above/ground press at Meet the Presses' 2014 Indie Market!

Saturday, November 22, 11:30 am – 5 pm

The Tranzac Club, Toronto

The Meet the Presses collective presents the 2014 Indie Literary Market, where handpicked literary presses and magazines stand behind their work!

The Market will also feature the announcement of the winner of the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award! See the shortlist for 2014 here.


Participating publishers and mags tentatively include:
above/ground press (Ottawa) • Mansfield Press (Toronto) • Proper Tales Press (Cobourg) • Pedlar Press (St. John’s) • Rampike (Windsor) • Apt. 9 Press (Ottawa) • Porcupine’s Quill (Erin) • Cough (Toronto) • Baseline Press (London) • Serif of Nottingham (Hamilton) • Frog Hollow (Victoria) • Coach House Books (Toronto) • Laurel Reed Books (Mt. Pleasant) • Gesture Press (Toronto) • Thee Hellbox Press (Kingston) • BookThug (Toronto) • Taddle Creek  (Toronto) • Sunnyoutside Press (Buffalo) • Little Brother Magazine (Toronto) • Biblioasis (Windsor) • Wolsak and Wynn (Hamilton) • Underwhich Editions (Toronto) • Imago/Red Iron (Toronto) • Junction Books (Toronto) • Phafours (Ottawa) • words(on)pages (Toronto) • OutWrites (Toronto)

Facebook event page here.

Scott Bryson reviews Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) in Broken Pencil #65

Scott Bryson was good enough to review Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) (both of which are still available) in Broken Pencil #65. Thanks, Scott!

This is actually the second review of After Swann, after Ryan Pratt was good enough to review such, and the third for Otherwise Smooth, following reviews by Ryan Pratt and Pearl Pirie.

We might not agree with Bryson's take on these works (apparently he's never heard of "constraint-driven poetry" before), but very much appreciate his attention. But the poetry chapbook reviews in Broken Pencil always make me wonder: if the reviewers don't seem to really understand poetry at all (there seems a tone of dismissal in much of Bryson's comments on the work in these chapbooks), why do they bother to write reviews?

After Swann
Marthe Reed

The words and phrases that constitute this series of poems were culled and collaged from Swann's Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time series of novels. Repurposing text from what Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "one of the supreme achievements of modern fiction," is never a bad way to start a poetry collection.
    The way Marthe Reed -- New York resident and chapbook publisher -- uses that text, however, may appear peculiar at first glance. She makes no attempt to vary the style of the verse she presents in After Swann; each entry consists of 10-12 three-line stanzas, and lines rarely go on for more than four words. These restrictions are more an indication of a singular vision, than a lack of creativity; she refers to her verse as "constraint-driven poetry" -- a style in which the author voluntarily applies limitations or rules, in an effort to spark inspiration.
    As a result of the succinct nature of Reed's lines, the segments of an individual poem never completely coalesce into a definable event. From time to time, you're awarded a brief flash of comprehension. A vague scene forms, then quickly fades into the next: "she suggested / my dress wasn't ready / some excuse // charming / she would jump in / and hold him in her arms." After Swann, in this way, pays homage to a crucial element of Proust's Swann's Way: involuntary memory -- when a particular cue evokes an unexpected recollection of a past event.
    A decent chunk of this, thematically, appears to deal with femininity and the tribulations and desires at play in the lives of women, 100 (or more) years ago. Those who've read Swann's Way will likely see more substance in this than those who haven't


Otherwise Smooth
Rosmarie Waldrop

The tone of a written work has likely never been set as quickly as it is in the first sentence of this collection: "How daily my life."
    Otherwise Smooth, an assemblage of nine prose fragments, rarely strays from that initial promise of despondency. There are tangible losses -- "a sister's death, a friend's," and the resulting funerals -- but Rosmarie Waldrop is more interested in the passing of what could be called the now-component of time, or what she describes as "the immediate between the ticks of the watch." Events and chances constantly evade her grasp; everything is instantly history: "A cosmic storm slips between my fingers... only once it's past I latch on."
    Language and cognition are to blame for the loss of immediate perception, Waldrop suggests: "Only once we've said 'I' with all that follows do we become aware of pure experience... But then it's already over... pronouns do not refer to anything in space and time except the utterance that contains them." This clearly isn't cheery material, but a nugget of hope does creep in to lighten the closing paragraph: "And yet. Already so many pear trees blossom."
    Otherwise Smooth reads as a complete cycle, with no loose ends, and Waldrop stays loyal to her theme throughout. It tends to wallow into heady territory, but always manages a tactful balance between poetic language and comprehensibility.

some author activity: Smith, Anstee, Hancock, Abel, McNair + mclennan,

Jessica Smith answers the "My Writing Process: Blog Tour" questions over at her blog, as does Cameron Anstee, over at his; Brecken Hancock gets interviewed over at Maisonneuve, and shares "Some thoughts on reading 'An Interview with Larissa Lai'" over at CWILA: Jordan Abel is interviewed over at Event magazine; and part of the work-in-progress collaboration between Christine McNair and rob mclennan appears up at BALDHIP magazine.

new from above/ground press: Cursed Objects, by Jason Christie

Cursed Objects
Jason Christie
$4

Bell, book and candle

ringing or unrung
a bell announces
the wilderness

rhythmic unbounding
of tone to source
an unhinged spillage
echoing without
what sounded deep
from within

paging or unpaged
a book announces
an interiority

covers flung askance
as though darkness
itself acted a doorway
as if patience guaranteed
a solipsistic frame
of mind or beams and lintel
as if waiting accrued pages
dust gathering time
with each mote latching
one second to the next

waxing or waning
a candle announces
darkness, only darkness

closed book, silent bell
unlit candle and doorway
silent page, muted metal
wax with no wick and
waste accumulates
under the nails
between the teeth
waiting until the flash
of light ignites each
page, melts wax, sets
a vacuum to ringing

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Author’s Note:
The poems in Cursed Objects take our involvement with objects across the line of usability into a realm where objects reach back and affect us in ways we can neither foresee nor control. These objects are cursed in that they deviate from the use we prescribed for them and have achieved an uncomfortable new role, namely that of reflecting our twisted sense of dominion.

Jason Christie is the author of i Robot, Canada Post, and Unknown Actor. His chapbook, Government, published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Jason lives in Ottawa with his wife and their one-year old son.

This is Jason Christie’s third above/ground press chapbook, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004) and Government (2013).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: today’s woods, by Pearl Pirie

today’s woods
Pearl Pirie
$3

the male is usually bigger with a head proportionally smaller.
females grizzlies usually have a shorter "wheel base”

in the mating season, May and June, the males (boars) often walk
with their hind legs farther apart than normal, a bow-legged sway

while the females (sows) are more likely riverside digging clams.
Robert Southey’s three bears were originally bachelors

    a Little, Small, Wee Bear,
    a Middle-sized Bear,
    and a Great, Huge Bear

invaded by a cussing old trespassing vagrant woman.
before that, it was Eleanor Mure’s tale of 3 friendly bears

and an invading vixen, meaning mea vulpes, not woman.
18 years after her published 1831 tale—

    about which Robert said
    he’s been telling it since 1813
    and his uncle told it to him,

but who can tell once the fairies have taken a tale for their uses—
the fox lost its tail and silver hair was shed to reveal a little girl.

since then the fox has a conservation status of safe but a sub-species
of bear has gone extinct. and at risk. iterations ran with sis & bro bear

and little bear friend then parents and boy bear. in 1918
Flora Annie Steel dubbed the child something that stuck: Goldilocks

a feminization of history: the baby bear became a girl too.
and that is where I entered the tale. proto-grrrl era.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Pearl Pirie’s next collection, Pet Radish, Shrunken is with BookThug, Spring 2015. Host of Literary Landscape on CKCUfm.com, she has organized Ottawa’s Tree Seed Workshops since 2009 and gives workshops and talks on poetry for various organizations. She blogs and photographs Ottawa’s rich, amazing literary scene. www.pearlpirie.com

This is Pearl Pirie’s fifth above/ground press publication and third chapbook, after vertigoheel for the dilly (2014) and oath in the boathouse (2008).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin, by Gregory Betts

Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin
Gregory Betts
$3

One

one can be generous, one can give things to people, and sometimes this is called teaching

turn the boys over is one way of teaching

knowledge is stolen

I assassinate You

I Hassan-i-Sabbah

nothing is true everything is permitted
permitted is true nothing is everything
nothing is permitted everything is true
permitted is true everything is nothing
nothing is true permitted is everything
permitted is everything true is nothing
nothing is permitted true is everything
permitted true is everything is nothing
nothing everything is is permitted true
nothing everything is true is permitted

knowledge is stolen

the desert is stolen

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gregory Betts is a poet-professor in St. Catharines, Ontario. His most recent book is Boycott (Make Now Books), available through spdbooks.org.

This is Gregory Betts’s third above/ground press chapbook, after curse of canada (2008) and The Cult of David Thompson (2005).

Produced in part for the Avant Canada: Artists, Prophets, Revolutionaries conference in St. Catharines, Ontario, November 5-7, 2014. avantcanada.ca

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Robinson, Earl, Armantrout, McNair + beaulieu,

Elizabeth Robinson responds (as do many others) to a request to reflect on "The Work of Poetry" for the 25th issue of Free Verse: A Journal of Contemporary Poetry and Poetics; Amanda Earl has a new visual poem up at Truck: a small article on Rae Armantrout's poetry appears in The Portland Mercury; there is now a video online of Christine McNair's reading in Vancouver as part of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series Third Anniversary Celebration, May 24, 2013; and Vancouver poet Kevin Spenst's performance of derek beaulieu visual poetry suite "quartet for 6 voices" is now up at soundcloud, as is Spenst's nephew's sound response "quartet for kevin."