Saturday, April 11, 2026
some author activity: Barwin + Nećakov, Harder, Ebbitt, Koss, Adams + Pirie,
Friday, April 10, 2026
new from above/ground press: Consequences, by Susan Rudy
Susan Rudy
$6
Telling the truth about my own experiences as a body
That kiss in Mrs Dalloway.
That life is complicated is a fact of great analytical importance.
That sickening moment when I realise, sitting across the table and listening to her story, that I feel scorn for conventional women.
That’s great, he said, how wonderful.
That’s the fiction of memoir, that you can actually remember.
The ‘wife’ he refers to in the Cabaret video, while singing ‘Fancy Free’, the wife who was me, where is she now?
The abandonment of a prescribed way of living for the abyss of self-determination.
The ache of desire, pushed away.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirty-third title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
April 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Cover Artwork by Alisa Ochoa
Susan Rudy is a London-based academic and writer whose work creates space for voices that are often silenced or split—especially those navigating complex relationships to gender, care, and creativity.
She works with language as archive and medium, drawing on decades of journal entries and academic research to assemble texts that challenge conventional memoir and academic prose.
Professor Emerita at the University of Calgary, she has been based in London, England since 2011 where she is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London.
Recent publications include a conversation about queer parenting (2026) with writer Hannah Silva, a creative piece at London’s Something Other (2025), and interviews with writer Caroline Bergvall (2023) and feminist theorist Clare Hemmings (2019).
Work in progress includes Hand Over, a poetic and experimental book of creative nonfiction which emerged during a six-week Leighton Artists’ Studio Residency at Canada’s Banff Centre for the Arts in 2024.
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
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
new from above/ground press: pinion, by Shelly Harder
Shelly Harder
$6
sparrow
wings shed night
feathers shred light
sparrow, won’t you stay?
stay, sparrow
leave me not where bulbs burn
leave me not where screens beam
draw me through the skin of night
dress me in rags of light
sparrow, stay
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Shelly Harder is the author of remnants, intimology, and zero dawn. They hold a doctorate from the University of Oxford and live and write in London, UK.
This is Harder’s second above/ground press title, after zero dawn (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
Sunday, April 5, 2026
Jon Cone : Omnibus review : above/ground press 2025 : Jon Cone : Omnibus review : above/ground press 2025 : Sandhu, Greene, Berlatsky, Ladouceur, Kelly, Reid, Ross, Sikkema + Browne,
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Here are some brief reviews of my favorite titles issued by Above/Ground Press during the year 2025. While I was not asked to write any of these reviews, I will state for the purpose of full disclosure that I was published by this press in 2025 and will appear as a co-author of another title in 2026.
THE TEMPORARY SPACE OF A PLACENTA by Mandy Sandhu
This is a wonderful collection. Sandhu’s poems are characterized by their concision, allusiveness, a leaping of imagery and wit. The voice behind the poetry suggests great intelligence and familiarity with various poetic traditions. Reading Sandhu’s poems, I thought of Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets. Then reading her bio at the back of the chapbook I was pleased to note Sandhu listed Berrigan as influence. A superb collection.
EL REY MURCIÉLAGO THE BAT KING by
Yaxkin Melchy Ramos [tr. Ryan Greene]
This work appears to combine various forms and traditions – Surrealism, Concrete (Visual) Poetry, Mythology, Science Fiction – and doubtless others – into a contemporary hybrid that veers between poetry and prose. If you ask your poetry to break down barriers, then this is a chapbook you’ll find rewarding. An added felicity: it is bilingual so you can compare English translation to Spanish original. Experimental in the best sense.
SPAMTOUM by Noah Berlatsky
This title contains one long poem of 95 stanzas of four-lines each, the titular “Spamtoum”, and a final poem “Hi Noah”. ‘Spamtoum’ with its repeating lines expands the pantoum form. Because I enjoy form, I set out to trace the pattern, then gave up at a certain point because it dawned on me the pattern itself was incidental to the feverish language play taking place before me. Much like John Ashbery’s sestina “Farm Implements and Rutagagas in a Landscape”, Berlatsky’s unfurling of the pantoum is intended to be gloriously screwball. Spam is where language goes to die. Here it is rescued, given oxygen, and a second chance. If you enjoy poetry that delights in language, then “Spamtoum” is ideal reading.
THE LAST MAN by Ben Ladouceur
Ben Ladouceur writes elegant, well-crafted poems. His poetic imagination is considerable; his evident care with line and stanza enviable. Thus it is impossible for me to read a poem by Ladouceur and not be impressed by both form and content, as if those aspects can ever be fully separated, because his writing achieves its results with apparent effortlessness. He is a poet in full control of his gifts for the poetic art. (Color me envious.) A brilliant collection.
MORE OF HOW TO READ THE BIBLE by J-T Kelly
Kelly writes poems that deal with his religious life, much like Franz Wright did. And like Wright, Kelly often deals with the struggle to maintain it in today’s world. Like the best love poetry, religious poetry appeals to us because it yearns to go beyond the material world toward a transcendent one. A highlight for me is Kelly’s catalog of sacred names that ends on a culminating moment; another favorite is the prose poem “Morning Exercise”, which has the profound bearing of a meditation one might encounter, say, in the journals of Thomas Merton. A serious and fine example of the art.
cuba A book by Monty Reid (twentieth anniversary edition)
This reissue contains a brief essay by Monty Reid that describers the circumstances that prompted the writing of the original poem. Reid wrote cuba A book after a period of not-writing, and it impresses by how assured it feels. None of that hesitancy or searching around for line or voice: from the start it is all there. I suppose that really shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. For those familiar with Reid’s work and those who would like a good place to start: recommended.
AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES by Stuart Ross
Stuart Ross is a poet who also writes a great deal of fiction. He’s a wonderful fiction writer. This small collection reminds me at times of Brautigan, at times of early Raymond Carver. (The Carver under the influence of Lish.) In his economy of language, Ross calls to mind another great Canadian short story writer: Norman Levine. The title story is a fine one; however, my personal favorite is “Meredith and Craig Sit in Their Kitchen and Play Stringed Instruments.” In that story you get an ending with a palpable sense of what music critic Greil Marcus called ‘that old weird America’ – a voice haunted, distant, haunting. An excellent collection.
JUST A MINUTE, MOON’S TOO LOUD by Michael Sikkema
A concise poetry that pays homage to the natural world, the world encountered at the edge of a hike or in a moment of jeweled awareness. Sikkema surely enjoys the ancient Chinese masters, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t enjoy writers such as Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. There’s humor here too, light, whimsical, lovely high seeming, as this complete poem demonstrates:
fav crow
ate my
rear view
When brevity is desired, let these poems answer the need.
DAILY SELF-PORTRAIT VALENTINE by Laynie Browne
This chapbook, at first glance, is composed of lyrics that resemble those of Emily Dickinson. That is a misleading impression to have. As Browne tells us in an author’s note these poems grew out of “a year-long durational project” in which she “made a self-portrait every day for one year.” The resulting collection enacts a quest, one where memory accompanies Browne, as the outside world of obligation seems to call to the poet in the midst of her purposeful concentrations. These self-portraits are by necessity impressionistic. It is a collection that usefully demonstrates how poetry can come out of a daily practice.
These are other fine titles can be found here https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com
Saturday, April 4, 2026
some author activity: Ross, Nećakov, Earl, Kemp-Gee, Crosby + Marlatt,
Friday, April 3, 2026
new from above/ground press: Misha Solomon’s BIODÔME: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster, by Misha Solomon
Misha Solomon
$6
Southern Two-Toed Slothpublished in Ottawa by above/ground press
Everyone represents the self’s less attractive
features with words that seek to distract, to deflect,
to scapegoat. You may think me slow, they try to say,
or lazy, but I’m so much better than the sign
to which this sinful word now points. And here I am,
and yes I’m slow, but the effort that it takes me
to go about my selfsame days is of a scale,
a magnitude, that far exceeds the limits placed
by semantics. There is no animal called lust,
called pride, called wrath, called greed. And if there were a beast
called gluttony, I’d envy them their liberty.
Nature rewards profligacy, in the short term.
I know not what it rewards in the long—my pace
implies perdurance, but I live no more for it.
April 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
This title is literally a response to Montreal poet Stephanie Bolster's chapbook BIODÔME (above/ground press 2006). A twentieth anniversary edition of BIODÔME, with a new introduction by Misha Solomon (above/ground press), appeared earlier this week.
cover credit: Naomie Hadida
Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has twice appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and in journals across Canada. He is a student in Concordia’s Interdisciplinary PhD program. His debut full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, appeared with Brick Books in March 2026. Misha Solomon’s Biodôme: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster is his third chapbook.
This is Solomon’s second above/ground press title, after FLORALS (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
Wednesday, April 1, 2026
new from above/ground press: BIODÔME: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by Stephanie Bolster
Stephanie Bolster
with an introduction by Misha Solomon
and new afterword by the author
$6
HOUSING THE GREAT AUK
Masses of glass, rocks at the back,
craggy, like the outcroppings in illustrations.
To think they thought the last had snuffed it!
Water at the front, so its splash
will make the gawkers flinch.
Can’t take long or journalists will catch
the squawks and then our coup
will cool. Remember the coelacanth?
Give it eels, beetles, chocolate ices
if it wants. Keep each lost feather
for the shop – a transparent envelope,
ten pounds, twenty? At night when they go home
we can ask it about the nineteenth century.
The sea teeming with ships! We were a marvel.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Stephanie Bolster’s latest book of poetry, Long Exposure, appeared with Palimpsest Press in fall 2025. Excerpts from the book were finalists for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2019. Bolster’s first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award and was translated into French as Pierre Blanche. Her poems have also been translated into Spanish, German, and Serbo-Croatian. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems by the late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner, and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and grew up in Burnaby, BC. She has been a professor of creative writing at Concordia University since 2000 and lives in Pointe-Claire, Québec, on the Mohawk (Kanien’kehá:ka) territory of Skaniatara:ti.
Many of the poems from this chapbook were later incorporated into and published as part of Stephanie Bolster’s A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (London ON: Brick Books, 2011), a book shortlisted for the 2012 Pat Lowther Memorial Award. Thanks to Brick Books for the permission to reprint this anniversary edition.
This is Stephanie Bolster’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after Three Bloody Words (1996), BIODÔME (2006), Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016) and GHOSTS (2017).
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
Saturday, March 28, 2026
some author activity : Chang-Richardson, Zhang, fitzpatrick, Kelly, Rogal, mclennan + Niespodziany,
Saturday, March 21, 2026
some author activity: fitzpatrick, Smith, Mody, mclennan, Burdick, Aube + Solomon,
Friday, March 20, 2026
new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #36; VERSeFest special!
2026 VERSeFest Special
lovingly hand-crafted, folded, stapled, edited and carried around in bags of envelopes by rob mclennan,
$6
With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars, irregulars and VERSeFest 2026 participants, including Gwen Aube, Frances Boyle, Melissa Powless Day, Michelle Desbarats, Amanda Earl, Lucia Farinon, Jen Jakob, Sneha Subramanian Kanta, Margo LaPierre, T Liem, D.A. Lockhart, Karen Massey, Emma McKenna, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Monty Reid, Declan Ryan, Robyn Sarah, Misha Solomon, Grant Wilkins, Lydia Unsworth + Jumoke Verissimo;published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[a small stack of copies will be distributed free as part of the sixteenth annual VERSeFest, March 24-30, 2026] [see last year's issue here]
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
Thursday, March 19, 2026
new from above/ground press: Wee Walk, by Jennifer Baker
Jennifer Baker
$6
In June of 2025 two poets
—and relatively inexperienced hikers—
decide on a whim
to walk Scotland’s West Highland Way
for their honeymoon
154km from Glasgow to Fort William.
This is just the beginning of how it went.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[Jennifer Baker launches Wee Walk as part of a Common House event alongside Sneha Subramanian Kanta and Vera Hadzic on Friday, March 27, 2026 as part of VERSeFest 2026]
Jennifer Baker is a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa, and the author of three chapbooks: Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014), Groundling (Trainwreck Press, 2021 & above/ground press, 2023), and Memento Mishka (with David Currie, Apt. 9 Press, 2023). She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to experimental poetics, and her material poetics work will appear in the upcoming Delisted Project (Third Thing Press, 2026). She is the former Poetry Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2023-2025, including a special Winter 2025 guest issue on The New Material Ecopoetics.
This is Baker's third chapbook with above/ground press.
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
Tuesday, March 17, 2026
Adrian Slatcher reviews an above/ground press launch: Tom Jenks, Lydia Unsworth + David Gaffney,
The Scene that Celebrates Itself
In the post-Xmas quiet there isn’t much going on literature wise, which may explain the packed house for the above/ground press launch on Thursday. Most of the literary folks in Manchester that I know were at Saul Hay Gallery for David Gaffney, Tom Jenks and Lydia Unsworth. I arrived on time, yet was one of the last ones there, which prompted an early start.
above/ground is a Canadian press publishes small pamphlets, and via some transatlantic links, reminiscent of the old mail-art networks of the sixties and seventies, has found a home for a number of Manchester-adjacent writers. David Gaffney’s stories lean into his earlier “sawn-off tales” but began as explorations of the similarities/differences between prose poetry and flash fiction. If there’s a difference between these, and his earlier work, I think its that it is in the ever-more deadpan absurdity, and embracing of surrealism. In some ways, it was as much a Dada-esque happening as a reading, though without the silly hats. (Maybe, next time.) Despite the humour of the pieces, there’s always a nugget of dark truth in David’s work. The first story, about a next generation of Arts Council staff being grown as clones, was a perfect example. In David’s work the mundane, is never mundane - whether a train journey across a Lincolnshire landscape that looks as if its been “photocopied”, or the absurdity of office politics. The book “Lakes of Titan” is available here.
Tom Jenks can sometimes seem like a P.T. Barnum of contemporary writing, and all he needs is a big coat with his bric-a-brac for sale to complete the image. The “badge” he was flogging for those of us who spend too much time in pointless meetings, “i’m an artist and you’re lucky i’m even here” sold like hotcakes. Tom’s work veers between the minimal (the badges, his posters of famous literary works) and the durational (projects mapping everything he has done in a year around a particular theme.) Yet here he engages with a range of pithy word-pictures, poignant yet funny.
Lydia Unsworth has slightly different tone than the other two. She has four pamphlets from above/ground and a recent publication just out from Knives, Forks and Spoons. It is a free spirited observational poetry that is probably at its best in the longer piece where she lists all the mundane but beautiful things that she experiences with her children on the everyday walk to school. Her books can be bought here.
Sunday, March 15, 2026
new from above/ground press: Origin stories, by rob mclennan
rob mclennan
$6
005 : “Origin Story”
My mother said very little. I came gift-wrapped, delivered. An empty chamber. By the waters of Babylon. They had to collect me. Entangled, form after form. From a stranger’s womb. I was nameless, swaddled. Between names. Frightened shoulders, a wish. They say, to descend from steps, from anything. To descend from the moon. I could not explain it. For eternity, my mentions were silence, what all they could offer. A wandering hand. Some tales remain, unfinished. A plot-line. I emerged from the ash, I came out of the ground. I was formless, formed. I was there, suddenly. After having not been.
Note: In January 2025, Chicago poet Benjamin Niespodziany begun a weekly substack, “Sunday Poem + Prompt,” in which he began to offer exactly that. I took it upon myself to respond to his weekly prompts as best as I could, as they came.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover artwork: Aoife Lydia Judith McLennan,
“family portrait,” February 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.
This is mclennan’s sixty-ninth above/ground press chapbook, following recent titles including the collaborative river / estuaries (with Julie Carr; 2023), edgeless : letters, (2023), The Alta Vista Improvements (2023), Autobiography (2022), the collaborative SOME LEAVES (with Gary Barwin; 2020), Twenty-one stories, (2020), Poems for Lunch Poems for SFU (2020), Somewhere in-between / cloud (2019), Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (2017).
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
Saturday, March 14, 2026
some author activity: Inniss, Carpenter, Lea, benedict, Solomon + Flemmer,
Thursday, March 12, 2026
The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Nada Gordon + Lydia Unsworth, March 29, 2026!
as part of the sixteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents:
The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:
Nada Gordon (Brooklyn NY)lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
+
Lydia Unsworth (Manchester UK)
Sunday, March 29, 2026
3-4pm, Arts Court Black Box Studio
A FREE EVENT / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 24-30, 2026
Saturday, March 7, 2026
some author activity: Robinson, Solomon, mclennan, Smith, Boyle + Adams,
Thursday, March 5, 2026
new from above/ground press: Now When, A Poem, by Travis Sharp
Travis Sharp
$6
when the reminder
when the junk mail piles
when the door’s a knockin
when it’s Monday
when the flowers breathe again
when the sound of trees in wind
when the flight gets cancelled
when the present can, in fact, be long
when the sun speaks out
when it snows so early
when there’s cops on every corner
when the metro is locked and guarded
when the escalator gets stuck mid-journey
when there’s another strike
when there’s banners out the windows
when I mean it this time
when the power goes out
when really
when you’re so late again
when the shining is the point
when feelings learn to fester
when the winter market opens
when wind so cold it burns the cheek
when your hair gets tussled
when the grinding labors you
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover image: Bradley W. Johnson, 4th of 7 Days, 7 Pieces (detail)
Travis Sharp is the author of the poetry books Monoculture (Unicorn Press, 2024) and Yes, I Am a Corpse Flower (Knife Fork Book, 2021), a poetry pamphlet, Behind the Poet Reading Their Poem Is a Sign Saying Applause (Knife Fork Book, 2022), and the chapbooks Sinister Queer Agenda (above/ground press, 2018) and One Plus One Is Two Ones (Recreational Resources, 2018). He’s a lecturer in the Department of English at Howard University and is an editor at Essay Press.
This is Sharp's second title with above/ground press, after Sinister Queer Agenda (2018).
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
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
Lit Balm: An Interactive Livestream Reading Series: A tribute to Larry Sawyer, March 7, 2026
A Tribute to Larry Sawyer
Saturday, March 7, 5pm EST on Zoom: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
see the facebook event page here
Featuring Friends Reading and Reminiscing by:
Vincent Katz : Paul Hoover : Sheila Murphy : Dale Smith : Tony Trigilio : rob mclennan
With Lina Ramona Vitkauskas
Hosted by Jefrey Cyphers Wright
And the Lit Balm crew : Marc Vincenz, Cassandra Atherton, Jonathan Penton and Jon Wesick.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
some author activity: Houbolt, Earl, Campos, Cannon + Niespodziany,
Friday, February 27, 2026
new from above/ground press: Vast Spaces, by John Levy
John Levy
$6
YUKI
for Angella KassubeThe Japanese word for snow, plus the name Angella gave her cat. When it snows in Minneapolis, the snow never completely fills the u in Yuki’s name. Nor the opening at the top of the Y. Both spaces are too vast, as is Yuki’s spirit, an immensity which animates her entire body and which Angella understands better than anyone when she looks into Yuki’s eyes.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover photo by the author: “Half Moon Bay”
John Levy lives in Tucson. He is married to the painter Leslie Buchanan. His collection of poems, 54 poems: selected & new, was published by Shearsman Books in 2023.
This is Levy’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after To Assemble an Absence (2024).
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
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
new from above/ground press: The Unknotter, by Christina Wells
Christina Wells
$6
Spilling Suns
First, a ghostly trace of head,
then stomach, then paintbrush tail,
emerging from the Atlantic,
an image sharpening like a Polaroid.
My father hauling in a 50-pounder,
big mama, old and fat, fabled.
The charm of her freckles, scorched
smudges in the light, her lateral lines, silver
arrows pointing to the sun.
She can lay out more eggs
than 28 smaller ones just like her.
Longlines, draggers couldn't hold
her back. For a quarter-century
she skirted past gillnets, box-shaped
traps, sharks, the cannibals
of her own kind, surviving below
pinkish shale crevices, the dense
gelatin of the deep rushing her on.
Then, the quickness
of the act: his haul.
The gaff.
(Oh, that sharp hook.)
Slide over, belly fat glistening.
The cut.
(Oh, the ready knife.)
Sun beats its fire into her round eye
for the first time. The whole of her
belly rich, roe-distended.
Back at the dock, we children cheer, clamour.
Mother gets the camera, makes us pose
with father as he holds her up by the hook,
knot-tight, two thumbs up next to the split form,
eggs spilling
and spilling
and spilling,
orange pricks of light.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover image:
To Sea Agin I Won’t, 2025 by Kym Greeley https://www.kymgreeley.com
Christina Wells (she/her) is a multi-genre writer from Northern Arm, NL/Ktaqmkuk. Her award-winning work, which explores memory and place, has appeared in The New Quarterly, ROOM, Riddle Fence, Horseshoe Magazine, The Newfoundland Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, and Yolk. She holds an MA from Memorial University and is now a PhD student at MUN. She currently lives in St. John’s, NL.
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
Monday, February 23, 2026
Kevin Spenst reviews Hope Anderson's Family Chronicles from Muffin Land (2024) via subterrain #102
Two different dimensions of aging are explored in Monty Reid's Vertebrata (Turret House) and Hope Anderson's Family Chronicles from Muffin Land (above/ground press). In the former, the poet writes in the poem "CV5": "The long string of bones I hang from / was never right according to doctors / who looked at the scans." The series of poems takes us from the top of the vertebrae down, reflecting on the physiological construction of the body, the Latinate and Germanic naming of parts, and Reid's own history with spinal issues. The tone and divergent subject matter are stunning fluid and touching. Hinging less on physiology, Anderson's Family Chronicles from Muffin Land are poems of family lore and slipstream lullabies dedicated to the author's grandchildren and family written from his new home in "that town, hermetically / Known as Muffin Land" (known to the rest of us as Victoria, BC). What I love in this unique blend of myths and fables is how I'd often finish a poem with a sense that the last line rhymed, only to look back and see it didn't. (What is the secret to Hope's ghost rhymes?) My favourite poem in the collection, "The Rolling Calf", reads as a lullaby that simultaneously presents danger and the promise of safety to the poet's granddaughter Nadja.
In a photo taken in Victoria in 1984, Hope Anderson is in a group of poets that include Amiri Baraka, George Bowering and bpNichol. The event was organised by Hope Anderson and in a recent interview with Wayde Compton for the Capilano Review, Anderson explains the context of Sunfest and how "Poetry always comes back to us."
Saturday, February 21, 2026
some author activity: Wells, Myles, Barwin, Sawyer, Solomon + Macdonald,
Friday, February 20, 2026
new from above/ground press: AN ACCURATE CIGARETTE: Poetry & Prompts, by Sarah Burgoyne
Poetry & Prompts
Sarah Burgoyne
$6
Go outside and record what happens or occurs to you for 15 minutes. Make it into a poem.
THE SOUND OF WATER RUNNING
The sound of water is running. It trickles over the balcony, across the alley, into another sound. A child’s voice through a downstairs shutter says, tell me now. Possibly, possibly, says Nana. The wind creates the ivy’s hair which dangles in the breeze. The next plant folds its hands to make a bird. A letter appears, containing a yes or no while closed. The downstairs voices sing beneath the sound of a plane. The plant’s bamboo crutch stabs into the sky. Finish your banana, nana. Child’s voice judders into song. It’s time for bed. Door creak. Am I in or outside of my head? The plane continues not to land. The child protests. The little table, stained under heat and duress, will last the winter. Pom-pom plant. Bird call: a long trilled note. Night’s morse code. Howling dog. Car honk. Trill, again, and bow-wow.
ADD WARRIORS : AN INTRODUCTION
I have been leading a little group called Poetry Studio, usually in the colder, lonelier months of Montréal winter, on and off for some years now. I had this idea that writing in real time (as opposed to bringing in pre-written work… sometimes already dead in the water) would help us to preserve the energy in a first draft that can be easily stamped out for fear of the poem being “too weird” or “not making sense.” The formula of our meetings is simple. We discuss poetry and poetics from something we read together that week, I provide a related prompt, we part and write for 45 minutes, we return and share what we wrote. (It is scary but people are kind.) Everything, no matter how raw or random, is taken as poetry. As Wittgenstein points out, “To say, ‘This combination of words makes no sense’ excludes it from the sphere of language and thereby bounds the domain of language. But when one draws a boundary it may be for various kinds of reason.” Yes, let us ponder, enumerate and celebrate the reasons! I have encountered many stupendous, “non-sense” poems this way. When I was a youngsome poet, in Tim Lilburn’s workshop at the University of Victoria, he wrote “add warriors” on one of my submissions, and nothing else. I took this into my most haunted and blue insomniac hours. What could this mean. Many years later, I wonder if this was his attempt to preserve and foster a strangeness in my early work, what Shklovsky calls “defamiliarization.” What other comment was I expecting? What other comment, now that I think of it, is even possible? In this weird little chapbook, I thought to share some of the prompts behind the poems as a way of fostering some strangeness in your own poetry, if you so happen to write it. Maybe you have never written poetry before. The corresponding poems were written in the span of 30-45 minutes, and if there is any editing, it is very light. Of course, they reflect but one way forward in the infinite paths that branch from a writing prompt. As I tell participants in Poetry Studio, use the prompt as a starting off point, but go where the poem wants to go. And if the poem is too obedient, add warriors.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Cover art by Paige Cooper.
Sarah Burgoyne is the author of Because the Sun (Coach House: 2021), Saint Twin (Mansfield: 2016) and Mechanophilia (Anvil: 2023), an infinite collaboration with American poet Vi Khi Nao.
This is Sarah Burgoyne’s fourth above/ground press title, after A Precarious Life on the Sea (2016), TENTACULUM SONNETS (2020) and the collaborative WHERE FORTH ART THOUGH (with Susan Burgoyne; 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
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Kevin Spenst reviews Dale Tracy's Gnomics (2024) via subterrain #102
our pal Kevin Spenst was good enough to review Dale Tracy's Gnomics (2024), as part of his regular column of chapbook reviews, in a round-up assemblage in subterrain #102! Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of Tracy's Gnomics, after Daniel Barbiero reviewed such via Arteidolia. As Spenst writes:
Dale Tracy's Gnomics (above/ground press) is astonishing in how much can be crafted within two- or three-line poems. Tracy's collection is replete with prophecies ("Those who drink the oil of ancient beasts / become the dragons who breathe fire"), persona poems ("Edging Stones // Since I am a garden, / I grow to a limit") and sylloisms ("Sounds bounce into distance. I hear sounds from a distance. Distance lives inside my ear.) This later poem strikes me in its compression of thought, touching as it does on a central argument in Tracy's 2017 book With the Witness: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience, where she theorizes poetry outside the cloying embrace of empathy as understanding another's experience. Instead, Tracy argues "literature helps one to know what it is to encounter another." I hear this nuanced argument again in "Distance lives inside my ear." We hear another person's story but that story only lives within us always at a certain remove.
Saturday, February 14, 2026
some author activity: Coulton, Aube, Kaplan, mclennan, Hausner + Unsworth,
Friday, February 13, 2026
new from above/ground press: 310 Consecutive Life Sentences, by Ken Sparling
Ken Sparling
$6
Sitting On A Blue Curbpublished in Ottawa by above/ground press
Me and Kitty were sitting on the sofa trying to decide if this guy in the movie we were watching was hot or not. I paused the movie when Kitty started asking what I thought about this guy. Nowadays, whenever you paused a movie on Netflix, they had this thing where a static ad came onto the screen and stayed there till you unpaused your show. So there was this ad for an insurance company up there and we had to keep unpausing it to see if this guy in the movie was hot. Then we had to re-pause it while we continued our discussion based on what we had seen while the movie was unpaused. The character we were discussing wasn’t the star of the movie, but he had a pretty big role. We’d seen him in other movies, but he looked quite different in this one. His hair was a lot shorter, and he was dressed in period costume. To tell the truth, I thought he was pretty hot, and that is what I told Kitty, but she didn’t agree. “He’s sort of pretty,” she told me, “but I’d never say he was hot.” “What’s the difference between pretty and hot?” I asked her. She looked away from me, back at the tv. “I hate this new thing with the ads when you pause a show,” she said. “Unpause it for a second, would you. I need to look at the guy again.”
as the thirty-second title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Cover image by Mary Sparling
More Ken Sparling
- Not Anywhere, Just Not (Coach House, 2023)
- the girl arrived (above/ground, 2021)
- This Poem is a House (Coach House, 2016)
Available from the author at dadsayshesawyou@gmail.com:
- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
- [untitled novel]
- For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers
- Book
- Intention, Implication, Wind
Online:
kensparling.github.io
instagram: @kensparling
kensparling.ca
This is Sparling's second title with above/ground press, after the girl arrived (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
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
new from above/ground press: LONG SPEECH FROM MY FATHER AS MY FATHER AS WU TAO TZU ET AL, by Jake Kennedy
Jake Kennedy
$6
Oh my son my son it’s cold without proper clothes on
-colder than a witch’s tit – colder than the balls on a brass
monkey – colder than a well-digger’s ass
with my little gods hereabouts: watch and keys and wallet
– shit, just look at them – very dutiful –calm and sincere – I
look away and quickly look back and they’re still here
jellyfish exist – crazy debutantes –twirling in their electric
ball gowns through the old seascape– wow – such
splendours – they exist my son – wow wow
tiny windows on the backs of ants – so bright - oh my son
inside their lacquered bodies it’s pure light - the gods
rattling in the attic and the gods shushing in the trees –
but seriously my son come in come in how are you? – I
think it’s time to admit them – I’ve been so afraid – I might
admit them– come in! –
another patient said to me, George we’re just dreams sent
into a world of brute material – no wonder it’s tricky out
there my son- rocks know how to be and we don’t
son son my son – like you I’m at home with the plain old
typical nouns – trying to find the one word (Knife!
Cigarette! Car!) that splits the hour open –
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
cover image: “Baudelaire,” 1911
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918)
Jake Kennedy does not know if it’s real or artificial or even intelligence at all therefore he appreciates the three squirrels this season that play maniacal tag on his front lawn. Every morning he tells them that he respects their speed / that he is in awe of their purposeless play. Every morning they retreat to the high branches and they perch above him and they go, “clickclickclick hisshisshiss booboo tryagainhuman” which is only right.
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
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