some author activity: Kelly, mclennan, Tierney, Sandhu + Gray,

J-T Kelly has a stack of poems up at UCity Review, and is featured over at Poetry is Currency; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Scrivener Creative Review; Rebecca Hawkes, John Garaets, and Orchid Tierney talk about Big Poetry, her collection this abattoir is a college, and MFA programmes via Zoom recording; Mandy Sandhu has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; and I'd somehow missed that Stephanie Gray had a series of pieces posted over at Jacket2.

new from above/ground press: The Oh Oh, by Beatriz Hausner

The Oh Oh
Beatriz Hausner
$6

The Goddess is Moved to Utterance

The goddess is moved to utterance. Three plus Seven times she 
Raises the Hour to One. She Returns and loosens the clasps For 
the Hour is now at Eight a.m. on the Third day of the Eighth month. 
By the sea did you see the goddess, First Born of the Froth 
the waves rise on the Sixth month with you: I stand in Amazement. 
Three times Three is Nine and we are Returned to each other again 
changed and the parts that are earthy and dampened with penetrant 
moisture are changed to bodily Flesh. On the Fourth day of the tenth 
month Am I born again year after year reminded of life of one from 
the Two and two from the one. Four plus Zero remains four even 
as all is Changed at every recurrence of Four. The Body grows
the seX not and yes and Careless the heart. Four. Yes and 
no because Four corners do not equal Four corners at Once though 
they might. Does the age of prestidigitation equal Seven? Yes
it does. Birth Day it is as all days are days of birth even this Fifth
day of the ninth month when access is given to the boundless world.

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

[Beatriz Hausner launches this title in Ottawa on August 7, 2025 as part of the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch at RedBird Live; tickets available]

cover image: “Mirage,” Susana Wald and Ludwig Zeller

Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including The Wardrobe Mistress (2003), Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020) and She Who Lies Above (2023), as well as many limited-edition chapbooks. Her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, French, and most recently Greek. Hausner writes extensively about surrealism and her translations of Spanish American surrealist poets have exerted an important influence on her own writing. She has edited journals and magazines, including Open Letter, ellipse, Exile Quarterly, as well as many of the books published during her tenure as a publisher of Quattro Books. She is the editor of Someone Editions, and its current project French Letter Society. Beatriz Hausner was President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She lives in Toronto where she publishes The Philosophical Egg, an organ or living surrealism. Currently, with Russell Smith, she curates and runs the lecture series Soluble Fish. 

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: Graham, Barwin, Ross, Mellis, mclennan + Tierney,

Lea Graham has a poem up at The Fortnightly Review; Gary Barwin has a poem up at NewPoetry; Stuart Ross has new work up at The Glacier; Miranda Mellis writes on Robert (Bob) Glück for BOMB magazine; rob mclennan has a poem up at Poem Alone, two more up at Blood+Honey, and is interviewed by Mia Funk for The Creative Process; and Orchid Tierney is hosting a free, virtual zine workshop, “pedagogies for the planthroposcene!,” on August 8 at noon as part of Sarabande Books's ⚡ZINE LUNCH!⚡ series.

Lisa de Nikolits reviews MLA Chernoff's ESTRO FLUNKY: FIELD NOTES (2023) at the Wolsak and Wynn blog,

Lisa de Nikolits was good enough to provide a first review of MLA Chernoff's ESTRO FLUNKY: FIELD NOTES (2023), as part of a listing of "great summer reads," over at the Wolsak and Wynn blog. Thanks so much! You can read her original post here. As she writes:

In case you’re new to MLA Chernoff, they’re a Toronto-based poet, performance artist, meme enthusiast and recovering academic. Their debut full-length poetry collection, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], was released by Gordon Hill Press in 2021. MLA is also the author of several chapbooks, including delet this (Bad Books, 2018), TERSE THIRSTY (Gap Riot Press, 2019), I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY) (845 Press, 2022) and ESTRO FLUNKY (above/ground press, 2023).

I completely loved [SQUELCH PROCEDURES] and was delighted to read ESTRO FLUNKY. 

I delight in the workings of MLA Chernoff’s wondrous mind as they deftly juggle words, images, emotions, sights and sounds. 

Sharply insightful, citrus and crackling, ESTRO FLUNKY is a reader’s delight. Political, sexual, life-affirming, life-analyzing, brilliantly insightful and incredibly, unfathomably clever, ESTRO FLUNKY’s “pomes” are woven with the minutiae of life’s tragedies and the overwhelming challenges of life: 

“Seasonal Repressive”

    Because feelings are
    H=A=R=D
    and all games
    inevitably 
    stop
    short.

Or from “Soyjacking”

    Lusting prosaic, 
    actually: if anything. 
    If things must be hushed 
    to the extreme, this is a tomato timer, 
    a political fiction, a fear of the self, 
    keying futurity, slashing its tires.

A collection I will repeatedly return to, to plumb the depths of MLA Chernoff’s most wondrous mind. 

some author activity: Browne, Maloukis, Saklikar, Manery, Robinson, Boughn + Kemp,

a video conversation of Kate Colby and Al Filreas discussing a poem by Laynie Browne at Kelly Writers House is now online; Rose Maloukis had a poem longlisted for The 2025 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse contest, via The New Quarterly; Renée Sarojini Saklikar etc read in Vancouver on June 28th as part of Rob Manery's Some Reading; Ben Robinson has some new poems and book recommendations over at Etcetera, as does Michael Boughn; and Penn Kemp has four new poems up at The Typescript.

new from above/ground press: Verse on the Banks / Poèmes sur le rivage, eds./dir. Véronique Sylvain and/de David O’Meara

Verse on the Banks / Poèmes sur le rivage
eds./dir. Véronique Sylvain 
and/et David O’Meara
$6

including new poems in English (alongside French translation) and new poems in French (alongside English translation) by:

Manahil Bandukwala
Julie Huard
Amanda Earl
Myriam Legault-Beauregard 
David Groulx
Michèle Matteau
Monty Reid
Clémence Roy-Darisse

translations by/traductions de Myriam Legault-Beauregard

Avant-propos, par Véronique Sylvain et David O’Meara
Poète officielle francophone et poète officiel anglophone de la Ville d’Ottawa

Dans le cadre de nos mandats à titre de poètes officiels pour 2024-2026, nous tâchons de mettre en valeur des organismes qui jouent un rôle important pour l’écologie de notre région, notamment en matière de sensibilisation et d’intendance environnementale. Nous célébrons, dans ce recueil, la rivière des Outaouais et son bassin versant, de même que le travail de Garde-rivière des Outaouais (https://garderivieredesoutaouais.ca/), qui joue un rôle essentiel pour préserver nos habitats locaux et la qualité de notre eau. Dans cet esprit, nous avons demandé à huit poètes d’ici d’écrire sur le thème de la rivière, et de nous communiquer leurs pensées, leurs souvenirs et leurs peurs en s’inspirant des environs. Les prochaines pages rassemblent les poèmes qui en découlent. Nous espérons qu’ils sauront vous plaire.

Foreword from Véronique Sylvain and David O’Meara
Poets Laureate, Francophone and Anglophone, The City of Ottawa

As part of our Laureate programs for 2024-26, we endeavour to recognize organizations that play an important role in the education and stewardship of our local ecology and its environment. With this chapbook, we celebrate the Ottawa River and its watershed and the work of the Ottawa Riverkeeper (https://ottawariverkeeper.ca/) in their essential role as supporters of local habitat and water quality. Accordingly, we asked eight local poets to respond to the subject of the river, conveying their thoughts, memories and fears through inspiration in its environs. These poems are the result. We hope you’ll enjoy them.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
produced for the Verse on the Banks / Poèmes sur le rivage event, Wednesday June 18 2025 in Ottawa : tickets available at: https://ottawariverkeeper.ca/theme-event/current-conversations-poetry-by-the-river-june-18th-2025/
June 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Biographies:

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.

Julie Huard is an author, photographer, filmmaker and traveller. Her seventh book, Paysâmes et miroirs du monde (Éditions David) won the prix “Coup de cœur” awarded by the City of Gatineau in 2016. Over the years, Julie has been invited to many writers’ residencies and literary festivals, including in Haiti, Belgium and Guinea. In her most recent book, a poetic narrative titled Les merveilleuses (Éditions David), she follows the footsteps of her mother, Hélène, while honouring all the mothers in the world. Her passion? To explore the planet, to observe and reflect on human nature, as she pursues her quest for beauty.

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews and publishes poetry, prose, visual poetry and hybrid work on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca. Her latest work is “desire, a footnote,” a long poem in six chapbooks published by AngelHousePress. More information: AmandaEarl.com. 

Myriam Legault-Beauregard is a translator, a poet and a spoken-word artist. She earned two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s from the Université du Québec en Outaouais, and she is currently completing her PhD at the University of Ottawa. Her own works and shorter translations have been published in various magazines and journals, and her first poetry collection, Comme un myosotis, was launched in September 2023. Her first book-length translation, De plâtre et de platine (French version of Shashi Bhat’s The Most Precious Substance on Earth), was a finalist to the John-Glassco prize in the fall of 2024. She lives in Gatineau with her partner and their two children.

David Groulx is an award-winning Indigenous author. He has published 11 books of poetry and several of his books have been translated into Cree, French and Ojibwe languages. He won the John Newlove award for poetry in 2019 and was nominated for the Archibald Lampman award in 2015 and 2019. His poetry has appeared in over 200 magazines in 16 countries. He currently lives in Vanier, Ontario.

Born in the Province of Québec, Michèle Matteau has lived in British Columbia and in Nova Scotia, where she worked as a teacher and completed her master’s degree in psychology. She now resides in Ottawa. Since 1987, she has worked as a screenwriter and researcher for different producers, as well as an educator for cultural and/or educational Canadian organizations. She was the director of the “Vertiges” collection at L’Interligne from 2009 to 2013. She now gives literary workshops and accompanies professional writers in their artistic career. An author of novels and short stories, a poet and a playwright, Michèle has won several literary awards, including the Prix littéraire Trillium, twice.

David O’Meara is the author of five collections of poetry, most recently A Pretty Sight and Masses On Radar (Coach House Books, 2013, 2021). His novel, Chandelier, is published by Nightwood Editions (2024). He is the current Poet Laureate (Anglophone) of the City of Ottawa.

Emerging writer, actor and producer Clémence Roy-Darisse was among the cast of 2042 at the National Arts Centre, and of Mamuche, by Théâtre Mauve Sapin. In 2019, she presented “Profil”, a work on the dictatorship of happiness on social media, as well as “Laurence”. Clémence holds a master’s degree in Theatre, in which she focuses on the integration of eco-emotions in theatre. She also aspires to involve the artistic community in the ecological transition, and therefore embodies a new generation of socially committed artists. 

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, worked in Alberta, and has lived beside the Ottawa River for the past 25 years.  His many books include Crawlspace (Anansi), The Luskville Reductions (Brick), and Garden (Chaudiere). His most recent chapbooks are Vertebrata, from Montreal’s Turret House, and the 20th anniversary re-issue of cuba A book, from above/ground press.

Véronique Sylvain lives in Ottawa, where she works in the publishing sector. Her poems appear in several literary journals and collectives. Thanks to her first collection, Premier quart (Prise de parole, 2019), she was rewarded with the Prix de poésie Trillium and the Prix du livre d’Ottawa, in 2020, as well as the prix Champlain and the Prix littéraire émergence AAOF, in 2021. Her most recent collection, En terrain miné, also published by Prise de parole, was launched in September 2024. She will be, until fall 2026, the Francophone Poet Laureate of the City of Ottawa. 

Notices biographiques:

Manahil Bandukwala est écrivaine et artiste en arts visuels. Elle est l’autrice d’Heliotropia (Brick Books, 2024, en lice pour le prix Pat-Lowther et le prix Raymond-Souster), ainsi que de MONUMENT (Brick Books, 2022 ; finaliste au prix Gerald-Lampert). Elle a fait partie, à deux reprises, de la liste préliminaire du CBC Poetry Prize, et a été sélectionnée au programme « Rising Star » du Writer’s Trust of Canada en 2023. Pour découvrir son œuvre : manahilbandukwala.com.

Julie Huard est auteure, photographe, réalisatrice et voyageuse. Son septième ouvrage, Paysâmes et miroirs du monde (David) remportait en 2016 le prix Coup de cœur de la Ville de Gatineau. Au fil du temps, Julie a été conviée à bon nombre de résidences d’auteurs et de festivals littéraires notamment en Haïti, en Belgique et en Guinée. Dans son plus récent ouvrage, Les merveilleuses (David), un récit poétique, elle suit les traces d’Hélène, sa mère, offrant un hommage à toutes les mères du monde. La passion de Julie? Découvrir la planète, observer et réfléchir sur la nature humaine en poursuivant sa quête de beauté.

Amanda Earl (elle) écrit, révise, critique et publie des œuvres de poésie, de prose, des poèmes visuels et des œuvres hybrides sur les terres non cédées des Algonquins Anichinabés. Elle est la directrice de rédaction du site Web Bywords.ca. Sa plus récente création, un long poème publié en six courts recueils, s’intitule « desire, a footnote » et a été publiée chez AngelHousePress. Pour en savoir plus : AmandaEarl.com. 

Myriam Legault-Beauregard est traductrice, poète et slameuse. Titulaire de deux baccalauréats et d’une maîtrise de l’Université du Québec en Outaouais, elle termine actuellement son doctorat à l’Université d’Ottawa. Ses propres créations et certaines de ses traductions ont été publiées dans diverses revues, et son premier recueil de poésie, Comme un myosotis, est paru en septembre 2023. Sa première traduction de roman, De plâtre et de platine (version française de The Most Precious Substance on Earth de Shashi Bhat), a été finaliste aux prix John-Glassco à l'automne 2024. Elle vit à Gatineau avec son conjoint et leurs deux filles.

David Groulx est un auteur autochtone primé. Il a fait paraître 11 recueils de poésie, et plusieurs de ses livres ont été traduits en cri, en français et en ojibwé. Il a remporté le prix de poésie John-Newlove en 2019 et a été finaliste au prix Archibald-Lampman en 2015 et en 2019. Ses poèmes ont été publiés dans plus de 200 revues, dans 16 pays. Il vit actuellement à Vanier, en Ontario.

Née au Québec, Michèle Matteau a vécu en Colombie-Britannique, puis en Nouvelle-Écosse où elle a enseigné et complété une maîtrise en psychologie. Elle réside aujourd’hui à Ottawa. Depuis 1987, elle a travaillé comme scénariste et recherchiste pour différents producteurs, et comme pédagogue pour des institutions culturelles ou éducatives canadiennes. Elle a dirigé la collection « Vertiges » (L’Interligne), de 2009 à 2013. Elle donne aujourd’hui des ateliers littéraires et accompagne des écrivain.e.s professionnel.le.s dans leur cheminement artistique. Autrice de romans et de nouvelles, poète et dramaturge, Michèle a remporté plusieurs prix littéraires dont deux fois le Prix Trillium.

David O’Meara est l’auteur de cinq recueils de poésie, dont les plus récents sont A Pretty Sight et On Radar (Coach House Books, 2013 et 2021). Son roman, intitulé Chandelier, a été publié chez Nightwood Editions en 2024. Il est actuellement le poète officiel anglophone de la Ville d’Ottawa.

Autrice, comédienne et metteure en scène de la relève, Clémence Roy-Darisse a fait partie de la distribution de 2042 au Centre national des Arts et de Mamuche du Théâtre Mauve Sapin. Elle a présenté, en 2019, « Profil », un texte sur la dictature du bonheur sur les réseaux sociaux et « Laurence ». Clémence détient une maîtrise en théâtre, où elle se concentre sur l’intégration des éco-émotions au théâtre. Elle aspire également à impliquer les artistes dans la transition écologique, incarnant ainsi une nouvelle génération d’artistes engagé.e.s.

Monty Reid est né en Saskatchewan, a travaillé en Alberta, et vit non loin de la rivière des Outaouais depuis 25 ans. Parmi les nombreux titres qu’il a fait paraître, mentionnons Crawlspace (House of Anansi), The Luskville Reductions (Brick Books), and Garden (Chaudière Books). Ses plus récentes publications sont deux courts recueils : Vertebrata, paru chez Turret House Press, à Montréal, et une réédition 20e anniversaire de cuba A book, parue chez above/ground press.

Véronique Sylvain habite à Ottawa, où elle travaille dans le milieu de l’édition. Ses poèmes ont paru dans plusieurs revues de création littéraire, ainsi que des collectifs. Son premier recueil, Premier quart (Prise de parole, 2019), lui a permis de remporter le Prix de poésie Trillium, le Prix du livre d’Ottawa, en 2020, le prix Champlain et le Prix littéraire émergence AAOF 2021. Son plus récent recueil de poésie, En terrain miné, est paru en septembre 2024 chez Prise de parole. Elle occupera, jusqu’à l’automne 2026, le poste de poète officielle francophone de la Ville d’Ottawa.

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: Tierney, Skrabalak, Carr, Robinson, Shea + Eleftherion,

Orchid Tierney is the third in the above/ground press author spotlights via the above/ground press substack; Ryan Skrabalak is interviewed alongside Robbie Wing by Miriam Atkin for "Specific Objects," WGXC: Radio for Open Ears; Julie Carr and Elizabeth Robinson have new work in the latest issue of Posit; Michael Martin Shea has some new translations of poems by Augusto Lunel over at Black Sun Lit; and Melissa Eleftherion has new work up Stone Circle Review.

new from above/ground press: BIBLIOMANCY, by Leah Souffrant

BIBLIOMANCY
Leah Souffrant
$6

cold, point, numbers

cold in Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; point in Just Us: An American Conversation by Claudia Rankine; numbers in MLA Handbook 7th Edition.

Numbers often seem cold. The stiff meaning of them. One cannot be two. But the romance of knowing! And then the cold devastation! Twelve is very specific. I’ve preferred “a dozen” or even “some.” I’ve preferred to make what is precise become vague, soft, imprecise. Even numbers can point us towards different things, different scales of measure, different amounts. Two miles is rather different than two apples. But this is the point of numbers, to point us to a shared point, to agree and understand something about how we take in the world, what it is to us in common. Is this cold? I ate two apples. He slept for two hours. She fell in love with two people. The numbers warm up. I see the apples begin to take shape, the shadow of one leaning across the other, the two cores tossed together in a trash bin. The numbers line up on a graph, the x axis and the y axis, but here the finger points to the place where something intersects, the point on the graph where cold becomes warm, where you show me what you’ve discovered and I see it.

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

Leah Souffrant is a writer and artist and the author of Entanglements: Threads woven from history, memory, and the body (Unbound Edition Press 2023) and Plain Burned Things: A Poetics of the Unsayable (Collection Clinamen, PULG Liège 2017). She teaches writing at New York University.

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

new from above/ground press: More of How to Read the Bible, by J-T Kelly

More of How to Read the Bible
J-T Kelly
$6

More of How to Read the Bible

Moses always disappearing to ask you what to do.
Comes back with a snake on a stick.
Comes back with water from a staff-struck rock.
Comes back with the law.
Comes back with his face shining.
Where would we be if he gave all this up for
the loneliness of the mountain,
of the heart?

When I am alone, you are with me. But I am not alone.
We are practically legion down here,
suffering, sinning, singing.
We go back to our old ways in a New York minute.
Hide the affair behind the expense account.
Let the perjured testimony stand.
Turn away the boats at the beach.

How to be a people. How to have a god.
I'm not sure I can have you all by my lonesome.
Not sure I can sin without some solidarity.
Not sure salvation
parses out the individual.

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

J-T Kelly is an innkeeper in Indianapolis. He lives in a brick house with his wife, their six children, his two parents, his brother, and a dog. Poems in The Denver Quarterly, Bad Lilies, and elsewhere. Chapbook Like Now (CCCP/Subpress, 2023). Full-length ms in circulation.

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 above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch/party! August 7 at RedBird,

celebrating THIRTY-TWO YEARS of continuous activity (and nearly fourteen hundred publications), Ottawa publisher above/ground press presents:

readings and chapbook launches by:

Jason Christie (Ottawa), Monty Reid (Ottawa), Beatriz Hausner (Toronto), Ellen Chang-Richardson (Ottawa), Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (Toronto) + Mandy Sandhu (Toronto);

lovingly hosted by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan
THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2025 at RedBird
7pm door/7:30pm reading 

$18 ; includes copies of three recent above/ground press titles ; Tickets available via RedBird, or at the door; [see the report here from last year’s event] 

author/performer biographies: 

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, and currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of the full-length collection 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), as well as a mound of chapbooks. 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.

Reid is the author of seven titles through above/ground press: Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (2000), cuba A book (2005), In the Garden (sept series) (2011), Moan Coach (2013), seam (2018), Where there’s smoke (2023) and cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition (2025), which he will be launching as part of this event. above/ground press produced Report from the Reid Society Vol. 1 No. 1 (2022).

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 Author (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). He’s wrapping up a new collection that he wrote with/against/for AI.

Christie is the author of nine chapbooks with above/ground press: 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, 2023), which won the bpNichol Chapbook Award, as well as PSA (2025), which he will be launching as part of this event.

Beatriz Hausner has published several poetry collections, including The Wardrobe Mistress (2003), Sew Him Up (2010), Enter the Raccoon (2012), Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart (2020) and She Who Lies Above (2023), as well as many limited edition chapbooks. Her books have been published internationally and translated into several languages, including her native Spanish, French, and most recently Greek. Hausner writes extensively about surrealism and her translations of Spanish American surrealist poets have exerted an important influence on her own writing. Hausner has edited journals and magazines, including Open Letter, ellipse, Exile Quarterly, as well as many of the books published during her tenure as a publisher of Quattro Books. She is the editor of Someone Editions, and its current project French Letter Society. Beatriz Hausner was President of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada and Chair of the Public Lending Right Commission. She lives in Toronto where she publishes The Philosophical Egg, an organ or living surrealism. Currently, with Russell Smith, she curates and runs the lecture series Soluble Fish. She will be launching her above/ground press debut chapbook, The Oh Oh (2025).

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet, multi-genre writer, judicial assistant, and editor of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent. A third culture kid at heart, Ellen’s writing is informed by their love of contemporary art, their concern with humanity’s impact on Earth, and their experience moving through various societies as a femme-presenting genderqueer. The author/co-author of six other poetry chapbooks, Ellen’s multi-genre writing has appeared in Augur, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Plenitude, Watch Your Head, and more. Their debut collection, Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024), was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. They are a co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series, an editor for Room and long con magazine, and a member of the poetry collective VII. Find out more at www.ehjchang.com. They will be launching their above/ground press debut, The Moleskin Coat (2025).

Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is a Canadian-American-Lithuanian formerly from Chicago, living in Toronto. She is an award-winning, published poet & video poet. She was a 2020 recipient of a PEN America grant for her development of an experimental poetry collection that adapted poems from Vsevolod Nekrasov and Bill Knott. She was also the voice of George Maciunas’ mother in the documentary, GEORGE (directed by Jeffrey Perkins) screened at MoMA and in Vilnius. Her work has been most recently featured in/at: Film Video Poetry Society (Los Angeles); Octopus Film Festival (Gdansk, Poland); John Gagné Contemporary Gallery (Toronto): Post-Future Era with Kunel Gaur, Justin Neely, and Confusions (Ben Turner); Poetic Phonotheque (Denmark); MOCA Toronto (public installation); SIFF (Moldova); Newlyn Film Festival (UK); Festival Fotogenia (Mexico); Midwest Poetry Fest (US); Vienna Video Poetry Festival (Austria); and the International Migration & Environmental Film Festival (Canada). Her website is linaramona.com. She will be launching her above/ground press debut, The Deaf Forest of Cosmic Scaffolding (2025).

Mandy Sandhu is a poet based in Oakville, Ontario. Her work, often in sonnet form, blends vivid imagery with sharp observation, drawing inspiration from writers like Sylvia Plath, the Beats, Dale Smith and Ted Berrigan.  Mandy works at Toronto Metropolitan University in the Disability Office. She will be launching her chapbook debut, The Temporary Space of a Placenta (2025).

for media inquires, as ever, send a note to rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com,

 

some author activity: McNair, mclennan, Norris, Sweeney, Munson, Novak + Ross,

Christine McNair is interviewed by Hollay Ghadery for the New Books Network podcast; rob mclennan has a new poem up at NewPoetry.ca, and an interview conducted by Victoria Cole for Horseshoe Literary Journal; Ken Norris has an excerpt of a memoir up at The Typescript; Heather Sweeney now has a substack; Jed Munson and JoAnna Novak have new work in DIAGRAM; and did you know that Stuart Ross' Proper Tales Press is now on Instagram?

video from an above/ground press zoom launch : May 28, 2025 : Tierney, Quartermain, Houglum, Doller, Jenks + mclennan

the recording of a recent above/ground press zoom launch is now online : May 28, 2025 : with readings by above/ground press authors Orchid Tierney (OH), Meredith Quartermain (BC), Brook Houglum (BC), Sandra Doller (NY), Tom Jenks (UK) and rob mclennan (ON). Do you remember the other above/ground press zoom launch from last year, as well? And be sure to catch a bunch of other videos over at the YouTube channel, including the ongoing 'virtual reading series' via periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

see author biographies for the event here