some author activity: Davis, Norris, Ladouceur, Doller, Maloukis, Trivedi + Boyle,

Jordan Davis has some new poems up at A Poet in Mexico; part five of Ken Norris' Confessions is now online; Ben Ladouceur has a poem up at NewPoetry; Sandra Doller writes on Fanny Howe's "The Witness" for Poetry Daily; Rose Maloukis has a poem in print and online at The New Quarterly; Amish Trivedi has a piece on C.D. Wright as part of a curated "cluster" on her work at Post45; and Frances Boyle has new work up at Public Reverie.

Jeremy Luke Hill chapbook launch in Elora + Holiday Book Tasting,

Jeremy Luke Hill launches his above/ground press chapbook, a burrow, a nest, a lea stone (2025) at the Elora Public Library alongside Tom Vaine (The Ballad of Omega Brown) and Jerry Prager (Skidding with the Quarrymen) on Saturday, November 29, 2025, from 2pm to 4:30pm. Further information here, and even catch the short piece he wrote on the collection here.

You can also catch him as part of the upcoming Gordon Hill Press and The Porcupines' Quill Holiday Book Tasting at The Hive (33 Cork Street West, Guelph) alongside Jerry Prager on Monday, December 15, 2025 at 7pm. Further information here.

new from above/ground press: BAD TEMPOR, by Jimmy T Cahill

BAD TEMPOR
Jimmy T Cahill
$6

III: erratic time-keeping,

a few hard blows 
destroy the timing
Almost immediately

This should result in
complete freedom

At this point
bend upward
in a spirit
where the end is to be,

This brief
release
sometimes jumps
to the highest point

at that moment
the seconds
rises and falls,

an escape

the escape

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

These poems were erased, plundered, and remixed using the text Handbook of Watch and Clock Repairs by H.G. Harris, 1961. (Revised edition 1972)

Jimmy T Cahill is a nonbinary writer of poetry and science fiction/fantasy. They have over eight chapbooks available from presses across North America. Their work has most recently been featured by Opaat Press (2024) and The Ampersand Review (2025).  More about them can be found at jimmytcahill.com.

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

Gordon Phinn reviews Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Reader

Gordon Phinn provides a first review of Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and a new review of Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Review. Thanks so much! This is actually the third review of Kemp's title, after Jennifer Wenn's review over at The Miramichi Reader and Karl Jirgens reviewed such over at The Typescript. You can see Phinn's original review here.

Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (Above/Ground Press, 1879/2015)

Chapbooks: As outlined in Eli MacLaren’s Little Resilience: The Ryerson Poetry Chapbooks (McGill-Queens 2021), these diminutive pamphlets have been a low profile but integral element of CanLit for decades. Between 1925 and 1962 Ryerson Press produced over 200. Since the 70/80’s the genre has, with the advent of copy machines, blossomed. Heck, I’ve done about a dozen myself. In its now expansive corral, new work is led out of the barn by poets and prose stylists trying out experiments in form and expression that might not otherwise see the light of day. Once not always so easy to acquire, the digital age, with all its websites, podcasts, and Substacks, has simplified the task. One can observe a wide selection as they canter around the exercise yard, finding their new legs and admirers. One seemingly inexhaustible source is Rob Mclennan’s Above/Ground press, and if I’m not mistaken, his stable has at least 600 residents. Mind you, I’m a past master at being mistaken.

Allow me to remedy whatever lack you may feel by introducing a couple of new contenders, each with a unique and valuable contribution to make. Jamie Sharpe, a Comox BC writer with five books to his credit, has uncovered a long neglected 19th century Quebecois poet, Eudore Evanturel, whose only book, Premieres Poesies from 1879, was not well received by the critics of the day and the disappointment led him to retire and relocate to Lowell, Massachusetts.

In his preface Sharpe reveals that on encountering Evanturel’s work he felt confronted with “a misplaced heirloom, a finely etched reliquary of longing, wit and restraint” and that his approach was “not archival but sympathetic”, and his use of “succinct English cadence” was to “allow the poems to exist without the velvet rope and museum glass.” In this he has succeeded admirably, allowing the shelved sentiments to breathe freely. Many of the verses are tantalizingly brief, some approaching the remote elevation of the haiku:

Village at Noon

Whitewashed walls lean
Under noon’s sunlight.  A lone bicycle
Collapsed by the door.  Somewhere:
Laughter, a  saucepan clatter.
The village slow and bright.
A midday lull in a world
Kept small.
To My Reader

Hold these words close, like a flower
Pressed, preserved, between pages.
Let it oblige your fingers to turn into
Glints of quiet contemplations waiting
For your own heart to finish them.
One hopes for more translations and research on this buried treasure.

Lives Of Dead Poets by Penn Kemp (Above/Ground Press 2025)

Penn Kemp has been regarded as something of an iconoclast and trailblazer for fifty odd years, the composer of thirty plus books of poetry and prose, seven plays and several daring, and dare I say seductive, experiments in sound poetry. If you suspect that there are boundaries that yet require breaking then Penn has already been there, joyously deconstructing. In this chapbook, she fondly recalls the lives and work of contemporaries who have shifted their focus to that universe next door. Let me say: she knocks and gains entry.

Gwen MacEwen, Robert Creeley, Robert Hogg, bp nicol, Jack Spicer, Phyllis Webb, John Ashbery, James Reaney, Colleen Thibaudeau, P.K. Page, Robert Kroetsch, Teva Harrison, Joe Blades & Ellen S. Jaffe: all are evoked, praised, loved and grieved. Her heart is in the right place and her aim is true.

One by One, They Depart, the Great Ones

The sound of voices
I wish I could hear, voices
now dissolved to ether, to

the vagaries of memory, lost in
translation.  What’s that?

How could such
presence disintegrate?

How could so much 
wisdom evaporate with
the body’s decay?

A chasm awaits 
Across the great 
division.

As the poets fall into their tradition,
our beloved dead are more intimate
now than they ever could be in the flesh.

Only their poetry can still convey
intimations of immortality, subtle slips
we grasp as truth, not knowing for sure

what is real, what is fantasy and false,
what lies somewhere in between as true.

Only their poems can transcribe
mysterium tremendum – where they’ve gone.
Their words embodied on the page,

For me.                                               For you.

new from above/ground press: SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST, by Amanda Earl

SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST
Amanda Earl
$6

In the cab en route to a place referred to as 
home, I tried to remember what being alive was 
like. I told myself to answer when my husband 
ended a noun verb object structure with an 
uprised tone. To me it sounded like zero zero 
zero up up? I think my response was one 
syllable two syllable two head nods.

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

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

This is Amanda Earl’s eleventh chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022). She edited the above/ground press collection the suitcase poem (2025), as well as the first issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2018). In 2022, above/ground press produced Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1, No. 1.

[Amanda Earl launches this title in Ottawa on Friday, alongside Stuart Ross and Liam Burke, as part of the pre-ottawa small press fair reading at Anina's Cafe]

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

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan : December 7, 2025

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan
on above/ground press
in which they (also) each read from recent work
Sunday Dec 7, 2025 / 7pm EST on zoom

a zoom link will be offered just prior to the event via the facebook event page; or email rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com to register;

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP, forthcoming in Spring 2026 with Nightwood Editions. She lives in East Vancouver.

Saklikar is the author of three titles through above/ground press: After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees— (2016; second printing, 2019), from The Book of Bramah (2019) and Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series (2025).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

He founded above/ground press way back in July 1993, having produced nearly 1,500 items-to-date, the bulk of which have been single author poetry chapbooks. His publishing mantra continues to be: "relentless."

some author activity: Praamsma, Campanello, Turnbull, Vitkauskas, Smith + Rosenthal,

Wanda Praamsma has new work up at Pamenar Press online, as does Kimberly Campanello and Chris Turnbull; Lina Ramona Vitkauskas has had some new poems up at The Fortnightly Review; Dale Smith is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; and Sarah Rosenthal is interviewed via Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: Studies, by Micah Anthony Cavaleri

Studies
Micah Anthony Cavaleri
$6

The study of a poem
is not scientific
.  The study is grounded
It is an experience.

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

Micah Cavaleri has lived many lives—as a philosopher, poet, soldier, publisher, pastor, and father. He has published several books, including One Bright Morning When My Work is Over. Home is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where he writes and cooks for his wife and daughter.

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

Peter Jaeger is on the 2025 Nelson Ball Prize short list! (along w Stebner, Christakos etc

Congratulations to the entire 2025 Nelson Ball Prize short list! (do you remember the longlist?) Naturally, it is very exciting to see an above/ground press title on the list, by Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, as well as titles by above/ground press authors Margaret Christakos (author of the 2019 title Retreat Diary 2019) and Kevin Stebner (author of the 2023 title AGALMA). In case you aren't aware:

The Nelson Ball Prize, worth $1,000, is awarded annually to a Canadian poet for a published work that features 'poetry of observation.' * The judges this year are James McDonald and Beverley Daurio. Stay tuned for announcement of the winning publication in the first week of December.

Here's the full list of shortlisted titles:

Margaret Christakos, That Audible Slippage (University of Alberta Press)
Jeremy Clarke, Stone Hours (Rufus Books)
Peter Jaeger, Selected Memoirs (above/ground press)
Kevin Stebner, Inherent (Assembly Press)
Michael Trussler, 10:10 (Icehouse Poetry)

new from above/ground press: The Man, by Benjamin Niespodziany

The Man
a sequence of foolish men
Benjamin Niespodziany
$6

The Man with the Tail

When he argued
with his doctor
it wandered.

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

Benjamin Niespodziany's writing has appeared in Fence, Conduit, Fairy Tale Review, Bennington Review, and elsewhere. He has previously released two chapbooks (one with above/ground press, one with Dark Hour Books) and two full-length books (one with Okay Donkey and one with X-R-A-Y). He also hosts the Neon Night Mic reading series in Chicago and recently launched the indie publication Piżama Press. You can find more at neonpajamas.com.

This is Niespodziany's second above/ground press chapbook, after The Northerners (2021).

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, November 21: Stuart Ross, Liam Burke + Amanda Earl,

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

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

featuring readings by:
Stuart Ross (Cobourg ON)
Liam Burke (Ottawa)
+ 
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 21, 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]

Stuart Ross has worked in the small press trenches of Canadian writing for 50 years. His new chapbook, The Thing About the Thing in Exile reprints a dozen poems that appeared in his first publication at age 16, plus a new essay. He has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the Trillium Book Award–winning memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. He has received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, as well as the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions, and has been running his own Proper Tales Press since 1979. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Liam Burke (he/him/himbo) lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. He is the winner of the 2023 Diana Brebner Prize, and is most recently the author of status ailment (Anstruther, 2025) and the co-author of Orbital Cultivation with Manahil Bandukwala (Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams with natalie hanna (Collusion, 2021) which was shortlisted for the 2022 bpNichol Chapbook Award. He was shortlisted for the 2022 Austin Clarke Award for a collaborative poem with Manahil Bandukwala.

Amanda Earl [photo credit: Charles Earl] (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. Her latest chapbook, her eleventh with above/ground press, is SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST (2025). More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

some author activity: Smith, Unrau, Bell, Myers + Ross,

Steve Ross Smith has a new song up at bandcamp; Melanie Dennis Unrau is interviewed via the "12 or 20 questions" series; Wade Bell has new work up at Public Reverie; Peter Myers has new work up at noir sauna; and Stuart Ross is interviewed by Tali Voron-Leiderman for The Ampersand Review.

new from above/ground press: The Sun Will Bleach It Away, by Rebecca Comay / Cary Fagan

The Sun Will Bleach It Away
Rebecca Comay / Cary Fagan
$6

Beer, light, Portuguese, German, English; how brittle is old paper in the seller’s hand.




The battered brass weight hung so heavily between her fingers.


Authors’ Note

In February and March of 2019, we spent several weeks in Lisbon.  One of us wrote a sentence in a blank notebook and handed it to the other who wrote a sentence in return.  This handing back and forth occurred about once a day until we left the city for home.  

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

Rebecca Comay teaches philosophy and comparative literature at The University of Toronto. Her books include Mourning Sickness: Hegel and the French Revolution (Stanford UP) and The Dash-The Other Side of Absolute Knowing (with Frank Ruda, MIT Press). Her next book, On Persistence is the first of two essay collections forthcoming from Seagull Books. She is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso. More work can be seen at rebeccacomay.com

Cary Fagan is the author of eight novels and six story collections as well as many books for children. Just published are A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News (book*hug) and Robot Island (Tundra Books). His novel, Still the World, will appear in 2027. He is a co-editor of the chapbook house, espresso, and the publisher of Found Object, which focuses on bringing work back into print. His books can he seen at caryfagan.com.

This is Fagan's third title through above/ground press, after Fifty-Two Lines About Henry (2024) and then / here / now / there (2025).

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