above/ground press

new from above/ground press: Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep, by rob mclennan

2012-01-27T09:01:00.000-05:00

Sextet: six poems from Songs for little sleep
by rob mclennan
$4

Vancouver, specifically
for Wayde Compton,

An uneasy mist
rises from this calligraphy of recollection
-- Mina Loy, The Lost Lunar Baedecker: Poems

1.

What is this, beauty. Failed attempts at, something. Stated aims, a viaduct. Specific questions, abandoned. Linger. Exploding at the bedrock, crust. Backwash, a church. A Union, Prior. Streets. A common grave. Or is it, grace.

Impossibilities, suffer. Excised, but not divide, subtract. A family path of clothespins, buttons.

You aren't front lawn, sophisticate. Subsets claim. A learning made of kitchens, home. A Georgian demolition, sweep. A lack of rumoured slums. Estate of longing, else. State, desired looks. Wood sliced into beam, a streetscape. What aren't we seeing.

If less abstracted, tell me. A community suffers, scattered. Brow to leaning brow.

2.

Attempts are not, but statements. Lone survivor, speaks dead language. Restorations. Memory, buffers. Erodes into allotted land. A formless quilt, afforded. Question, its effects.

Mortgage is, but this. Your murdered laughter.

What are we, looking? The look of elsewhere, less. All that glitters. Little controversies, pass the stupid buck. Strathcona is, a name. The trees for city, same. The house but not, paved over. Why did you, did? Could further, else. A glaze.

Of, the shores. What oxidized. Go. Here, not only. Long, into the east.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2012
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2012), A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011) and kate street (Moira, 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (www.ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (www.ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (www.ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Into the Blind World, by Barry McKinnon

2012-01-26T09:01:00.034-05:00

Into the Blind World
by Barry McKinnon
$4

into the blind world –
the new life – the essential tremor /refusal
of diminishment

I see in a double
space – conjunction & irony, that part blind I’m made
to see. it is not Dante’s forest exactly. More
so a sense

/a kind of open door
is beginning /closing – dark turning
- light I didn’t expect.

old flesh renews, that the dim
eye makes almost nothing matter. looks to

what I find ahead.

I believe -

fear kept
me speaking, or all would cease to be. so I spoke & the forest flew by
& city lights distorted – the cold stars of love and dark – the beginning, a journey, a descent

the ghost of myself still
alive,
to address the infected world, to stall & cease advance, to the forest one fears
to enter

sad desire/ without a mask –
to journey solely at night dark to the armies
circling themselves – the forest of knives
invisible to those who never make it
or recognize

desire: one heart to pull
the other retract - that the gap maintains its depth & distance

to hell – the hidden road & the river one dares

Afterword

§

This poem/fragment is based on a selection of lines sent to me by Arianwen Goronwy Roberts, a young student, poet, and artist who I jokingly referred to as Virgil one night when she soberly drove me home after a drunken literary event in the fall of 2009. I got Arianwen curious to read Dante’s Divine Comedy & at some other drunken literary event asked her to send me the Dante lines or sections that she liked or stood out for whatever reason. This she did from an on-line translation (http://www.readprint.cm/work -7/inferno-dante-alighieri: The Divine Comedy: Hell - no translator given). Within those stanzas, verses, and narrative fragments I could see certain words/phrasings and images that prompted my own “translation” and improvised responses.

I’ve made no dramatic attempt to describe sinners being dipped upside down in hot tar – or include any of the other dark & menacing monsters contained in Dante’s hell - or developed the relationship between Dante and Virgil, his poet/guide through hell. Instead, I took only words, phrases or images from Arianwen’s choices that I could then reconfigure without, I decided, any presumption to condense the narrative in Book One, or make any literal reference to snakes, lizards, and lions etc. (though somehow a lone fox trotted in).

The “ending” does not wholly contain the sanguine possibility Dante recognized in Canto xxxiv – a “return to the bright world”- “to look once more upon the stars”. More so, I believe it when the poet Robert Creeley writes - “the darkness surrounds us” - yet within it we must live and experience whatever range we are given or decide.

When the writing stalled, I also took lines/ideas from Arianwen’s poem – the forest of knives image, Mateusz Patryka’s poem for his line the ghost of myself, Cecil Giscombe’s email - these days the sisters incoherent, unrequited, incomplete and Robert Creeley’s line happy in hell – sources that kept me going for awhile longer on the hidden road.

Otherwise, all else is missing.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2012
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Barry McKinnon was born in 1944 in Calgary Alberta, where he grew up. In 1965, after two years at Mount Royal College, he went to Sir George Williams University in Montreal and took poetry courses with Irving Layton. He graduated in 1967 with a B.A. degree. In 1969, he graduated with an M.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and was hired that same year to teach English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George where he has lived and worked ever since.

Barry McKinnon’s The the was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1080. Pulp Log was the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for the B.C. Book Prizes in 1991 and Arrhythmia was the winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for the best chapbook published in Canada in English in 1994. His chapbook Surety Disappears was the runner-up for the bpNichol Award in 2008.

His most recent trade collections include In the Millennium (Vancouver: New Star, 2009) and The Centre: Poems 1970-2000 (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2004).

Barry McKinnon reads in Ottawa on Sunday, March 4, 2012 with Paige Ackerson-Kiely as part of Ottawa’s second annual VERSeFest poetry festival.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: let lie/, an excerpt from a collaborative work by Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin

2012-01-25T12:02:00.012-05:00

let lie/
an excerpt from a collaborative work by Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin
$4

that’s the way it goes it goes mm hmm mm hmm da… mm hmm mm hmm da… something about the ocean de de de de mm hmm and being pulled from the wreckage you hardly ever hear it on the radio anymore you told me once my vagina was like a small bird and I never asked you how it doesn’t forage for food in the forest in the winter nor does it sing from the trees in the spring I sometimes wonder if you had any idea what you were saying half the time you said anything at all there’s a part in the middle that goes nan a na naa in the middle of the song I mean not in the middle of my vagina and a part that goes yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah dried and bedded and sometimes the truth is just the ceiling coming down just the ashes left see you’re carrying that look on your face if you want to make love to me take off your pants and if you want to go just do it just go but either way like men say when they throw the football… go long.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2012
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Elizabeth Rainer is a visual artist and a writer. Her work has been published in numerous small magazines. This is her first chapbook. Her online home is www.wordrocket.tumblr.com and although she resides in Vancouver she lives in Alberta.

Michael Blouin is a novelist and a poet. He has two books of poetry with Pedlar Press (I’m not going to lie to you 2007, Lampman-Scott Award Finalist) and Wore Down Trust (2011), a novel with Coach House Books (Chase and Haven 2008, ReLit Award Winner and Amazon First Novel Finalist) and a chapbook with Apt. 9 Press. He is represented by Westwood Creative Artists and his online home is www.michaelblouin.org

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

"poem" broadside #309: untitled, by Amanda Earl

2012-01-24T12:01:00.013-05:00

SICKNESS HAD ITS BEAUTIFUL MOMENTS
each with a frozen brief glow I only half regret
Phil Hall, An Oak Hunch, IV Gang Plank, p. 66

i wear my limbo white & the property
of snow is light. to unburden.

i don't know if i begged or prayed
i hear it as a whisper, a song, a hum

as darkness comes. i leave the light on.
wait for the glistening reprieve

of flakes i take on the tongue to chill
the heat my body remembers.

dear ghost, i am sorry i left you behind
the gauze curtain on the stairs,

your hand outstretched...
do i regret not touching your hand?

i am still afraid sometimes

untitled
by Amanda Earl
above/ground press broadside #309

Amanda Earl's poems appear most recently or are forthcoming in Sunfish Journal (UK), Spirits Magazine, University Northwest (USA), unarmed (USA), filling Station (Calgary, AB) and SCRIPTjr.nl (USA). Her chapbooks have been published by above/ground press (Ottawa, ON), Avantacular Press (USA), Book Thug (Toronto, ON), chapbookpublisher (USA), and Laurel Reed Books (Mt. Pleasant, ON), with visual poetry somehow appearing in exhibits in Moscow & Windsor. Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. Follow Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle or read about her shenanigans & jiggerypockery at www.amandaearl.com. This untitled poem is in homage to the poet Phil Hall whose work continues to offer solace to the anguished & the battle scarred/weary.

new from above/ground press: Rae Armantrout’s Custom

2012-01-23T12:02:00.034-05:00

Custom
Four poems by Rae Armantrout
$4

ACTION POEM

1

On screen
men discover
that their mothers
are imposters,
that their world’s
unreal.

Substitution
is eerie.

(We discover this again.)

2

America
has a lucid dream.

She’s falling
from level
to collapsing level
in someone else’s (whose?)
terrain, through
floorboards, off bridges,
firing desperately.

Someone says, “Dream
bigger,” handing us
an RPG.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2012
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Wesleyan published Rae Armantrout’s [see her 12 or 20 questions here, as well as another piece] most recent poetry collection, Money Shot, in January of 2011. Armantrout’s previous book, Versed (Wesleyan, 2009), received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was a finalist for the National Book Award. Next Life (Wesleyan, 2007), was chosen as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2007 by The New York Times. Other recent books include Collected Prose (Singing Horse, 2007), Up to Speed (Wesleyan, 2004), The Pretext (Green Integer, 2001), and Veil: New and Selected Poems (Wesleyan University Press, 2001). Her poems have been included in anthologies such as American Hybrid (Norton, 2009), Postmodern American Poetry: A Norton Anthology (1993), American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Tradition (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007 and 2008. Armantrout received an award in poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 2007 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. She is Professor of Poetry and Poetics at the University of California, San Diego. Writing in Poetry magazine, Ange Mlinko has said, “I would trade the bulk of contemporary anecdotal free verse for more incisive, chilling poetry like Armantrout’s. The poems gathered here are from a manuscript called Just Saying due out in 2013.

Rae Armantrout reads in Ottawa on Saturday, March 3, 2012 as part of Ottawa’s second annual VERSeFest poetry festival.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

The Capilano Review blog: rob mclennan, on collaborating with Lea Graham

2012-01-17T12:02:00.000-05:00

My piece on collaborating with American poet Lea Graham on, among other things, the chapbook metric: a collaboration (above/ground press, 2011), is now up at The Capilano Review blog.

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Paige Ackerson-Kiely + Barry McKinnon, March 4, 2012

2012-01-13T17:09:00.001-05:00

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the second annual VERSeFest poetry festival

The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series, two talks and readings by:

Paige Ackerson-Kiely (Vermont)
and Barry McKinnon (Prince George BC)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan,

Sunday, March 4, 2012
FREE ADMISSION!
4:30pm at The Mercury Lounge, 56 Byward Market Square, Ottawa
check the VERSeFest link for the full schedule of events!
February 28-March 4, 2012

Paige Ackerson-Kiely‘s first collection, In No One’s Land, was chosen by DA Powell and published by Ahsahta Press in 2007. Her second book, My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta, 2012) began as a response to Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s memoir Alone, and is concerned with exploration, leave-taking and thwarted journeys. Paige has also published a chapbook of prose poems, Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed (above/ground 2011) and a letterpress art folio, This Landscape (Argos, 2010). Her poems have appeared widely in journals here and abroad, and have been translated into several languages. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships for her work from such organizations as Poets & Writers, The Jentel Foundation, Vermont Arts Council and others.

Currently Paige lives in West Addison, Vermont where she is employed at a homeless shelter in a neighboring town. In her spare time she co-edits the poetry annual A Handsome Journal, a subsidiary of Black Ocean (Cambridge, MA.) She is working on a second novel, Made to Lie Down in Green Pastures, a third collection of poetry, and a lyrical comic book illustrated with medium format photographs and centered around the life of Kate Marsden, particularly her time spent in Siberian leper colonies.
http://www.versefest.ca/poets/paige-ackerson-kiely/

Barry McKinnon was born in 1944 in Calgary Alberta, where he grew up. In 1965, after two years at Mount Royal College, he went to Sir George Williams University in Montreal and took poetry courses with Irving Layton. He graduated in 1967 with a B.A. degree. In 1969, he graduated with an M.A. from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, and was hired that same year to teach English at the College of New Caledonia in Prince George where he has lived and worked ever since.

Barry McKinnon’s The the was nominated for the Governor General’s Award for poetry in 1080. Pulp Log was the winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for the B.C. Book Prizes in 1991 and Arrhythmia was the winner of the bp Nichol Chapbook Award for the best chapbook published in Canada in English in 1994. His chapbook Surety Disappears was the runner-up for the bp Nichol Award in 2008.

McKinnon's latest trade collections:
In the Millennium. Vancouver: New Star, 2009.
The Centre: Poems 1970-2000. Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2004.
http://www.versefest.ca/poets/barry-mckinnon/

the bpNichol chapbook award; call for entries,

2012-01-12T17:33:00.000-05:00

Announcing a New Administrative Body for the bpNichol Chapbook Award

In the spirit of the original Phoenix Chapbook Award, which was adjudicated for its first two years by Frank Davey and bpNichol, and continued as the bpNichol Chapbook Award for 23 years by Phoenix Community Works Foundation, the award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry published in chapbook form. With the demise of Phoenix Community Works Foundation, the Meet the Presses collective is pleased to assume management of the award. Meet the Presses is a Toronto-based collective devoted to promoting micro, small and independent literary presses. This collective has come together in the spirit of the original Meet the Presses event begun in Toronto in the mid-1980s by Nicholas Power and Stuart Ross. Members of Meet the Presses have organized a variety of curated public events, and all the events focus on independent publishers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Meet the Presses – an unfunded and non-profit collective – consists of members Gary Barwin, Elisabeth de Mariaffi, Paul Dutton, Maria Erskine, Ally Fleming, Beth Follett, Leigh Nash, Nicholas Power, and Stuart Ross.

Chapbooks written by members of the Meet the Presses collective are ineligible for the award. Authors of chapbooks published by members of the collective remain eligible for the award.

Call for submissions 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award
A $2000 prize will be awarded for the poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of a chapbook of poetry in English published in Canada in 2011.

Chapbooks should be no less than 10 pages and no more than 48 pages.

Submissions should include a brief C.V. of the author, plus address, telephone number, and email address. Send to:

Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award
PO Box 26, Station P, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2S6

The closing date for submissions to the 2012 competition is May 31, 2012.

Please email Meet The Presses for more information: meetthepresses@gmail.com.
A link to previous winners and further information here.

some author activity: Amanda Earl, rob mclennan + Emily Carr,

2012-01-07T13:07:00.007-05:00

A "12 or 20 questions" interview with poet Emily Carr, and rob mclennan and Amanda Earl read as part of the launch of Air Out/In Air (ed. Pearl Pirie) at Collected Works Bookstore, Ottawa, Thursday, January 19.

"poem" broadside #307: Sex at 31, by Jamie Bradley

2012-01-05T11:38:00.012-05:00

the still reproach of, the borrowed line:
learning to read eyes well, mostly,
where matters of contact count
& the spirit is courted

women not called & others
not called again

morbid curiosity & still
the still less promiscuous joy

a rightful mind of fire
& stillness

sharing your body
with other loves
& feeling love's brief knot
& going away & fecund

& telling
you only
the visible
in private

Sex at 31
by Jamie Bradley
above/ground press broadside #307

Jamie Bradley's poetry has appeared most recently or is forthcoming in CV 2, Moria, Otoliths and Rattle. His chapbooks include Compositions (Angel House Press, 2008) and the collaborative anthology Dalhousie Blues (Ex-hubris, 2009), with Christine McNair, Sean Moreland and Caleb JW Brassett. He is an instructor in English at the University of Ottawa.

Maguire, Ladouceur, Cooley + Ackerson-Kiely (+ mclennan) make Amanda Earl's favourite chapbooks of 2011 list

2011-12-28T17:54:00.000-05:00

Ottawa literary maven Amanda Earl has posted a list of "favourite chapbooks of 2011," and she includes titles from an array of literary presses, including Apt. 9 Press, Pooka Press, BookThug and various others, highlighting four titles by above/ground press: Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed, by Paige Ackerson-Kiely; have you learned / nothing kroetsch, by Dennis Cooley; Lime Kiln Quay Road, by Ben Ladouceur; Vowel Wolves & Other Knots, by Shannon Maguire (all of which are still available). For a list of other recent chapbooks, click here! And then of course, subscriptions...

She was even nice enough to mention my own C. (little red leaves, Textile Editions). Thanks, Amanda!

A review of rob mclennan’s The underside of the line, by Megan Burns (Rain Taxi Review)

2011-12-27T11:29:00.001-05:00

Poet Megan Burns wrote a lovely and positive review of my chapbook, The underside of the line, (above/ground press, 2011) as part of her “chapbook corner” in Rain Taxi, alongside reviews of Travis Cebula’s Jamaica (bedoin books) and Bhanu Kapil’s (a poem-essay, or precursor: NOTES: for a novel: Ban en Banlieues) (Belladonna #127). I did a review or two for Rain Taxi moons ago, but haven’t managed to write a second, but for them publishing my essay on Don Quixote. Unfortunately, the magazine somehow missed the misspelled Ottawa, and Megan Burns (who is also hosting a reading by myself and Stephen Brockwell in March, down there in New Orleans) somehow calls above/ground press “coedited” by me, misunderstanding that above/ground press is a solo show, and has never been co-edited by anyone (I suspect she mistook for Chaudiere Books, which still, is co-run with Jennifer Mulligan, and still singularly edited by myself). But enough nit-picking: this is a lovely, positive and attentive review, Megan Burns, and I thank you for it!

Here is a fragment of said review (the whole review is available in the print edition of their new issue), posted with permission:

mclennan’s lines are short and rhythmically sudden; the sounds of these lines, even in the midst of a prose poem, cause the reader to paint the picture from a flurry of images. […] The tableau would seem surrealistic, but mclennan’s images are grounded in the everyday; the poems function as collages where disparate but familiar tropes are given back to us for subjective sorting. Furthermore, mclennan’s lines are satisfying because he plays on the musicality of hard syllables and recurring assonance as well as the surprise of what will turn up next. […] In the same way that a song uses rhythm to bridge sense with emotion, mclennan winds his images in rhythms that allow one to suspend disbelief for the greater return of amusement.

above/ground press 2012 subscriptions! + update of forthcoming titles,

2011-12-22T12:45:00.015-05:00

Hey, above/ground press enthusiasts! This is a notice to see who might be interested in subscribing to our 2012 annual subscriptions, $50 (in the United States, $50 US; $75 international) for everything above/ground press makes from now until the end of 2012. Can you believe, 2012 marks nineteen years above/ground?

There are a whole bunch of publications in the works for 2012, including new publications by Rae Armantrout, derek beaulieu, Sarah Mangold, j/j hastain, Kathryn MacLeod, Rob Manery, Allison Grayhurst, Lars Palm, Fenn Stewart, kemeny babineau, rob mclennan, a collaboration by Andrew Burke + Phil Hall, and plenty of others. How is it you’ve stayed away for so long?

You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) at (new address!) 402 McLeod Street #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A5 or drop the money on my recently-acquired Paypal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

And keep checking author and publication updates on the above/ground press blog as well, including recent new interviews with Dennis Cooley and Camille Martin, a tribute to Robert Kroetsch, and the online appearance of Ross Brighton's above/ground press chapbook as a free pdf as part of the Dusie Kollektiv 5, as well as the occasional online reissue of a number of above/ground press “poem” broadsides, with recent and forthcoming appearances by Stephanie Bolster, Marilyn Irwin, Amanda Earl and Jamie Bradley.

We, alone, are keeping Canada Post in business. Don’t you forget it.

Happy seasonal things, and best for the New Year.

yer wayward publisher,

"poem" broadside #306: this side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht, by Marilyn Irwin

2011-12-20T13:32:00.010-05:00

concave
sparks
a heart
a feather

the weight
of the world
in a wink

weather wax drips
stellar sip trips
fire pours poorly

mothing
light-bulb
shades shadows

from star tangle
and everything
contained

this side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht
by Marilyn Irwin
above/ground press broadside #306

Marilyn Irwin’s work can be found in issues of ottawater, Bywords, Bywords Quarterly Journal, X-Ray Magazine, and Peter F. Yacht Club. She self-published her first chapbook in 2010 which was re-issued by above/ground press the same year. She is amassing pieces of things for her second chapbook.

Cameron Anstee at the Bah! House Band Reading Series, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011

2011-12-13T17:55:00.000-05:00

above/ground press author Cameron Anstee reads at the Bah! House Band Reading Series alongside Ottawa poet David Currie on Thursday, December 15, 2011; 9pm-11pm, Raw Sugar Cafe, 692 Somerset Street West, Ottawa.

The return of the House Band Reading Series, featuring DJ Komsomol & McNally in the band, with Special Guests Cameron Anstee and Dave Currie.
The House Band Reading Series mixes music with words, a DJ scoring each piece as it is read/performed with special guests bringing other genres of writing to round out the evening.

Mashing a musical score with prose, the House Band will be performing two seasonal pieces.

Dave Currie: a man haunted by schemes. Writing is one of them, he's been working on this racket for a while now and if it doesn't work out he might take up glass blowing or dream interpretation. He can often be seen stroking, chewing or raking his facial hair. He currently serves as the fiction editor of In/Words Magazine where he is often quite grumpy.

Cameron Anstee: Apt. 9 Press (Ottawa ON) publishes handmade book in limited editions by new and established writers. We publish poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Our publishing emphasizes local writers, but strives for broader dialogue. Our first titles were launched in August 2009. His chapbook Frank St. (above/ground, 2010) is still available, here.

some author activity: Amanda Earl, Emily Carr + Camille Martin,

2011-12-07T18:50:00.000-05:00

above/ground press author Emily Carr has a new poem online at Front Porch, and Amanda Earl's March, 2011 VERSeFest reading of her above/ground press chapbook, The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (still available, here), is now on-line (as well as a number of other VERSeFest readings), and Camille Martin blogs on her recent Kingston + Ottawa chapbook launches.

new above/ground press broadsides by Marilyn Irwin, Jamie Bradley, Nick Ravo + Amanda Earl

2011-12-04T18:29:00.000-05:00

"This side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht"
by Marilyn Irwin
above/ground press broadside #306

"Sex at 31"
by Jamie Bradley
above/ground press broadisde #307

"A Boab in Broome, Western Australia"
by Nick Ravo
above/ground press broadside #308

untitled
by Amanda Earl
above/ground press broadside #309

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive complimentary copies

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2)

copies available by sending a s.a.s.e. (or $2) to:
rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON Canada K2P 1A6

paypal available at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

a tribute to Robert Kroetsch: a selection from his writings edited by Nicole Markotic

2011-12-02T21:49:00.000-05:00

A tribute to recent above/ground press author Robert Kroetsch on The Capilano Review website, the second issue of their free web folio: a selection from his writings edited by Nicole Markotic.

a new interview with Dennis Cooley

2011-12-01T12:27:00.002-05:00

A new interview with recent above/ground press author Dennis Cooley, conducted by American poet Lea Graham, author of, among other titles, the chapbook Calendar Girls (above/ground press, 2006).

Ross Brighton's above/ground chapbook, TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE, is now on-line as pdf

2011-11-25T12:02:00.000-05:00

New Zealand poet Ross Brighton's above/ground press chapbook, TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE (2011), originally published as part of the Dusie Kollektiv 5, is now available on-line as part of the same (along with nearly one hundred other works, including one by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan, published by Brighton; see the full list here). Check out the link to Brighton's chapbook here.

"poem" broadside #289: Night Zoo, by Stephanie Bolster

2011-11-24T13:37:00.004-05:00

Dogs ravaged the yard where yesterday
rabbits and toads. The dead
fed to the cages and the dark.
The mouth of the mouth.

Plants dangled from pegs
beside padlocks. Reaching,
though they weren’t.

A dark stain on concrete.
A little water.

Let’s go, I said,
meaning stay.

Night Zoo
by Stephanie Bolster
above/ground press broadside #289

Stephanie Bolster lives in Montreal. Her fourth poetry collection is A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011). She has published two different chapbooks through above/ground press.

Camille Martin: On Writing

2011-11-18T14:00:00.001-05:00

An interview with Camille Martin, "On Writing," is now posted at Open Book. Her chapbook If Leaf, Then Arpeggio is still available here.

new from above/ground press: Shannon Maguire's Vowel Wolves & Other Knots

2011-11-16T12:02:00.000-05:00

THE MIDWIFE’S HANDS

(Palms up, Ready to Catch)

Left

threat to deer from the covered hook
extended extended the extended deer

bend deer hair wing to the upright hook
attach extended behind from a tail
wrap fur covered thread over wing
hook to the upright furry worm

right up deer bend hair extended behind wing
attach thread to fur wing
from behind wrap deer hair over a worm
bend hook to the tail wing

hook hair to the covered tail
right from a bend attach deer to the hook
wrap fur up from behind the coveted
to hook upright attach bend right

Right

from marsh all-night moose send night
lava image all forms passing a hider
night forms the “send moose” button from a marsh
marsh pearl from a hidden sail

send marsh from a sail letter
forms passing raw button pearl under the lava
moose trail from image letter
left all buttons...send pearl future-passing letter

marsh from an all-night imagery lava
raw image hidden trail under letter
moose future passing forms the sail
send button pearl letter from an all-night marsh

future future a future button
trail from button forms a hidden marsh

Vowel Wolves & Other Knots
by Shannon Maguire
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Shannon Maguire is a poet and playwright. She is the co-cultivator of AvantGarden, an experimental text and sound based performance series in Toronto. "Fur(l) Parachute" was shortlisted for the 2011 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her work has appeared in CV2, Gulch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (Tightrope) and Nightwood Theatre's 4X4 Off Road Festival, among other places.

Shannon Maguire launches in Toronto on November 22 at the Art Bar Reading Series, alongside rob mclennan and Pearl Pirie.

Verulam: Phil Hall wins the GG for Killdeer (BookThug)

2011-11-15T12:35:00.001-05:00

It was announced today that Perth, Ontario poet Phil Hall has won this year's Governor General's Award for Poetry for the collection Killdeer (Toronto ON: BoookThug, 2011). Congrats to Phil Hall and everyone (Jay, Hazel, Jenny) at BookThug! It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, a more deserving poet, or a more deserving book. For further information on Hall's work, check out the lengthy essay I wrote, up at Poetics.ca.

One of the sections of Killdeer was originally published as a chapbook through above/ground press. Produced in 2009 in a run of two hundred copies (hand-stamped by Hall), there are still a few copies left, if anyone is interested.

Verulam
by Phil Hall
August 2009
$4

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Ken Norris’ LOOKING INTO IT

2011-11-02T13:01:00.012-04:00

WRITING POEMS
I'm writing poems,
trying to find a place to stand.

Sometimes you can awaken
yourself with a poem.

It doesn't always have to be
about the reader's pleasure.

Sometimes you're just desperately trying
to save your damaged soul.

LOOKING INTO IT
by Ken Norris
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He emigrated to Montreal in the mid-1970s, and became a Canadian citizen in 1985. He currently teaches Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maine. His previous above/ground press titles include Windward - St. Lucia Poems (1995), THE COMMENTARIES (1999), SONGS FOR ISABELLA (2000) and Green Wind (2010).

new from above/ground press: Camille Martin's If Leaf, Then Arpeggio

2011-11-01T17:56:00.000-04:00

~

Right now is what dwindling feels like, despite
the mulberry outside my window steadfastly
anchoring its taproot. The new century counts planets
that might support rooted beings and ravenous predators.
But stardust piles up on lines connecting dots
in constellations, blurring them into nebulae. Shapeless
experience waffles between concrete and abstract, accounting
for the popularity of horoscopes, especially when Jupiter enters
Aries and we vacillate, like volcanoes heaving ash
before the pyroclastic flow, collapsing before tsunami, dwindling
until the next cycle. I abstractly shake dew from ripe mulberries.
Or I lie down, gazing at shivering green tracery non-existent
a couple of months ago and just as soon to vanish.
A more or less concrete cup of coffee balances on my belly,
wobbling to the diastolic and systolic rhythms of my heart.

If Leaf, Then Arpeggio
by Camille Martin
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Camille Martin, a Toronto poet, is the author of Sonnets (Shearsman Books, 2010) and Codes of Public Sleep (BookThug, 2007). Her work has been widely published in journals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her current work in progress is a collection of double sonnets. She is also engaged in a project funded by the Ontario Arts Council: a long poem (working title: “The Evangeline Papers”) based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage and her recent visit to Nova Scotia to participate in an archaeological dig at Beaubassin and to research Acadian and Mik’maq history and culture. She earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in English at Louisiana State University. Currently she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University. Her website is http://www.camillemartin.ca and her blog is http://rogueembryo.wordpress.com

some author activity: Stephen Brockwell + Emily Carr,

2011-10-28T21:49:00.000-04:00

Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell read from his "Impossible Books" work-in-progress (that includes his above/ground press chapbook) at the In/words reading series the other night, and Odourless Press was good enough to post selected audio of the evening. In other news, Calgary poet Emily Carr, author of the above/ground chapbook, & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil, has new poems online at Web Conjunctions, and even a new book. Did you know any of that?

2012 subscriptions now available!

2011-09-22T09:30:00.002-04:00

The 2012 above/ground press subscription is now available. $50 for everything above/ground press produces to the end of the 2012 calendar year sent directly to your mailbox (or, in some cases, hand-delivered).

And be sure to check out the above/ground press group on facebook, including The Factory Reading Series (celebrating 20 years in January 2012) events at The Carleton Tavern.

YES! I WANT EVERYTHING ABOVE/GROUND PRESS HAS TO OFFER! GIVE ME A 2012 SUBSCRIPTION (STARTING TODAY, THANK GOD) FOR ONLY FIFTY (50) DOLLARS (IN THE US, $50 US).

with recent and forthcoming above/ground publications by: Camille Martin, Rae Armantrout, Dennis Cooley, Robert Kroetsch, Andrew Burke + Phil Hall, Sarah Mangold, Ben Ladouceur, rob mclennan, Ken Norris, Hugh Thomas, Michael Blouin, Christine McNair, derek beaulieu, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, kemeny babineau, Eric Folsom, Ross Brighton, Marilyn Irwin, Shannon Maguire + plenty of others.

give $50 to rob mclennan, or mail:
c/o 402 McLeod Street #3, Ottawa Ontario Canada K2P 1A6

paypal available via www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

regular notices are also sent out through an email list of Ottawa-area literary events. to get on the list, email me at az421@freenet.carleton.ca

new from above/ground press: Hugh Thomas’ Opening the Dictionary

2011-09-20T12:57:00.000-04:00

Opening the Dictionary
by Hugh Thomas
$4

Opening the Dictionary

I.

good family, the King, ten crowns, evil, a ring
himself, his looks, chance, profit, income
white blossoms, tears, burning zeal
principle, meat, that account
lack of curiosity, bake cakes
undress, clear the table, break in two
go to sleep, pine away

II.

milk, light, book, loaf
the main thing
near, first, alone
as he works
suddenly, absolutely, quite simply

III.

to glance at, to blow a kiss
to spend the night
to afflict, to throw out
to accuse, to speak ill of
to hanker after

IV.

memory, writing, works, friend,
days, folly, portrait,
tending to corrupt, suitable, full,

there were a lot of people in the streets today

V.

to whine, to whimper
to squeak, to crinkle, to crunch
to twinkle, to shine
to take out, to utter, to publish
to hollow
to rummage in
to write, to be written
to wake up

VI.

pocket dictionary letter
bird ballad gadget
snowfall whisper

VII.

ink by force to talk to itself
engaged in reading
too, also, as well
and so am I

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Hugh Thomas lives in Fredericton, where he is a professor of mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. Chapbooks of his poetry have been published by Paper Kite Press (Heart badly buried by five shovels, 2009) and BookThug (Mutations, 2004). Franzlations, the imaginary Kafka parables, a book of variations on Kafka texts, which is a joint project with Gary Barwin and Craig Conley, will be published by New Star Books in the fall.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Hugh Thomas reads in Ottawa as part of The Factory Reading Series on Friday, September 23, 2011.

new from above/ground press: rob mclennan's The underside of the line,

2011-09-16T09:01:00.033-04:00

The underside of the line,
by rob mclennan
$4

Future Bakery: Interim Report

1.

Tumble awake, this morning. Start from fragments. A gauntlet. Urge others, speak slowly, more. Unity precedes. A cranial. Decline to leave names.

2.

Regular harbour, weave. Brunswick House, girlfriend. Ease down like an astronaut. What brief integrity, dialed. Composure governs. I pull my soldiered hands, small fortunes.

3.

Children, the frame. Agency of water, fresh and unremarkable, rare. Brace, with low chairs. The sun strikes everything, rattling plastic clouds. Who is this, really? Table this, divide.

4

Windspeck, taste of rain. Illusions in this distance, blue. Compulsive fingernails. Battered, cleared and crawled. Hotel concordance, congress. In passing, spark tongues. Suppress. These rooms are legion.

5.

Mechanical lineage. By the way, no longer. Sorry flightless birds. Submit is not the word. The right lane ends. All these coloured pencils. A shelf-life. Blueprint grit. She worries: where we cease to be.

6.

A corkscrew, distance. Impatient, leaf. Sweet fragrance. Hotel, sustains. Time changes colour. Coffee cools, and something moves. Synopsis: boundaries. Hips and dashed integrity. Relieved, we plummet.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

rob mclennan reads next in Ottawa on September 17, 2011 as part of the League of Canadian Poets fundraiser.

new from above/ground press: Eric Folsom's NORTHEAST ANTI-GHAZALS (second printing)

2011-09-15T12:01:00.021-04:00

Northeast

If you picked any story but this,
I wouldn’t know where to begin.

The grey November sky predicting early snow,
The ground already resisting footprints.

A young doe in my garden looks up;
How the mind seeing, loses sight.

Inside where I stand, one cobweb on the ceiling
Delicately twists when the furnace comes to life.

What if I turned my face away
And when I looked back you were gone?

The freezing mud in the driveway
Seizes the tires in their ruts overnight.

I wish for multiple eyes like a spider,
My forehead of shining cobblestones.

NORTHEAST ANTI-GHAZALS
Eric Folsom
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
second printing, September 2011
(first printing, January 2005)
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Eric Folsom writes poems, works at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, and occasionally bakes cookies. He has written a handful of poetry books, including Icon Driven (Wolask and Wynn, 2001) and Poems for Little Cataraqui (Broken Jaw, 1994). He helped edit the literary magazines Next Exit and Quarry, served as the Ontario rep for the League of Canadian Poets, and has hung around in Kingston, Ontario since 1974. He was told once he looks pretty good for his age. In 2011 the Kingston City council appointed Eric as Kingston's first Poet Laureate.

Eric Folsom reads in Ottawa on Saturday, September 17, 2011 as part of a League of Canadian Poets benefit.

new from above/ground press: have you learned / nothing kroetsch by Dennis Cooley

2011-09-14T11:30:00.000-04:00

have you learned / nothing kroetsch
three poems by Dennis Cooley
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Dennis Cooley grew up in Southern Saskatchewan. He has studied at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Rochester, and has lived with his family in Winnipeg since 1973. His latest title is correction line, which draws heavily on memories of family and of his life in and around Estevan. He is working on several manuscripts, including a collection of essays on Robert Kroetsch.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s A Book About A Candle Burning in a Shed

2011-09-13T12:30:00.000-04:00

A Book About A Candle Burning in a Shed
by Paige Ackerson-Kiely
$4

:

They called me down and I went down and arrived. My uniform was basically clean; a life alone makes the need for external demonstration almost disappear, but not fully. One thing I hate is when you get there and it’s all over. Like felled trees after a storm you have to cut up and drag them off the road. But not really the same thing. I knew it would be an important day when someone first hollered help in my direction. Mostly it is small jobs, unlocking cars and checking on the elderly. Sometimes they think I am their son and cry when I leave. Other times they are pretty much dead and I call the paramedics. None of the situations is good. I was north of town when the dispatcher crackled to me. Her clothes found in the river, hung up on some rocks, probably she got taken in the storm—but I was still uneasy, even though nature is out of my hands, which should be a relief like it is to be a child and not a man. Beside the river there was an old mattress and a woman’s swimsuit, the kind that was in style 5 years ago, with ties on either side of the leg openings that you cinch or relax, depending on company. Water’s high and full of silt, and it smelled like squash bugs and my ex-girlfriend’s neck when she worried about money. There was never enough of anything but I guess I got used to it. She was still beautiful from a distance and always in my memory delivered on a soft cloud. I didn’t make a grab for her shirt as it drifted away, there on the banks, sun as bright as I’d ever seen it. I was afraid to be pulled under.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod Street, Ottawa ON Canada K2P 1A6, or simply drop $ on paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Paige Ackerson-Kiely [see her 12 or 20 questions here] authored the poetry collections In No One’s Land (Ahsahta, 2007), My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta, forthcoming) and a limited edition art folio/ collaboration, This Landscape (Argos Books, 2010). Paige lives in rural Vermont, edits the poetry annual A Handsome Journal, and works at a homeless shelter.

"poem" broadside #294: Incidental Kill, by Monica Kidd

2011-09-10T10:56:00.014-04:00

Friend, I've been thinking about that day on Temperance Street, before you packed up, before any of it, when Ken sat at your table to eat whale. All dark glasses and skinny elbows, drunk on the place. His homecoming. A Fogo Island minke, caught by someone's father, was the story. Wrong time, wrong place: how she goes. Mason jars marked with a letter and passed from kettle to coat pocket. How he grinned. The meaty greasy on his plate, the fork in his ham-fist. He wanted a picture and I took one. His serious stare. His joy bursting.

We all climbed Topsail Bluff later and I still look for myself in his poem. And still I find: your hand, his cigarette, even my faded red truck. Wrong place, wrong time. Incidentally, did you ever tell him the W on that jar was really an M? Someone's bottled moose forgotten in your bachelor fridge? How that piece of lead shot stuck in your teeth like a little white lie?

Incidental Kill
by Monica Kidd
above/ground press broadside #294

Monica Kidd is the author of four books, including Actualities (poetry from Gaspereau Press, 2007). A former biologist and journalist, she lives and writes in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she now works as a physician.

Ben Ladouceur + William Hawkins poems reprinted at Odourless

2011-09-07T22:40:00.000-04:00

Ben Ladouceur and William Hawkins poems reprinted from their above/ground press chapbooks on the Odourless Press blog.

"poem" broadside #298: this used to be a sestina, by Fenn Stewart

2011-08-27T19:01:00.000-04:00

they don't know that/ the earth is a magnet
when they are released/ they cannot find their heads
they navigate/ they don't know where

they move/ confused/ into the swamps

to live! slowly they remember
to experiment! they have magnets!
they seek crocodiles!

O those scientists,
we will swath their heads
extrememly. in black bandages. in thick technique.
in florida.

we will disrupt these territorial scientists
they are unique/ and valuable creatures
we will disrupt them/ at a rate of 10 miles per week

to increase their numbers!
this is our radar/ this is our responsibility

their eyeballs are magnets
they roll/ their gait/ their heavy eyes inside their heads
they watch

they are less

their eyes
their magnet eyes
shine deeper in the swamps/

the disruption is over

it is safe to

this used to be a sestina
by Fenn Stewart
above/ground press broadside #298

Fenn Stewart reads and writes in a skinny old house in Toronto. She used to live in Montreal and Vancouver and probably will again, someday. Recent work also appears in The Capilano Review and the "Toronto issue" of The Peter F. Yacht Club.

Mark McCawley's mini-review of rob mclennan's "First you know, and then so ordinary,"

2011-08-21T22:17:00.000-04:00

Edmonton writer/editor Mark McCawley's mini-review of rob mclennan's First you know, and then so ordinary (above/ground press, 2010) at Fresh Raw Cuts.

above/ground press is moving!

2011-08-16T15:41:00.001-04:00

After fifteen years in Ottawa's Chinatown, we're finally moving. The new mailing address for above/ground press, effective September 1, 2011, will be:

402 McLeod Street, #3
Ottawa ON Canada
K2P 1A6

update your records! And keep your eyes out for information on various upcoming new titles, as well as 2012 subscription information.

Have you taken advantage of the end-of-summer sale yet?

above/ground press' end-of-summer sale!

2011-08-08T16:01:00.001-04:00

Celebrating (so far, at least) eighteen glorious years (1993-2011)

poetry chapbooks: 3 for $10 / 6 for $20 / 9 for $30 / 12 for $40 (until September 1, 2011)

Given eighteen years of publishing [thanks to Amanda Earl for the image, from a lovely blog post a couple of years back], it means parts of the warehouse are overflowing, so I'm clearing out some backlist in anticipation of forthcoming titles by derek beaulieu, Dennis Cooley, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Ken Norris, Hugh Thomas, Shannon Maguire and others. Watch here for updates.

Some of the titles available include: Robert Kroetsch, Further to Our Conversation (2011), Julia Williams, MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS (2004), Donato Mancini, @phabet (2003), Jessica Smith, Shifting Landscapes (2006), Phil Hall, Verulam (2009), Amanda Earl, The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (2008), Emily Carr, & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil (2009), Matthew Holmes, SHORTS, BRIEFS and curlies (2005), Josh Auerbach, in/form/al measures (2002), Marcus McCann, Town in a long day of leaving (2010), Nelson Ball, Scrub Cedar (2003), Artie Gold, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS (2003), Lea Graham, Calendar Girls (2006), Gwendolyn Guth, Good People (2010), rob mclennan, 16 Yonge (2010), Alessandro Porco, Autobiographia Cinematica (2005), K.I. Press, FLAME (2002), rob mclennan, Some Forty (2010), George Bowering as “Ellen Field,” A, You're Adorable (2^nd printing, 2004), Gregory Betts, the curse of canada (2008), Helen Hajnoczky, A history of button collecting (2010), Marilyn Irwin, for when you pick daisies (2010), William Hawkins, the black prince of bank street (2007), rob mclennan and Lea Graham, metric (2010), kath macLean, ten: ways to skin a cat (2003), Shauna McCabe, land over time (2005), Gil McElroy, (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Ken Norris, SONGS FOR ISABELLA (2000), Douglas Barbour, It's over is it over: Love's Fragmented Narrative (2005), Larry Sawyer, A Chaise Lounge in Hell (2003), D.G. Jones, standard pose (2002), bpNichol, KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch (2002) and The Peter F. Yacht Club #15, VerseFest Ottawa special (2011).

Inquire for titles not listed here, at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com. In Canada, add $2 for postage; outside, add $4; paypal now available (via rob mclennan's blog), or send cheques c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Amanda Earl's The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman mentioned on Goodreads

2011-07-29T09:01:00.003-04:00

Amanda Earl's chapbook The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (2008) mentioned on Goodreads.

"poem" broadside #304: Future Bakery: Interim Report, by rob mclennan

2011-07-28T17:24:00.000-04:00

Tumble awake, this morning. Start from fragments. A gauntlet. Urge others, speak slowly, more. Unity precedes. A cranial. Decline to leave names.

Regular harbour, weave. Brunswick House, girlfriend. Ease down like an astronaut. What brief integrity, dialed. Composure governs. I pull my soldiered hands, small fortunes.

Children, the frame. Agency of water, fresh and unremarkable, rare. Brace, with low chairs. The sun strikes everything, rattling plastic clouds. Who is this, really? Table this, divide.

Windspeck, taste of rain. Illusions in this distance, blue. Compulsive fingernails. Battered, cleared and crawled. Hotel concordance, congress. In passing, spark tongues. Suppress. These rooms are legion.

Mechanical lineage. By the way, no longer. Sorry flightless birds. Submit is not the word. The right lane ends. All these coloured pencils. A shelf-life. Blueprint grit. She worries: where we cease to be.

A corkscrew, distance. Impatient, leaf. Sweet fragrance. Hotel, sustains. Time changes colour. Coffee cools, and something moves. Synopsis: boundaries. Hips and dashed integrity. Relieved, we plummet.

Future Bakery: Interim Report

by rob mclennan

Produced for small press fairs Toronto + Ottawa, June 2011

above/ground press broadside #304

Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of nearly two dozen trade publications in multiple countries, including the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) – essay on Phil Hall – (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). He is currently working to complete a third novel, various short stories, and a non-fiction project concerning grieving, loss and family archives, tentatively titled “The Last Good Year.” http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

"poem" broadsides "inside cow barn at Ecotay," near Perth, Ontario; photo by Brian Pirie,

2011-07-25T14:01:00.000-04:00

new from above/ground press: Robert Kroetsch’s Further to Our Conversation

2011-07-15T09:01:00.000-04:00

Further to Our Conversation
by Robert Kroetsch
$3

You May Not Know the Sender

This message is from you.
It says: Please do not open.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset
Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,
or check out abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7. (for paypal options, drop $5 on www.robmclennan.blogspot.com, & email me yr address at rob_mclennan@hotmail.com)

Renowned poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) [see my obit/tribute for him here] was one of Canada’s most accomplished authors. With a career spanning well over 40 years, Kroetsch received numerous honours, including the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for his book The Studhorse Man, and penned 9 internationally acclaimed novels, 14 books of poetry, and 5 books of non-fiction, essays, and exploration.

Celebrated as a leading creator of contemporary Canadian literature, his writing, teaching, and critical vision helped shape Canadian literature and culture. His works have been translated, published, and studied extensively worldwide, and he gave readings in countries as various as China, Japan, Finland, Italy, and Australia. Kroetsch taught and mentored countless writers throughout the world. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2000 for The Hornbooks of Rita K.

A Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Alberta, his most recent award was the Manitoba Arts Council Arts Award of Distinction.

“poem” broadside #302: Morrisburg Ontario, by Michael Blouin

2011-07-13T12:45:00.000-04:00

a lot of what gets said isn’t true

some things become more true over time

this place grew me

been lying on this bathroom floor long enough

to speculate that the intricacies of the tile work are beyond standard motel applications

the word byzantine might come into play

was it usual for this particular motel? did the tile layer have a momentary vision and set aside the wrinkled paper plan? run back and forth to the pickup or the store? get fired for it at the end but happy with an emptied head finally and dreams of a future beyond mere tilery and motel splendour? this is what I end up hoping.

that the man spent the rest of his life fabricating elaborate mosaics living on chocolate and water and feeling things more deeply than was strictly good for him

after dusk I wander into the tree line behind the soft vinyl sided building slowly driven by something I do not know fingers lightly brushing the rough tree edges

my neck becomes sore from looking up

no stars.

Morrisburg Ontario

by Michael Blouin

Produced for a reading at the Dusty Owl Reading Series

June 12, 2011

above/ground press broadside #302

Michael Blouin’s Chase and Haven (Coach House) won the Re Lit Award for Best Novel in 2009. His current Wore Down Trust (Pedlar Press) is garnering national attention. This new work is from a manuscript in progress. http://www.minor-poet.blogspot.com

“poem” broadside #305: January 9: Before Kroetsch’s visit to my meteorology class, by Nicole Markotić

2011-07-11T14:06:00.000-04:00

thank you for boosting precipitation in Alberta. I confess I have always endeavoured to write the weather into line-breaks, wind speeds as enjambment, cirrus as infernal semi-colon, today’s high as the exact moment I read The Snowbird Poems aloud and hear you perusing Jack Spicer. The space between breaks a mutual breathing.

You begin me beginning. The Chinook stretches and reaches and pulls my exhalation across the prairies. Louis and I passed beneath Manitoba last week, when we took a cross-country detour to visit Lorine Niedecker’s birthplace and home town. We started in Windsor, drove to Chicago, then through Wisconsin, up towards Saskatchewan, into Moose Jaw, and on to Alberta. At the wheel, I quoted from Alberta, citing driving records and crocus alerts and overly coddled spring gardens. I craved myself back into the prairies, your prairies, back into provinces where Schmier and the rules that don’t make logical sense, make sense.

You remind me, when you repeat “diadem” back to me, that ancient Greek does not accommodate the word blue. How to crown the poem without a pure lambent sky? Lorine Faith Niedecker lived in a small hut by the Rock River, her mother’s breath supplying the room’s temperature, and wrote, “don’t be afraid / to pour wine over cabbage.” She is buried in the same grave as her parents, her husband’s headstone a footnote beside them. On the family stone, “Neidecker” posthumously insists on e-before-I: direction is important in weathered stones.

What is it about the grave, you ask, that institutes plot? I can only answer with Picasso blues and wavering humidity, with the idea of horizon flames on a crown of winter, and with snowflakes sprinkling over your head in the dead heat of a Calgary January. You lose yourself in disproportionate narrative, on purpose. And we smectite readers follow, determined to unbury the plot, unspell surnames, unpave the TransCanada, and unwrite the inclement page.

In between morning rain and afternoon hail, you noticed what I forget: pronunciation matters. And the invention of the telephone did change how we write.

January 9: Before Kroetsch’s visit to my meteorology class

by Nicole Markotić

July 2011

above/ground press broadside #305

Nicole Markotić is author of two poetry books, Connect the Dots and Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, the novella Yellow Pages, and the novel Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot. She has edited a collection of poetry by Dennis Cooley, By Word of Mouth, has worked as a freelance editor, and has edited special issues for the literary journals Open Letter and Tessera. She was poetry editor for Red Deer Press for six years and has recently joined the NeWest literary board as one of its fiction editors. She publishes a chapbook poetry series, Wrinkle Press, which includes work by Louis Cabri, Robert Kroetsch, and Nikki Reimer. She lives in Windsor, and is working on a book of poems.

“poem” broadside #301, Stolen Wind, by Hugh Thomas

2011-07-09T10:36:00.000-04:00

why

by the window

rain in my arms

the wide boulevards

trailing blue smoke

his sad smile

prepared

waiting to speak

to death

this happened

we were alive

notebook

the tricky steps

and green panoramas

after lovemaking

combing

orange streaks of light

i was never anything more

than the perpetual threat of rain

food and pleasure

the lake and the sky

little songs

that elude me

coffee

meanwhile

waiting for

the nightingales

we say goodbye

I am a tired, bleary-eyed man

in love with a beach

the scaffolding comes apart

the heat, the light, the green rice fields

a few clouds

slowly making for that further shore

Stolen Wind

by Hugh Thomas

above/ground press broadside #301

Hugh Thomas teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Heart badly buried by five shovels, a chapbook of his poetry, was recently published by Paper Kite Press. “Stolen wind” is composed of words and phrases from the chapbook Green Wind (above/ground press, 2010) by Ken Norris.

“poem” broadside #303: “to fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,” by Christine McNair

2011-07-08T17:18:00.000-04:00

interspliced – my fingers lick

dashboard drip syrup lose venue

slip diagonal beneath

stringed instruments

soft sand sucks toes

black bays my hips

tilt to the wash of it

shoe blunt with beach

my perpetual chafe of

wet

fae folk require raw cherries

devilish red sticky

goblin

shoulder span cool

stone sweet there’s

no ocean where there’s

no ocean no ocean

my tongue coasts

beloved bellatrix

beautiful belladonna

flash fictions

my heart’s root hem lonely

sweet murmur

“to fret thy soul with crosses and with cares”

by Christine McNair

Produced for small press fairs Toronto + Ottawa, June 2011

above/ground press broadside #303

Christine McNair’s work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, ditchpoetry.com, CV2, the Bywords Quarterly Journal, Descant, Arc, and a few other places. She is one of the hosts of CKCU's Literary Landscapes and works as a book doctor in Ottawa. http://cartywheel.wordpress.com

Cameron Anstee reviews Stephen Brockwell + Ben Ladouceur titles;

2011-05-24T10:46:00.000-04:00

Ottawa poet and Apt. 9 publisher Cameron Anstee serves up some reviews for Stephen Brockwell's Impossible Books (The Carleton Installment) (2010) and Ben Ladouceur's [photo from his recent launch] LIME KILN QUAY ROAD (2011).

Amanda Earl on Stan Rogal (from his recent Factory Reading Series appearance);

2011-05-23T12:04:00.000-04:00

a note Ottawa poet, publisher and blogger Amanda Earl wrote on discovering Toronto writer Stan Rogal's work at the most recent Factory reading. Very nice!

Some of Rogal's above/ground press works include the chapbooks In Search of the Emerald City (1997) and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2004).

Here's a note I wrote on Rogal myself, some time ago.

new from above/ground press: Ben Ladouceur’s LIME KILN QUAY ROAD

2011-05-20T11:29:00.000-04:00

There was a rock rumoured to grow

one inch every year.

It was a letdown.

The heath once housed

a witch

but then they built the church

so she became some nightjars

and took off.

It’s something we do

in the countryside.

We don’t grow a great deal

and depart

when the birds we’re made of

have had enough.

LIME KILN QUAY ROAD

by Ben Ladouceur

$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

in an edition of 200 copies, May 2011

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,

or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage;

outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob

mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor,

Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

After a year spent living and working in various towns throughout England, Ben Ladouceur spent the summer of 2010 employed at a youth hostel in the hamlet of Blaxhall, Suffolk. He is now living back in Ottawa, his hometown. His poetry has most recently been featured in Ottawater, Cadaverine, and the anthology Pith and Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press, ed. Susan McMaster, 2010). Previous chapbooks include: Nuuk, In/Words Chapbook Series, 2008; Alert, Angel House Press, 2009; The Argossey, Apt. 9 Press, 2009; The Bottom of the Sea, The Moose & Pussy, 2011

Recent above/ground press titles reviewed in Jones Av., by Allan Brown

2011-05-16T22:26:00.000-04:00

Here is a write-up received this week in the new issue of Toronto poetry quarterly Jones Av. (Vol. XV, No. IV, Spring 2011), by British Columbia poet/critic (and Jones. Av. contributing editor) Allan Brown. Thank you for the attention, sir!

These recent above/ground chapbooks (c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON, K1R 6R7) combine a familiar format with four well-varied voices.

Cameron Anstee’s serial poem Frank St. (March 2010, $4.00) is a study of house, history ("in 1878 this address / was at the city limit”), art and self. He moves through his new/old home precisely but gently, instructing himself and us how to relax, “learn to stop,” in order to then “see better, poem.”

Marilyn Irwin’s first chapbook for when you pick daisies (July 2010, $4.00) moves playfully through unexpected sights “carnation imprints” (“the dirt on my window”) and sounds “bullfrog chorus kuhcoffaknee” (“untitled”). The intricate title piece expands the “silver puddles” of the flowers (poems) “into meadow shadows” and allows us to “watch sea strands saturate.”

Marcus McCann plays more academic literary games in Town in a long day of leaving (March 2010, $3.00). the last and first poems expand upon material from Susanna Moodie’s Roughing It in the Bush, from the quiet intimations of “Many voices murmuring in the anxious / beings” (“Town”) to the vital “Dancing, quivering, dazzling” of “We stick to the wind.” Sometimes the teacher cracks a joke, as in his re-arrangement of the pop song “Crazy” in which “I ache, I even spun // thunder.”

Founder rob mclennan has issued several of his own titles, most recently 16 Yonge (August 2010, $4.00). A kind of meandering street-scape, its tones shift from the punning query of “how does your Gardiner grow, / expressly” through the suggestive description of “a dusty lake, a silken sandbar” to the final poignant wondering: “what can one safely say / of sleep, // that stolen river.”

above/ground press participating in Niagara Falls, Toronto + Ottawa small press fairs;

2011-05-12T09:33:00.000-04:00

above/ground press will be participating in small press book fairs (with new wares a'plenty) in:

Niagara Falls, ON: A Book Affair, Saturday, June 4th, 2011, hosted by The Niagara Literary Arts Festival. information here.

Toronto ON: The Toronto Small Press Book Fair, Sunday, June 19,2011. information here.

Ottawa ON: the ottawa small press book fair, Saturday, June 25, 2011, hosted by the small press action network - ottawa (span-o). information here.

for further information on small press book fairs across Canada, check out the small press book fair blog.

hopefully we will see you at one, if not all of these! best,

new from above/ground press: THE DUSTY OWL QUARTERLY VOLS. 27-42

2011-05-09T10:00:00.000-04:00

THE DUSTY OWL QUARTERLY VOLS. 27-42
edited by rob mclennan
$4

Contributors:
Cameron Anstee
Amanda Earl
Laurie Fuhr
Warren Dean Fulton
Marilyn Irwin
Alastair Larwill
John Lavery
Marcus McCann
rob mclennan
Christine McNair
Pearl Pirie
Roland Prevost
Monty Reid
Sandra Ridley
+ Janice Tokar.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in an edition of 200 copies, May 8, 2011,
for the triumphant return of Steve “Dusty Al” Zytveld
to The Dusty Owl Reading Series
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset
Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,
or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Pearl Pirie's write-up on Haller, Liefso, Yang,

2011-03-28T10:21:00.000-04:00

Poet/blogger Pearl Pirie did a lovely write-up on the recent reading by Aurian Haller, Brenda Liefso + Teresa Yang. Here's hoping Teresa might submit something to above/ground! Photo of Haller and myself by Pirie as well.

above/ground press at VERSeFest

2011-03-17T20:43:00.000-04:00

with my full report here;

new from above/ground press: The Peter F. Yacht Club #15 (VERSeFest special);

2011-03-04T15:58:00.000-05:00

The Peter F Yacht Club #15
Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan
March 2011 ; VERSeFest Ottawa special
$5

with new writing by:

Cameron Anstee
Dennis Cooley
Amanda Earl
Lea Graham
Marilyn Irwin
Meghan Jackson
Ben Ladouceur
Marcus McCann
Gil McElroy
David McGimpsey
rob mclennan
Christine McNair
Sean Moreland
Wanda O’Connor
Pearl Pirie
Monty Reid
+ Karen Solie

issue #15; irregular (very) writers group publication. Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan in Ottawa, March 2011, “VERSeFest Ottawa special,” to coincide with the first ever annual VERSeFest, Ottawa’s newest poetry festival, March 8-13, 2011, as well as being above/ground press’ 600th publication!

published in Ottawa by above/ground press, March 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset
Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,
or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7. copies will also be available at Ottawa's first annual VERSeFest Poetry Festival, March 8-13, 2011; www.versefest.ca

Previous issues still available (possibly) at $5 each. Issue #1, August 2003, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #2, April 2004, edited by Anita Dolman (out of print); Issue #3, September 2004, edited by Peter Norman and Melanie Little (out of print); Issue #4, September 2005, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #5, April 2006, edited by Max Middle; Issue #6, mis-numbered Calgary issue, February 2007, edited by Laurie Fuhr; Issue #7, writers festival issue, April 2007, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #8, “Edmonton issue,” October 2007, produced at the University of Alberta, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #9, Fredericton issue, January 2008, edited by Jesse Patrick Ferguson in “The Poets’ Corner” (Fredericton, New Brunswick), and produced at the University of Alberta; Issue #10, “in by one, out by four” special, March 2008, produced at the University of Alberta, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #11, “Edmonton issue the second,” May 2008, produced at the University of Alberta, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #12, “Fifth anniversary issue: Anarchy, Apocalypse, & Madness,” September 2008, edited by Amanda Earl; Issue #13, “lucky thirteen – the white album,” June 2009, edited by rob mclennan; Issue #14, “from one centre to another—a Toronto issue.” March 2010, edited by rob mclennan.

new from above/ground press: Ross Brighton’s TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE

2011-03-01T14:37:00.000-05:00

TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE
by Ross Brighton
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 300 copies, March 2011, as part of the Dusie Kollectiv #5; a dusi/e-chap, www.dusie.org

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7, or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Ross Brighton is a New Zealand poet, based in Auckland. He is the author of A Draft From BIRDS, A Pelt a Shrub a Soil Sample, /K/:HAVEDONEWITH (forthcoming from June Gloom Press), and a limited edition forthcoming from Electio Editions. His work has appeared in Side Stream, Brief, Otoliths, Reconfigurations, No Tell Motel and Action Yes. He is reviews editor for the journal Tarpaulin Sky, and blogs on poetics and contemporary art at www.ignoretheventriloquists.blogspot.com.

new from above/ground press: metric: a collaboration of small poems by Lea Graham and rob mclennan

2011-02-27T10:45:00.002-05:00

metric
by Lea Graham + rob mclennan
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 250 copies.

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset

Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,

or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

These poems were composed March 24 + 26, 2006 in Ottawa at Pubwell’s Restaurant, 96 Preston Street. Some have appeared previously in The Capilano Review’s collaboration issue and online at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Lea Graham’s first book of poems, Hough & Helix & Where & Here & You, You, You, is forthcoming summer of 2011 through No Tell Books. Her poems, collaborations, reviews and articles have been published in or are forthcoming in journals such as Notre Dame Review, American Letters & Commentary, American Poetry Journal and Sentence. Recently, her work was included in the anthology, Gatherings: Fifteen Poems/Poets, through Haybarn Press. She has translations forthcoming in The Alteration of Silence: Recent Chilean Poetry through the University of New Orleans Press. She is currently Assistant Professor of English at Marist College in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee and grew up in Northwest Arkansas. Her first poetry chapbook, Calendar Girls, was published by above/ground press in March 2006.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011), 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010) and wild horses (2010), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Monty Reid’s In the Garden (sept series)

2011-02-25T11:35:00.000-05:00

1. September

All the stems

are hollow.

It’s how the dead

breathe

there

in the anonymous ground

waiting for us

to go away.

In the Garden (sept series)
by Monty Reid
$3

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

in an edition of 250 copies, March 2011

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,

or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Monty Reid is an Ottawa writer. Among his many books are Disappointment Island (Chaudiere), Lost in the owl Woods (BookThug), The Luskville Reductions (Brick) and A Poem that Ends with Murder (Apt 9). In the Garden (sept series) is the first unit of a year-long series of poems that have grown out of his backyard garden [see his January unit here]. Until recently, Monty Reid was Director of Exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of Nature. He now works in the garden full time.

And watch for Monty Reid's lecture on poetry as part of Ottawa's first annual VERSeFest Poetry Festival (with Marcus McCann) on March 11!

above/ground press: Aurian Haller, Brenda Leifso + Teresa Yang reading, March 25‏

2011-02-10T11:35:00.000-05:00

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) & above/ground press present:
three poets

with readings by:

Aurian Haller (Quebec City)
Brenda Leifso
Teresa Yang (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan

Friday, March 25, 2011;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern, 223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Poet and singer-songwriter, Aurian Haller, lives in Quebec City with his wife and two children. He is a National Magazine Award winner for 2007, and co-winner of the 2007 Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Aurian’s work has also received prizes or been nominated for awards such as the Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poem of the Year contest and the CBC Literary awards. His poems have been published in Canada, the U.S., Ireland, and Australia. Aurian’s first book, A Dream of Sulphur, was published in 2000 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Song of the Taxidermist will be published by Goose Lane Editions in the spring of 2011. Much of Aurian’s earlier work drew from his experiences growing up in rural BC. More recently Aurian has focused on the long poem and explored a range of fields such as Taxidermy, Glossogeny (the origin of language), and the work of Canadian visual artists. He is presently researching for The Diggers, his next book of long poems on archaeology in the high Arctic. In addition to poetry, Aurian writes music for and performs with his alternative folk band, The Aurian Haller Band (www.theaurianhallerband.ca). He also works as an arts consultant and music teacher for the Anglophone school board in Quebec City.

Brenda Leifso has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and was the executive editor of PRISM international. Her poetry has appeared in many journals, and has received the Bliss Carman Banff Centre Award for Poetry, as well as awards in the Vancouver International Writers' Festival Writing Contest. Her first poetry collection, Daughters of Men, appeared with Brick Books in 2008. She currently lives in Ottawa.

Chuqiao (Teresa) Yang (pictured) lives somewhere in Ottawa and is currently learning how to learn. she likes reading, songs, and pacing. She has work appearing in recent issues of Grain, ottawater, filling Station and on CBC Saskatchewan.

new from above/ground press: First you know, and then so ordinary, by rob mclennan

2010-11-16T11:43:00.000-05:00

First you know, and then so ordinary,
rob mclennan
$3

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 200 copies for a question/answer seminar for MA students, “Small Presses, Little Magazines, and Creative Writing,” at Carleton University, November 18, 2010, alongside Cameron Anstee; 2011 subscriptions now available;

to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 US) to rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

Some of these poems appeared previously in the summer 2010 issue of MiPOesias, Otoliths, and an above/ground press broadside.

Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of nearly two dozen trade publications in multiple countries, including the poetry collections wild horses (U of Alberta Press, 2010), the forthcoming Glengarry (Talonbooks, spring 2011), and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). He is currently working to complete a third novel, various short stories, and a non-fiction project concerning grieving, loss and family archives.

new from above/ground press: Continua 1-22 by Chris Turnbull;

2010-11-08T19:55:00.000-05:00

Continua 1-22
by Chris Turnbull
$4

published in Ottawa in an edition of 250 copies; 2011 subscriptions now available;

to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 US) to rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

Chris Turnbull lives in Kemptville, Ontario. Recent pieces of continua have been published in ottawater, Convergences, How2, ditch and Dusie. continua is a visual text and multi-voiced performative piece.

Mark McCawley on Amanda Earl

2010-09-10T09:57:00.000-04:00

Mark McCawley reviews Amanda Earl's The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (above/ground press) here;

above/ground press author Pearl Pirie

2010-09-04T16:50:00.000-04:00

on two of the most recent above/ground press offerings;

2011 subscriptions now available!

2010-09-03T16:56:00.000-04:00

I'm now offering my usual annual $40 above/ground press subscription for 2011 (& check out our group on facebook).

YES! I WANT EVERYTHING ABOVE/GROUND PRESS HAS TO OFFER! GIVE ME A 2011 SUBSCRIPTION (STARTING TODAY, THANK GOD) FOR ONLY FORTY (40) DOLLARS (IN THE US, $40 US).

give $40 to rob mclennan, or mail:
c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

regular notices are also sent out through an email list of Ottawa-area literary events. to get on the list, email me at az421@freenet.carleton.ca

a poem from rob mclennan's "Poems for Lainna" reprinted online

2010-09-02T15:25:00.000-04:00

a poem from rob mclennan's Poems for Lainna (above/ground press, 2009) was recently reprinted online as part of Josh Massey's "Blockbuster Poem" curatorial project at The Tyee,

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/09/03/BlockbusterPoem6/

new from above/ground press: Good People, poems by Gwendolyn Guth

2010-09-01T09:32:00.000-04:00

How Armando Became a Ladies Man

He says, “I tell you story.”

Shrugs off grammar-clotted papers to make space

for memory and his hands’ motion. When he saw her

for the first time, he was wrist-high in blood, gore.

The animal death of the shop

enticed her: meat for sale. He knew

how to move his knife. Her eyes flashed jet-dark,

defiant. In a few days, the shining counter dissolved

like an apprentice dream. He wiped

his hands, turned from carcasses to caress

warm perfumed hocks, pink moons.

His young self fascinates him. Two years

living off the avails of a breathtaking hooker.

Imagine him then, pale ovo, thin asperagus,

dressing his body in expensive suits, his hair

in a pouffe. Afternoons sipping port,

his whore-lover having slept off

the night’s work. What kind of man, what kind

of life, pleaded his mother. Two years

of lacrimosa, invocations to the Madonna.

Two heavy years. Hands move swiftly

over his face to check an expression.

He says, “I had to think future.”

Good People, poems by Gwendolyn Guth
$4

published in an edition of 200 copies, and launched as part of the above/ground press 17th anniversary reading/party, September 3, at the Carleton Tavern;

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2 US) to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Gwendolyn Guth, mother of three active boys, notes that super mom and super model have far less in common than their assonance would suggest. She has the enviable privilege of talking about literature for a living, at Heritage College in Gatineau. She is a long-time supporter of and participant in Ottawa literary ventures, including Bywords, above/ground, Ottawater, yawp, Friday Circle, Rideau Review, etc. Her chapbook, Good People, anticipates her first trade book, due any year now and fiercely successful in her dreams. She craves inner peace but settles for outer calm.

new from above/ground press: Stephen Brockwell's Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment)

2010-08-31T18:08:00.000-04:00

From Metonymies: Poems by Objects Owned by Illustrious People

Stephen Harper’s Shoes

Long days holding up the country,

short nights breathing fresh air.

Each morning, a minion polishes away

a day’s accumulated scuffs

with matt black petroleum paste.

My burnished upper reflects the blurred image

of the face above but does not shine.

My heel grinds even the iridescent

beetle, silent, powerless, beautiful,

Into the Langevin asphalt. My steel

shank would never pass security

if the face did not control it personally.

The feet have no particular smell,

like winter air or snow. I complain

of the unguents, salves and balms, reeking of sulphur

that, despite all evidence to the contrary, will not

relieve the cracked and callused heels.

Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment)
by Stephen Brockwell
$4

published in Ottawa in an edition of 200 copies, and launched as part of the above/ground press 17th anniversary reading/party, September 3rd, at the Carleton Tavern;

to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 US) to rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

Stephen Brockwell's most recent book is The Real Made Up (Toronto: ECW Press, 2007). The first installment of his Impossible Books project was delivered at the Olive Reading Series in December 2007. Brockwell is trying to find a way to run a small IT company and write poems without going completely mad. Stephen recently moved to the charming Ottawa neighbourhood of Lindenlea just north of Beechwood Avenue.

Max Middle's "A Creation Song" (above/ground press) reprinted online;

2010-07-30T12:43:00.000-04:00

long out of print, Ottawa poet Max Middle's first above/ground press chapbook, A Creation Song (above/ground press, 2004) reprinted online by The Tyee;

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2010/07/30/BlockbusterPoem1/

are his two other above/ground press publications still available? possibly,

new from above/ground press: rob mclennan’s 16 Yonge

2010-07-28T13:13:00.000-04:00

*

point on a point; discuss,

map of scatter, eyes
broadsheet about,

Toronto Star, the Hemingway in you
describes,

pinwheels, skipper, sailing ships

talk like a pirate day,
your birthday,

felt no sun,

*

Yonge + Queen’s Quay govern,
nothing else disturbs,

distillery, grandstand
, emphasis against

the year has been, unequal

to place facts squared
or squarely, in a book

shape of a (shifting) harbour,

16 Yonge
by rob mclennan
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in an edition of 200 copies, August 2010
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2) c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections Glengarry (2011), wild horses (2010) and kate street (2010) and a second novel, missing persons (2009), An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and expects to spend much of the next year in Toronto. He regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Marilyn Irwin’s for when you pick daisies

2010-07-27T20:38:00.000-04:00

humidex

i am drunk off
your scent steam
lingers

august mist
bee sting
bug itch

sparks stream from cigarettes
casualties of war
fuse into fire escape

shift of sand sift

feather breath
kiss whispers
expose

soap scum scars
freckles there
that curve like pisces

for when you pick daisies
Marilyn Irwin
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 200 copies, July 2010
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2) c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7

Originally published in a private edition by the author in an edition of 22 copies for a night above/ground poetry reading (with poets Cameron Anstee and Marcus McCann), lovingly hosted by rob mclennan at the Carleton Tavern, Ottawa, Ontario on July 16, 2010. A recent graduate of the Winter 2010 edition of rob mclennan’s seasonal poetry workshops and forthcoming graduate of Algonquin’s Creative Writing program, Marilyn Irwin can be seen (mostly) and heard (less) in and around the multi-faceted poetry scene of Ottawa.

some older, out-of-print items

2010-04-20T10:39:00.001-04:00

now available, by George Bowering, Michael Holmes, John Barton, Barry McKinnon, etc;

rob mclennan featured

2010-04-02T10:14:00.001-04:00

in the Globe & Mail book blog, by Judith Fitzgerald; the beginning of a month of features, curated by rob mclennan

Pearl Pirie

2010-03-23T11:48:00.000-04:00

on Ken Norris' Green Wind;

new from above/ground press:

2010-03-14T13:07:00.000-04:00

Frank St.

A sequence of poems by Cameron Anstee

$4

your fingers

and where they make familiar

and this room makes more sense

you arranged the furniture

while I picked up boxes

the things we carried here

and their shapes from light

our pillows match your birthmark

the ivy, and the umbrella, and the cactus

from Champagne

yes, we’ve kept these plants alive

and some days we remember

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 200 copies, March 2010; a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy (2010 subscriptions still available); to order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, $2) c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7

Cameron Anstee lives in Ottawa ON, where he runs Apt. 9 Press.

new from above/ground press: A history of button collecting Helen Hajnoczky

2010-03-12T11:50:00.000-05:00

A history of button collecting

Helen Hajnoczky

Helen Hajnoczky recently completed her BA Honours in English and creative writing from the University of Calgary, where her research focused on feminist avant-garde poetics. Her work has appeared in Nod, fillingStation, Rampike, and Matrix magazines, as well as in a variety of chapbooks. She is the current poetry editor of fillingStation magazine. Her first book of poetry, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, is forthcoming from Snare Books.

new from above/ground press: Some Forty by rob mclennan

2010-03-11T12:36:00.000-05:00

Some Forty

by rob mclennan

$3

published in Ottawa by above/ground press in an edition of 200 copies, mid-March 2010 for distribution during celebrations of the author’s fortieth birthday

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy (2010 subscriptions still available)

write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7, or check out rob_mclennan@hotmail.com or abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of some twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections wild horses (University of Alberta Press), kate street (Moira), and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and currently divides his time between Ottawa and Toronto. He regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com.

new from above/ground press: Green Wind, by Ken Norris

2010-03-10T09:19:00.000-05:00

Green Wind
by Ken Norris
$5

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He emigrated to Montreal in the mid-1970s, and became a Canadian citizen in 1985. He currently teaches Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maine.

new from above/ground press: apartments, section three by Aaron Tucker

2010-03-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

apartments, section three
Aaron Tucker
$3

Aaron Tucker's work has appeared in literary journals across Canada including Rampike and Descant. He is currently an Executive member of the Scream Literary Festival and regular book reviewer at http://www.agorereview.ca/, a website he also edits. He is currently living and teaching in Toronto. An earlier part of this same manuscript appeared as a chapbook by The Emergency Response Unit in 2009.