some author activity: Stebner, Martin, Berlatsky, Banks, Mohammadi, Moure + Solomon,

Kevin Stebner answers the '12 or 20 questions' interview; Camille Martin has a series of photographs newly posted online; Noah Berlatsky has new work up at dadakuku; Chris Banks has an essay forthcoming in Best Canadian Essays 2026, and Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi, Erín Moure and Misha Solomon have poems forthcoming in Best Canadian Poetry 2026.

new from above/ground press: DOWN WATER STREET, by Terri Witek

DOWN WATER STREET
Terri Witek
$6

Vessel 1


After river-gathering elsewhere, a vessel arrives, catches. The story may be different where you are, but this time it was dipped then dropped by a stoop-weary nun. Lucky you who found it anyway, wet glint in sand. Now take out the people. A shard meshed in a river god's hair slowly reaches the lap of a waiting cypress. Nicks until sap beads but stays. Now X the gods. River touches sea and can’t return.

I say this because my sister’s not tight with her neighbor, who thinks birds queue for my sister’s bird feeder on her very own clothesline and shit shit shit. My sister neither moves the feeder nor declines to let her dog dig while the neighbor hisses.

But of course the neighbor’s lover passes and the woman turns poorly. Tears do something to proximities and it should have come as no surprise though it did that the neighbor’s legs begin to weep. Only the backs, so she both feels and imagines drops dragging down to gold carpet. My sister starts dressing her neighbor’s wounds. Yellow serum, she says, a pattern of holes. And     , who is, as they say, terminal, helps my sister back to her feet after my sister dresses the last little red weeper near her neighbor’s heel

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Terri Witek is the author of 8 previous full-length books of poems and many chapbooks: the most recent, Something’s Missing in This Museum, was published by Anhinga Press in 2023.  Exit Island was a Florida Book Award medalist; The Rape Kit was the Slope Editions Prize 2018 winner, judged by Dawn Lundy Martin. Martin calls The Rape Kit “ a grand success, the best we’ll get. Fresh, relevant, and heartbreaking” and “a fire in the throat of a culture that has no appropriate language for rape and its aftermath…”

Witek’s visual poetics work is featured in JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Gallery of Women’s Asemic Writing and Visual Poetry (2021) as well as in arts venues.  The poet’s collaborations with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have, since 2005, been shown nationally and internationally: in New York, Seoul, Miami, Lisbon, Valencia (Spain) and Rio de Janeiro. The duo have been represented by The Liminal gallery in Valencia: their most recent collaboration was featured at ARCO, Madrid (2023) where the Liminal won special jury mention. Since 2011, collaborations with new media artist Matt Roberts (mattroberts.com) often use augmented reality technology and have been featured in Matanza (Colombia), Lisbon, Glasgow, Vancouver, and Miami.  Recent collaborative work with poet Amaranth Borsuk loops the pandemic and the eco-crisis as a crisis of rain and smoke between worlds; that with weaver Paula Damm combines text/textile. Individual and collaborative work has been featured in a wide variety of text venues, including Fence, The Colorado Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Slate, Hudson Review, Lana Turner, The New Republic, and many other journals and anthologies.

With Cyriaco Lopes, Witek team-teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas; they also run The Fernando Pessoa Game as faculty in the summer Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. Witek holds the university’s Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing and is the recipient of both the McInery Award and the John Hague Award for teaching.  terriwitek.com

This is Witek’s second above/ground press title, after the collaborative W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT (2021), with Amaranth Borsuk.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Meredith Quartermain, Catriona Strang, Brook Houglum : above/ground press (Vancouver) chapbook launch : June 15 2025

Meredith Quartermain, Catriona Strang, Brook Houglum
: above/ground press (Vancouver) chapbook launch

June 15, 2025 @ 7pm | People’s Co-Op Books
1391 Commercial Drive | Vancouver, BC | V5L 3X5

Meredith Quartermain’s most recent book is Lullabies in the Real World (shortlisted for an Alberta Book Publishers’ award). Vancouver Walking won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. She is also the author of two novels and two books of short fiction: Recipes from the Red Planet (BC fiction award finalist) and I, Bartleby. From 2014-2016, she served as Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio program. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Prism International, The Dalhousie Review, Event Magazine, The Capilano Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, and many other magazines. She will be launching her above/ground press title, Things Musing (April 2025).

A founding member of the Institute for Domestic Research, Catriona Strang is the author of Unfuckable Lardass, Reveries of a Solitary Biker, Corked, and Low Fancy, and  co-author of Light Sweet Crude, Cold Trip, and Busted with the late Nancy Shaw, whose selected works, The Gorge, she edited.

She frequently collaborates with composer Jacqueline Leggatt, and lives with her two grown kids on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ Lands. She has been involved for decades in the Vancouver writing community, including in her paid work as editor at Talonbooks. She is recovering from decades of caring labour. She will be launching her above/ground press debut, from What If I Sang "Flower of Scotland"? (January 2025).

Brook Houglum [see her recent author spotlight interview here] has recently published the chapbooks Anthronoise (2024) and Inventory (2025) with above/ground press. She teaches at Capilano University and lives in Vancouver on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ lands. She will be launching her second above/ground press title, INVENTORY (April 2025).

Colin Dardis reviews Nathanael O'Reilly's TERMINALS (2025) at Poem Alone

Irish poet (and above/ground press author) Colin Dardis was good enough to provide a first review of Nathanael O'Reilly's TERMINALS (2025) over at Poem Alone. Thanks so much! You can read Dardis' original post here. As he writes:

O’Reilly’s third pamphlet with Canada’s above/ground press is, as the title suggests, comprised entirely of the terminal form. As the book notes, the form was invented by Australian poet John Tranter, where "the final word of each line in a source poem us used as the end-word for each line of a new poem”. A sizeable challenge in itself, as O’Reilly maintains not only this end-words in this new pieces, but the same order of words and stanza structure for each poem.

Sourced poems come from Seamus Heaney, Philip Larkin, Jessica Traynor, John Keats, Jane Clarke and others. The terminal device opens up a second level to the collection: the reader can source the originals, read and contrast them to O’Reilly’s re-imaginings, and admire just how inventive and challenging the new works our. Repeatedly, O’Reilly has been able to craft the restriction of the end-words into his own narrative, which often explores the need for isolation, and an affinity with landscapes. In ‘Settling Down’, the poem starts off as an innocent description of a beach scene, with surfers and fishermen. Then, unexpectedly:

    They do not know my remains
    will be scattered on their beach, blown
    out to see, the evidence of me
    settling down in one place at least[.]

This affinity drives the theme of some eco-poems in Terminals: closing poem ‘Autumn Lament’ chides humanity for not taking take of the earth – “The planet won’t let us off the hook | for the debts we owe’. The phrase ‘damaged earth’ is repeated from the opening poem, serving as neat bookend for the theme.

Tied closely to this connection to the land is the want for escape, mostly from other poem. The speaker in ‘The Landscape’s Singing’ hopes “for a fertile summer | writing poetry in the turf-shed”. In ‘Archaeology’, the opening action of ‘I close the door’ double downs on this shutting away of oneself, seemingly a much needed retreat: “I dig for the ancient me | sometimes feared vanished”. Although this is some connection with others elsewhere, such as remembering studying Picasso with a friend, or dwelling over a past love, the separateness creeps in. Equinox asks the ex-lover to “wonder | in my arms are lovelier than aloneness’. ‘Equinox’ sees the speaker wishing for ‘inspiration, solitude’, the two apparently inseparable.

There are a few flexible applications of the end words here and there: Heaney’s ‘place’ becomes ‘homeplace’ in O’Reilly rewriting; Duffy’s ‘hesitate’ shifts to ‘hesitation’; while Larkin’s ‘lace’ becomes hidden in the word ‘placed’. To this reviewer, these liberties are permissible: one would rather see a slight deviation, rather than have the language feel forced and unnatural in order to meet the demand of the original end-words. ‘Sweet Movement’ goes one step further, and retains the syllable count for each line as well from George and Ira Gershwin’s song, ‘Embraceable You’.

Looking at some of the end-words in isolation, one might marvel at the shift from the source poem to the new poem. ‘Remember’ takes from Ellen Bass’s ‘Any Common Desolation’. In one part, the end-words are ruminant, ginger, signs, mother, gathered, toes, etc., potentially unconnected to each other as the answers in a crossword puzzle. O’Reilly transforms these into a call for calmness and patience:

    Wait. Become ruminant,
    Meditate. Peel and grate ginger,
    sip healing tea. Search for signs
    of chance. Remember your mother,
    how she believed in you, gathered
    you in her arms, tickled your toes,
    made you laugh until you lost breath,
    distracted you from darkness. Sit in the yard
    imbibing the moon[.]

Terminals is a work of transmogrification, with surprising and pleasing results throughout, and is certainly the strongest work O’Reilly has published with above/ground press, which is known for championing experimental and restricted writing. A rewarding read, and for fellow writers, one that will inspire them to try their hand at their own terminal form.

Celebrating Penn Kemp's Life Time Achievement Award At Blackfriars Bistro, June 8 : London ON

Please join us at Blackfriars Bistro 

 

Cocktail / Hors-d’oeuvre Reception & Poetry Reading

 

 Celebrating

Poet, Performer and Playwright

 

Penn Kemp’s

 

 League of Canadian Poets 

 

Lifetime Achievement Award

 

Sunday June 8th from

 

 2 PM to 4 PM.

 

Please R.S.V.P at 519-667-4930.

Address: 46 Blackfriars St, London, ON. N6H 1K7

ethicalgourmet@yahoo.com  

some author activity: Carpenter, Solomon, Armantrout, Mellis, Norris + Stengel,

I missed it before, but J.R. Carpenter has a collaborative work with Mary Paterson over at Pamenar Online Journal; Misha Solomon is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Rae Armantrout has two new poems online at Granta; Miranda Mellis has started a substack; Ken Norris has new work up at The Typescript; and Jill Stengel has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series.

Jennifer Wenn reviews Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Miramichi Reader

London, Ontario poet and reviewer Jennifer Wenn was good enough to provide a review of Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) over at The Miramichi Reader. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of this particular title, after Karl Jirgens reviewed such over at The Typescript. You can read Wenn's original post here. As they write:

From Penn Kemp, one of our true elder trailblazers, is a new chapbook, Lives of Dead Poets (Above/Ground Press) A lament for those who have left/the present, the planet and possibility/behind, left us bewildered by/no more/words.

This is a poignant, affectionate collection leveraging a variety of forms and voices, for the most part a tribute to a remarkable era in Canadian literature centring on the early 70’s, one I very much wish I had known personally. At the time Kemp found herself in the middle of Toronto’s flourishing poetry scene, publishing her first book Bearing Down in 1972, editing the first anthology of women’s writing in Canada next, and then hosting a new reading series at A Space Gallery. Due to the Canada Council’s generosity at the time, it was possible to bring in poets from across Canada and even the United States. All this placed Kemp in a remarkable circle, as reflected by those she elegizes. She also reminisces in an separately published essay:  https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/03/penn-kemp-one-by-one-they-depart-great.html

After two introductory pieces (“Lives of Dead Poets”; and the punningly entitled “Die Verse”) the first memory is of Gwendolyn MacEwen (“Not Waving But Drowning”). This is a simply brilliant piece, for me the strongest in the collection, very heartfelt and sad.  It tells of a time when MacEwen (who was to pass on in 1987 at age 46 from complications of alcoholism) showed up for a reading a day late (The night after what would have been/triumph if you had appeared/you appear, bleary, beckoning to me/against the wall) and proceeds to reflect on her tragic decline.

Two other poets who died young are included: bp nichol (For bp nichol: A loss as alive now as/then) and Teva Harrison (Not One of These Poems Is About You, said Teva), perhaps best known for documenting her journey with metastatic breast cancer.

One of the minority of American poets found in these pages (the others are Canadian), Robert Creeley, is gifted two poems (“Gone Fishing“; and “Wednesday’s Man”), quite appropriate given that for Kemp of the old poets, the one/I most/miss is Creeley.

“Reading: Bob in the Light of” provides a sketch constructed of anecdotes for Bob Hogg, and some wisdom on a poet’s body of work: …The night//before you died, you/replied— /it goes on even when we no longer do!” Along the same lines is “The Girl from Sao Paolo”, a humorous narrative of a visit by P.K. Page to Kemp’s Toronto Island home: At the stove’s first growl, she leapt up and alighted/for the evening on the couch arm.

Special mention must be made of James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau, husband and wife icons of Souwesto (a term for Southwestern Ontario popularized by Reaney). A pair of beautiful tributes are happily included here, in the form of updated versions of two pieces that originally appeared in Kemp’s collection Local Heroes: the lightly revised “Drawing in Miniatures” for Reaney; and the significantly reworked “Social Justice Recounted”, ReStoried (formerly titled Recounted, ReStored, ReStoried) for Thibaudeau.

Two American poets (that, as Kemp has written in the aforementioned essay, she did not meet but whose poetry she admired) are also represented: Jack Spicer (“For Jack Spicer”) and John Ashbery (“Alphabet for Ashbery”). The latter is a very nice piece whose enjoyment would be enhanced by possessing a good appreciation of the subject; and my enjoyment of the former, I have to admit, suffered on account of my unfamiliarity with Spicer.

Lovely homages feature Phyllis Webb (“The Poet in Charge”: You are the glimmer     between sea/and sky/your poems still arrest us) and Robert Kroetsch (“A great illumination”: Of prescient kindness one/of a kind).

The last two elegies are both unusual. “Joe for Joe, Encore” is an affectionate dual tribute entwining Joe Blades and Joe Rosenblatt (Yet what I recall/most tenderly is your kind selves). In “Homage for Ellen S. Jaffe, Poet”, we meet Jaffe on her death bed, but still engaged: Ellen,     grey,     lying on//pillows,     blows us kisses   from her bed.

Closing the circle, we have the concluding piece “One by One They Depart, the Great Ones”, a touching reflection on times gone by and poets and friends passed on.  For one who wasn’t there, this chapbook is a precious glimpse into an extraordinary time and a special group of writers. Happily for all of us, we have their works, and, as Kemp says, “As the poets fall into their tradition/our beloved dead are more intimate/now than ever they could be in flesh.”

new from above/ground press: Tierra del Fuego (excerpts from a fiction), by R. Kolewe

Tierra del Fuego (excerpts from a fiction)
R. Kolewe
$5

He stayed off expressways and stuck to secondary roads when he could, sometimes in forest, sometimes with wide vistas: though the mountains there are not the spectacular peaks farther north they are softly sublime. He saw the small blue sign marking the access road for the Institute among the aspens, a place he’d read about wondering if he’d ever wind up there himself, given his work it wasn’t impossible and in a way it would be closing an open loop in his life. He had no idea Sil would be there a few years later; he had just discovered Tear had a sister, my genius sister Tear said, we’re twins but she’s five years older. Later he found his journals didn’t mention that sign though he recalled it clearly, of course illuminated by Sil’s tenure there and everything that transpired afterwards: it was one of those things that gained significance only in retrospect. And exactly what significance did it have, if any, anyway? It was like realizing that you and the green-eyed stranger at the bar beside you were both at the same event, a concert or gallery opening or conference, a decade or more ago. She doesn’t know who Rilke was but at least you have that in common, the same place at the same time; an entanglement, yes, but not something that tells you much about anything. Simultaneity isn’t information.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the twenty-eighth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

R. Kolewe has published four books of poetry, and several chapbooks. He lives in Toronto.

This is Kolewe’s second title with above/ground press, following Like the noises alive people wear (2019).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Alice Notley (November 8, 1945 - May 19, 2025)

Sad to hear that American poet and above/ground press author Alice Notley [photo lifted from her 2018 '12 or 20 questions' interview] died Monday night in Paris. The tributes will be far-reaching, I suspect, from every corner of contemporary writing across these next few days and weeks. For now, we offer condolences to her family and friends. She came through Ottawa to read at VERSeFest in 2018, which prompted her above/ground press title, and her reading was one of the finest I've witnessed.

new from above/ground press: PSA, by Jason Christie

PSA
Jason Christie
$6
 

Microplastics are forever!

I get itchy just thinking about how my body might change as a result of all the little, hard bits of chemical residue I've absorbed. I guess that's the joy of being human, it’s my privilege, right? Experiencing evolution even if it is uncomfortable. It is a miracle to feel and understand comfort because we experience discomfort. Not simply as a sensation but as a concept that I can enact. Being able to modify myself and my environment. That's power! Now where did I put my limited edition Deadpool mini-figure again? Hey, consider this though. What if because of the microplastics filling our bodies we end up preserved and living forever? What if because we were so fucking stupid we actually and accidentally become immortal? I'd watch that movie. Microplastics, man. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

[Jason Christie will be launching this title in Ottawa on August 7, 2025 as part of the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch at RedBird Live; tickets and other information available soon]

Jason Christie lives and writes in Ottawa with his wife and two children and no pets. His published books include Canada Post (Invisible), i-Robot (EDGE/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). He’s wrapping up a new collection that he wrote with/against/for AI.

This is Christie’s ninth chapbook with above/ground press, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Government (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018), Bridge and Burn (2021) and glass / language / untitled / exaltation (2023; second printing, 2024), which won the bpNichol Chapbook Award.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

above/ground press zoom launch! Tierney, Quartermain, Houglum, Doller + Jenks, May 28 2025

Check out the above/ground press ZOOM launch we’re doing on Wednesday, May 28, 7pm EDT, with myself reading alongside:

Orchid Tierney (OH)
Meredith Quartermain (BC)
Brook Houglum (BC)
Sandra Doller (NY)
and
Tom Jenks (UK)

, all of whom have recent above/ground press titles. Join via the link, here.

Author biographies:

Orchid Tierney is a poet and scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her collections include this abattoir is a college (Calamari Archive, 2025) and a year of misreading the wildcats (The Operating System 2019). She is the author of several chapbooks including looking at the Tiny: Mad lichen on the surfaces of reading (Essay Press, 2023), my beatrice (Ottawa: above/ground, 2020), ocean plastic (BlazeVOX, 2019), and blue doors (Belladonna* Press, 2018). Tierney is the coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics, and her scholarship has appeared in SubStance, Jacket2, The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry, Teaching the Literature of Climate Change, and The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics Since 1900. She is a senior editor at The Kenyon Review.

She is launching her second above/ground press title, pedagogies for the planthroposcene (May 2025), following my beatrice (2020)

Brook Houglum published the chapbook Anthronoise with above/ground press in 2024. She teaches at Capilano University and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia on unceded Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ lands.

She is launching her second above/ground press title, INVENTORY (April 2025)

Meredith Quartermain’s most recent book is Lullabies in the Real World (shortlisted for an Alberta Book Publishers’ award). Vancouver Walking won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. She is also the author of two novels and two books of short fiction: Recipes from the Red Planet (BC fiction award finalist) and I, Bartleby. From 2014-2016, she served as Poetry Mentor in the SFU Writer’s Studio program. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, Prism International, The Dalhousie Review, Event Magazine, The Capilano Review, Golden Handcuffs Review, and many other magazines.

She is launching Things Musing (April 2025), her fourth publication but first chapbook through above/ground press, following the broadsides “December 4” (#168, April 2003) and “Geography” (#225, 2005), and “Highway 99,” produced as issue #35 of STANZAS magazine (October 2003)

Tom Jenks is a writer and text artist living in Manchester, UK. His books include The Philosopher (Sublunary Editions), Melamine (The Red Ceilings Press) and Pack My Box with Five Dozen Liquor Jugs (Penteract Press), a pangrammatical novel with Catherine Vidler. He edits the small press zimzalla, specialising in literary objects. More at https://tomjenks.uk/

He is launching his above/ground press debut, Chimneys (May 2025)

Sandra Doller is the author of several books of poetry, prose, translation, and the in-between from the most valiant and precarious small presses—Les Figues, Ahsahta, Subito, and Sidebrow Books. Her newest book, Not Now Now, is forthcoming from Rescue Press. Doller is the founder of an international literary arts journal and independent press, 1913 a journal of forms/1913 Press, where she remains éditrice-in-chief, publishing poetry, poetics, prose, and all else by emerging and established writers. She lives in the USA, for now.

She is launching her above/ground press debut, I’ll try this hour (March 2025)

some author activity: Cone, Eleftherion, Armantrout, Skrabalek + Gontarek,

forthcoming author Jon Cone has new work up at Ant5; Melissa Eleftherion has new work up at Moira; Rae Armantrout has a new poem, "craft talk," up at The Best American Poetry blog; the video recording of Ryan Skrabalek's Woolsey Heights reading in South Berkeley, California, alongside Cecily Nicholson, Ted Rees and Joni Flint Gonzales, is now online; and I missed it before, but apparently Maxwell Gontarek had some work online as part of the online journal for Pamenar Press.

new from above/ground press: A N G E L D U S T, by Micah Ballard

A N G E L D U S T
Micah Ballard
$6

CONNOISSEURSHIP

Irresponsible joy
recycling moods inhaled surreal
what ifs all heart sensitive aloof
picked up maddening static
detained by a friendly hand
laughing and sinking into the most
luxurious eros. What a show off
yawing at the police
A charmed suddenness always talking
alone in the quasi I am unable
to be sad. You make me believe
I embarrass myself and go to bed early
all these souls jumping
inside and out. I am not asleep
I am only emerging
my broken mask invisible
with a subtle task

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image: Jason Morris, while listening to Dead Moon on repeat.

Micah Ballard is the author of over a dozen books of poetry including Waifs and Strays (City Lights Books), Afterlives (Bootstrap Press), The Michaux Notebook (FMSBW), Parish Krewes (Bootstrap Press), Selected Prose, 2008–19 (Blue Press), Evangeline Downs (Ugly Duckling Presse), Daily Vigs (Bird & Beckett Books), Vesper Chimes (Gas Meter), Busy Secret (first ed. above/ground press; second ed. FMSBW) and Negative Capability in the Verse of John Wieners (Bootstrap Press). He lives in San Francisco with poet Sunnylyn Thibodeaux and their daughter Lorca.

This is Ballard’s second above/ground press title, after Busy Secret (2024). With Garrett Caples, he co-edited G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #21, “Castle Guestskull” (2022).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 20: Pirie, MA|DE, Bandukwala, Moran + Smith,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Pearl Pirie (QC)
MA|DE (Windsor ON)
Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa ON)
James K. Moran (Ottawa ON)
+
Mahaila Smith (Ottawa ON)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 20, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

author biographies:

Pearl Pirie lives slowly in rural Quebec. A queer, p/t abled settler on unceded land of the Anishnaabe, she is the author of footlights (Radiant Press, 2020)  You can find her on socials— Instagram, Patreon, Substack and at www.pearlpirie.com.

MA|DE (est. 2018) [pictured] is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace — artists whose active solo practices, while differing radically, serve to complement one another. Their work has appeared in literary journals internationally, including Augur, CV2, Grain, PRISM, Salamander, The Woodward Review and Vallum. MA|DE has written 4 chapbooks, including the bpNichol award-shortlisted A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books 2020). MA|DE's debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO, is out now from Palimpsest Press, and another collection, Detourism, is forthcoming with Palimpsest in 2028. More: ma-de.ca

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022; shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award). She has been twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

James K. Moran’s poetry and speculative fiction have appeared in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Burly Tales, Bywords, Glitterwolf, and On Spec. Lethe Press published his fiction collection Fear Itself and horror novel Town & Train. Moran writes across genres about cosmic carports, drag-queen warlocks and nomadic superheroes. He reviews for Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude and Strange Horizons. Findable at jameskmoran.blogspot.ca, @jamestheballadeer.bsky.social (Bluesky) and jamestheballadeer (Instagram). Moran lives in Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Mahaila Smith is a researcher, poet, editor and MA student based on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They won the 2024 John Newlove Poetry Award and were nominated for the Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. They adore fibre crafts and collecting sea-glass. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca. Their debut narrative poetry collection, Seed Beetle is available from Stelliform Press.

new from above/ground press: cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition, by Monty Reid

cuba A book
twentieth anniversary edition
Monty Reid
$6

 

Imagination
always has a body.

Revolution always
has a boat.

You have entered
the black room

and the celebrated boat
is preserved

in a glass house
in the old city.

Description
is no longer possible.

What's left
of the sea

has never
arrived.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

[Monty Reid will be launching this title in Ottawa on August 7, 2025 as part of the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch at RedBird Live; tickets and other information available soon]

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, and currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of the full-length collections Karst Means Stone (NeWest Press, 1979), The Life of Ryley (Thistledown Press, 1981), The Dream of Snowy Owls (Longspoon Press, 1983), The Alternate Guide (Red Deer College Press, 1985), These Lawns (Red Deer College Press, 1990), Dog Sleeps: Irritated Texts (NeWest Press, 1993), Crawlspace: New and Selected Poems (House of Anansi Press, 1993), Flat Side (Red Deer College Press, 1998), Disappointment Island (Chaudiere Books, 2006), Luskville Reductions (Brick Books, 2008), Garden (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and Meditatio Placentae (Brick Books, 2016). The former Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, he was the Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival for more than a decade.

This is Reid’s seventh chapbook with above/ground press, following Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (2000), cuba A book (2005), In the Garden (sept series) (2011), Moan Coach (2013), seam (2018) and Where there’s smoke (2023). above/ground press produced the festschrift Report from the Reid Society Vol. 1 No. 1 in 2022.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Chang-Richardson,Witek, mclennan, Kaplan, Eleftherion, MacEachern, Moure + Houglum,

forthcoming author Ellen Chang-Richardson answers the '12 or 20 questions'; forthcoming author Terri Witek is featured in the spotlight series; rob mclennan is interviewed by JWT BookAdventures; Genevieve Kaplan has work in the latest Word for Word; Melissa Eleftherion reads for the DMQ Virtual Salon; Jessi MacEachern answers four questions for Erín Moure via YouTube; and did you see that Brook Houglum is the second in the new series of author spotlights over at the above/ground press substack?

new from above/ground press: Chimneys, by Tom Jenks

Chimneys
Tom Jenks
$5

syrup

“I have built a complete and immaculate world”, sighed the Baron, resting a white gloved hand on the green baize table; “but I do not have the time to inhabit it.” Plum trees in jars, marzipan churches, mountains dusted with the rarest of sugars. No, dear Baron, we must remain in this imperfect version, with its leaning trees and crooked rivers, its damp parks and rickety iron bridges. Dogs roam the lanes and find their way into houses. They sit at the table and help themselves to porridge with spoonful after spoonful of dense golden syrup.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Tom Jenks is a writer and text artist living in Manchester, UK. His books include The Philosopher (Sublunary Editions), Melamine (The Red Ceilings Press) and Pack My Box with Five Dozen Liquor Jugs (Penteract Press), a pangrammatical novel with Catherine Vidler. He edits the small press zimzalla, specialising in literary objects. More at https://tomjenks.uk/

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Jay Miller reviews Lance La Rocque's Glitch (2020)

Montreal poet, translator and reviewer Jay Miller was good enough to provide the first review of Lance La Rocque's Glitch (2020) over at Bibelotages. Thanks so much! You can read Miller's original post here. As Miller writes:

Lance La Rocque, I believe, contains such perspicaciousness and self-awareness. I trust his poetry.

It is election night in Canada in what many may consider the most monumental federal electoral happening of their lives, I know I certainly do. Nothing, besides a Xanax dressed as Big Bird from Sesame Street or a steam bath of chloroform could knock me out.

So I am finally picking up a 2020 chapbook by none other than Lance La Rocque to soothe my nerves. I have been saving this work for a special occasion, for not only is it published by rob mclennan’s above/ground press, La Rocque acknowledges two favourites of mine, Stuart Ross and Alice Burdick, in the back of the chap for “generous editorial advice.”

Lance La Rocque is a beloved and celebrated professor of literature and writing at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, has poems in Ross’s Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian poets under the influence, and other creative and academic work reaching back as long ago as 2002 (the last palindrome year of the Gregorian calendar we will witness until 2112).

From Surreal Estate:

    HISTORY IS THE EXCEPTION

    This present
    is this
    present.
    The other ones
    are sleeping,
    their eyes red with
    dreaming.
    Or not.

    The others: imaginary skeletons
    deprived of bodies,
    writhing under
    the linoleum. The asphalt.
    The earth.
    Or not.

    I awaken to this.

    Most things are
    never born.

    But some things are/
    born dead.
    And ghostlike,
    they make their ways
    among the furniture,
    wandering on the brink
    of resignation and despair.

As a millennial, I am of the stubborn inexplicable opinion that some of you reading this might share that in the year 2025, you could still very much base an entire writerly career on the concept of despair and make a life out of it. I think only a handful of Spanish-language writers and a handful of Canadian poets understand this, although it probably has roots in something like Lautréamont.

Regardless of whether you write poetry, non-fiction, or blogs, the theme of despair is such a Mariana Trench of irony and narrative force, like the deep sea itself, I would consider the majority of it unexplored. That, even by mere mention of it, no less in the final line of a surrealist poem, I take it as a sign of perspicacity and awareness unobtainable by a vast swath of living writing authors around the world today. It’s just one of those things to me.

Lance La Rocque, I believe, contains such perspicaciousness and self-awareness. I trust his poetry.

And I say millennial even though the roots extend into the past well before my time because it is exceedingly rare as time goes on, but has been sparse looking back. Sure, you may find themes of despair in works by someone such as Victor Hugo or Bloy (author of the novel Le Désespéré, one of the few titles mentioned by Borges in his inimitable column Biblioteca personal)—it is perhaps best depicted by Alfred de Musset in his 1835 poem Le Pélican [English follows original]:

    Quel que soit le souci que ta jeunesse endure,
    Laisse-la s’élargir, cette sainte blessure
    Que les séraphins noirs t’ont faite au fond du coeur ;
    Rien ne nous rend si grands qu’une grande douleur
    Mais, pour en être atteint, ne crois pas, ô poète,
    Que ta voix ici-bas doive rester muette.

    Les plus désespérés sont les chants les plus beaux,
    Et j’en sais d’immortels qui sont de purs sanglots.
    Lorsque le pélican, lassé d’un long voyage,
    Dans les brouillards du soir retourne à ses roseaux,
    Ses petits affamés courent sur le rivage
    En le voyant au loin s’abattre sur les eaux.
    Déjà, croyant saisir et partager leur proie,
    Ils courent à leur père avec des cris de joie
    En secouant leurs becs sur leurs goitres hideux.
    Lui, gagnant à pas lent une roche élevée,
    De son aile pendante abritant sa couvée,
    Pêcheur mélancolique, il regarde les cieux.
    Le sang coule à longs flots de sa poitrine ouverte ;
    En vain il a des mers fouillé la profondeur ;
    L’océan était vide et la plage déserte ;
    Pour toute nourriture il apporte son cœur.
    Sombre et silencieux, étendu sur la pierre,
    Partageant à ses fils ses entrailles de père,
    Dans son amour sublime il berce sa douleur ;
    Et, regardant couler sa sanglante mamelle,
    Sur son festin de mort il s’affaisse et chancelle,
    Ivre de volupté, de tendresse et d’horreur.
    Mais parfois, au milieu du divin sacrifice,
    Fatigué de mourir dans un trop long supplice,
    Il craint que ses enfants ne le laissent vivant ;
    Alors il se soulève, ouvre son aile au vent,
    Et, se frappant le cœur avec un cri sauvage,
    Il pousse dans la nuit un si funèbre adieu,
    Que les oiseaux des mers désertent le rivage,
    Et que le voyageur attardé sur la plage,
    Sentant passer la mort se recommande à Dieu.

    Poète, c’est ainsi que font les grands poètes.
    Ils laissent s’égayer ceux qui vivent un temps ;
    Mais les festins humains qu’ils servent à leurs fêtes
    Ressemblent la plupart à ceux des pélicans.
    Quand ils parlent ainsi d’espérances trompées,
    De tristesse et d’oubli, d’amour et de malheur,
    Ce n’est pas un concert à dilater le cœur ;
    Leurs déclamations sont comme des épées :
    Elles tracent dans l’air un cercle éblouissant ;
    Mais il y pend toujours quelque goutte de sang.

    Whatever may be the concern your youth endure,
    Let prosper this holy wound
    That black seraphims left in the bottom of your heart—
    Nothing makes us so grand as a grand pain;
    But, to be afflicted by it, don’t believe, dear poet,
    That your voice henceforth must remain silent.

    Most desperate are songs most beautiful,
    And I know of timeless ones forged of pure sobs.
    Such as when the pelican, from long journey spent,
    Returns to his reeds under the immesurable fog of night,
    His famished nestlings run along the shore,
    Seeing him from afar alight upon the waters.
    Yet, thinking to seize and share their prey,
    With shrieks of joy they run to their father
    Shaking their beaks upon their hideous glands.
    And he, ascending a tall rock with measured pace,
    Ushering in his flock with pendulent wing,
    Melancholic fisherman that he is, looks to the skies.
    Blood pours out in long streams from his open chest—
    He foraged the sea deep in vain:
    The ocean was empty, the beach was barren—
    For all sustenance he gave his heart.
    Sombre and silent, laid out on the stone,
    Sharing his paternal innards to his offspring,
    He cradles his pain in a sublime act of love.
    Upon seeing his bleeding breast,
    He falters and submits to the feast of his death,
    With tenderness and horror, drunk on pure will.
    Yet betimes, amidst his divine sacrifice,
    Weary of dying from too long a feast,
    He fears his children won’t leave him alive;
    So he rises, opening his wing to the wind,
    And, beating his heart with a wild shriek,
    Cries out a farewell into the night so deathly
    That the birds of sea abandon the shore
    And the straggling beachcomber in his surprise
    Prepares to meet his maker with a little sign.

    Poet, it is thus that the greats perform their craft.
    They let those who live a while make merry and well;
    But the human feasts they serve at their fêtes
    Mostly resemble those of pelicans.
    When they speak thus of false hopes,
    Of sadness and oblivion, of love and malice,
    It makes not a concert to delight the heart;
    Their harried words stick like swords
    And draw a stunning circle in the air,
    But therein always lingers some drop of blood.

[Editor’s note: translation my own —J.M.]

It is with this that I leave you, time no longer permitting me to linger with La Rocque, with a poem of his that encapsulates this:

    Child

    Dark night. Nothing but dreams. That means I have slept, sifting the
    rusty coils.
    and staring through slits on the upper deck where I’ve lost my dime
    again. Again.

    I’d rather have been encased in the silent black rock, and you scrape
    away all the marks
    on the shell. All that I’ve done and not done.

    The silver lining is the long needle. Repeated punctures. Lungs. Ear
    drums. The soft valves
    in sounds it sounds like love is the punishing machine.

    I am begging you god guide my child through the passages and
    creatures
    of this crowded circus. Until he’s done. I can’t.

    I awaken paralyzed, blind from the hammering
    injustice or indifference builds on a face.

new from above/ground press: pedagogies for the planthroposcene, by Orchid Tierney

pedagogies for the planthroposcene
Orchid Tierney
$5

it’s amazing    how fires unfurl strange weathers   brown husks carve         

                   hills tacky with ash      unseasonal fires every season

are a kind bomb      arson is endless repetition       in a hot system        

             feedback notations      craven fires like tourists         

grousing trees and      lichen with fiery indifference      another network

           of dirty looks      smoldering      and smoke trees transfer riches

                   to seedlings      or that stump      there on the hill         

           defines what health      care is      a flashfire      sprouts too soon            

                      charred roots enjoy such strange      world endings    

                           corpse grey dirt      new urfs to grow in

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Orchid Tierney is a poet and scholar from Aotearoa New Zealand. Her collections include this abattoir is a college (Calamari Archive, 2025) and a year of misreading the wildcats (The Operating System 2019). She is the author of several chapbooks including looking at the Tiny: Mad lichen on the surfaces of reading (Essay Press, 2023), my beatrice (Ottawa: above/ground, 2020), ocean plastic (BlazeVOX, 2019), and blue doors (Belladonna* Press, 2018). Tierney is the coeditor of The Routledge Companion to Ecopoetics, and her scholarship has appeared in SubStance, Jacket2, The Cambridge Companion to Australian Poetry, Teaching the Literature of Climate Change, and The Cambridge Companion to American Poetry and Politics Since 1900. She is a senior editor at The Kenyon Review.

This is Tierney’s second above/ground press title, after my beatrice (2020).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com