Douglas Barbour (1940-2021)

Edmonton poet, editor, publisher, critic and occasional above/ground press author Douglas Barbour has died, after an extended illness [see my full obituary for him, posted yesterday, here]. Barbour appeared in more than a couple of above/ground press publications over the years, including as the chapbook Love’s Fragmented Narrative (2005), and Wednesdays’ (2008), produced as part of the online (since disappeared from the internet) “ALBERTA SERIES,” as well as an issue of STANZAS magazine (issue #30, 2002), which featured the first three sections of his collaborative “Continuations,” with Sheila E. Murphy. He was talented, beloved and kind. He shall be missed.

“poem” broadside #354 : “JD2458624,” by Gil McElroy

 

 

 

I did,
to hear, in air-
conditioned worrying, staying
away from
the amphetamines & ideas
of my passage. What
of building a mid-
sentence apology? What
of it? My
short, un-
ruly shirt saturated
in that Bolivian
summer, until
blood & flesh excluded
me.

Ah, well. I’ll
mouth their
intents, their
funerals, even
their eyes.

There. There’s
my world, which
is harder.

JD2458624
by Gil McElroy
September 2021
above/ground press broadside #354

Gil McElroy is a poet currently living in Colborne, Ontario. His most recent book is Long Division (University of Calgary Press, 2020). He has published eight chapbooks through above/ground press, most recently Some Julian Days: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2019).

Scott Bryson reviews James Hawes' The Hotdog Variations (2021) in Broken Pencil

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of James Hawes' The Hotdog Variations (2021) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

The Hotdog Variations : Chapbook, James Hawes, 14 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.com, $4

Never has “a hotdog with mustard & relish” been so elevated. This humble phrase constitutes the entirety of James Hawes’ chapbook. Poem after poem is built by rearranging — and using all of — the 24 characters of that dog description. Each line and stanza is a jumble of the letters in “a hotdog with mustard & relish.”

For some reason, the word “with” is never altered, always appearing as is. The remaining text shifts into a mix of non-sense — such as “do thog & rast / umd with is a rhel” — as well as strange but sensible verse: “a slide with & through stardom.” Some of these poems, viewed individually, evoke tangible feelings regardless of one’s ability to understand the content. When the reassembled words in a poem are all curt, for example (that done on purpose by Hawes, one would assume), they speak with anger or disgust.

Nearly more interesting than these poems is imagining Hawes’ process. Why a hotdog? Did he use some sort of anagram generator or painstakingly rearrange these letters from scratch? Do the seemingly nonsensical lines make sense to him, in some way? Why no ketchup?

some author activity: Ross, Reid, Tate, Archer, Gunnars, Jirgens, Norris + Young,

Stuart Ross is a finalist for the 4th James Tate International Poetry Prize, for his full-length manuscript, "Cringe System"; Monty Reid is interviewed over at Train : a poetry journal; Bronwen Tate now has a newsletter you can sign up for; Sacha Archer has posted "an improvisation by Sacha Archer played on a broken stand-up piano that was found in a large dumpster in the downtown of Peterborough, Ontario c. 2007" via YouTube; and above/ground press authors Ken Norris, Karl Jirgens, Geoffrey Young and Kristjana Gunnars, among others, have new work in the latest issue of mouse eggs.

new from above/ground press: ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH, by Franklin Bruno

ALL THAT IS SOLID MELTS IN YOUR MOUTH
Franklin Bruno
$5

SOFT CRACK STAGE


215˚F

Dripping through a bed of gypsum,
the halo on the Cave of Antiparos
gives information, not equivalence.
We commonly speak of all sorts of things
as being harder or softer than others:
a servantless house, the busiest friends,
tinted coconut, a cursor fitted
with a screw lock.  A scissors dipped
in butter determines the force
at which the tip destroys the couverture,
the "Z"-shaped dab atop the opera cream.
After hours of exertion I found myself
gloved to the elbows in brown, sticky goo.

I blamed it on the fact that I couldn't read French.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Franklin Bruno is the author of The Accordion Repertoire (poetry, Edge Books), the chapbooks MF/MA (Seeing Eye) and Policy Instrument (Lame House), and Armed Forces (criticism, in Continuum/Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series). He has released 20 albums of original songs as one-third of Nothing Painted Blue, under his own name, and (currently) as frontman of The Human Hearts. Raised in Southern California’s Inland Empire, he now lives and writes in Jackson Heights, Queens.

This is Bruno’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after Clinging & Grasping (2021).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: SAYING “BOY” IN A WILDERNESS OF SONG, by Gary Barwin

SAYING “BOY” IN A WILDERNESS OF SONG
Gary Barwin
$5

Afterboy

Saying “Boy” in a Wilderness of Song was written sometime in the 1980s (I was in my 20s) and was unearthed as part of a project with Alessandro Porco of assembling a collection of my selected short fiction. Alex did amazing work editing my selected poems and since we both bought ourselves yachts with the spoils of that project, we’re mad keen to create another one. This time we’re getting matching castles. Really, it is a remarkable experience revisiting past work, both published and unpublished (like this story, until now) noticing the development of one’s work and the perennial themes and techniques, if only in nascent form, not to mention an entire history of personal computing technology. This story was printed on a dot matrix printer on an Atari 520ST.

Half Monty Python and half postcolonial hijinks, it satirizes a number of different cliches, tropes and genres in its exploration of tone and convention. For example, its parody of the Eurocentric exoticism of Tarzan. I’m delighted to have rescued this story from the bottom of a water-stained banker’s box which moved with me through many different basement storage situations and floods. I’m quite charmed by its soggy, youthful exuberance.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the twelfth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
September 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, musician, and multidisciplinary artist and has published 25 books of fiction, poetry and numerous chapbooks. His latest books include For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco, Ampers&thropocene (visuals) and a new novel, Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy. His albums are available at https://garybarwin.bandcamp.com/ His latest chapbook is Punctum, (Gap Riot Press) a collaboration with Dona Mayoora. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario and at garybarwin.com

This is Barwins’s seventh above/ground press chapbook, after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001), Seedpod, Microfiche (2013) and Dust of the Wren: poems and translations (2019), and the collaborative PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Alice Burdick; 2018), gravitynipplemilk anthroposcenesters (with Tom Prime; 2018) and SOME LEAVES (with rob mclennan; 2020).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Lantern Review includes Monica Mody's Ordinary Annals (2021) in An Asian American Poetry Companion: Fresh Books for Fall 2021

Lantern Review was good enough to include Monica Mody's above/ground press chapbook debut, Ordinary Annals (August, 2021), in their list of "An Asian American Poetry Companion: Fresh Books for Fall 2021." Thanks so much! As they write to introduce the post: "Even we find ourselves at the close of another challenging summer, Asian American voices continue to shine in print. Earlier this year, we celebrated the proliferation of spring Asian American poetry releases. Today, we’re excited to highlight just a small portion of the new and forthcoming works coming out of the AsAm poetry community this fall." Be sure to check out their full list! As they wrote of Mody's chapbook:

Monica Mody, Ordinary Annals (above/ground, August 2021)

Contributor (and past staff writer) Monica Mody’s newest chapbook, written over the course of the last year, reflects on the tumultuous events of 2020 and 2021 as the poet herself contended with the US’s notoriously thorny visa system. In her signature resonant and deeply grounded poetic style, Mody examines the limits of the body in all its many senses—as creative work, as organism, as site of protest, as political subject, as resident (of community, of nation, of habitat, of ecosystem, of Earth)—resulting in a prescient work that, in the poet’s own words, “falter(s) towards a ripple, a ground of healing.” A beautiful artifact of these difficult times, this lovely little handmade chap is not one to miss.