above/ground press at IFOA: George Elliot Clarke, Peter Norman + Christine McNair,

Okay, so perhaps that's a bit of a stretch, but three authors previously published by above/ground press are featuring in Toronto as part of the 34th annual International Festival of Authors (October 24-November 3, 2013; Toronto): Peter Norman at the Poet Summit on October 26, as well as at a second event the same day; George Elliott Clarke on November 1 and again on November 2; and Christine McNair at the Poet Summit on October 26 and again on October 27. I'll be accompanying the thirty-seven-week-pregnant McNair to our first ever IFOA. Looking forward to it!

Ryan Pratt reviews Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013)

Our pal Ryan Pratt was good enough to review Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks, Ryan! See the original review here.

some author activity: Thomas, Martin, beaulieu, Reid, Young + mclennan

[photo of how we would have preferred to move into the new house] Hugh Thomas has a new poem posted as part of the dusie "Tuesday Poem" series; Camille Martin reviews The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry (University of California Press, 2009), edited by Mark Weiss, over at her blog, and is interviewed by Katie Rosenthal over at Stated Magazine; derek beaulieu gives "advice to aspiring poets" through a q+a with Gauntlet; Monty Reid, Deanna Young and rob mclennan read at the Ottawa Public Library on October 7 with David Groulx, Rhonda Douglas and Chris Jennings, and mclennan also conducts a poetry workshop (pre-registration required) on October 17; and rob mclennan has quite the author page (as do others, I'm sure) over at filling Station magazine.

new from above/ground press: Rituals, by Rae Armantrout

Rituals
Rae Armantrout
$4

RITUALS


    1

In this now ancient ritual
a succession of young women

are saucy,

which is to say they name
common objects and relations

as if they had mastered them
but shouldn’t.

Each receives false approbation.


     2

As Xmas sells winter
to its prisoners.

As warmth
feels like love;

and love is warmth
only more capricious.

Fingers uncurl.

Organs expand
and rise

toward a surface
that must never

be broken.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Just Saying, Rae Armantrout’s most recent book of poems, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2013. Versed (Wesleyan, 2009) received the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was also 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 Money Shot (Wesleyan, 2011), 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 The Best of the Best American Poetry: 1988-2012 (2013), The Norton Anthology of Postmodern American Poetry (2013), The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine (Chicago, 2012), American Hybrid (Norton, 2009), American Women Poets in the 21 Century: Where Language Meets the Lyric Traditionist (Wesleyan, 2002), The Oxford Book of American Poetry (Oxford, 2006) and The Best American Poetry of 1988, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2011 and 2012. 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.”

This is Armantrout’s second above/ground press publication, after the chapbook Custom (2012).

[Rae Armantrout reads in Ottawa on October 3, 2013 with Ron Silliman, as part of the A B Series]

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

The Factory Reading Series presents: a VERSeFest fundraiser; lectures/talks by Earl, Hancock + O'Meara

The Factory Reading Series presents:

A VERSeFest Fundraiser : with lectures/talks on writing by

Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
Brecken Hancock (Ottawa)
+ David O'Meara (Ottawa)

as a fundraiser for Ottawa’s fourth annual VERSeFest Poetry Festival, March 2014

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, November 21, 2013
8$ door cover
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Raw Sugar Cafe, 692 Somerset St W  Ottawa, ON

Amanda Earl is a poet, publisher and pornographer. She's the editor of Bywords.ca & the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. In 2012/2013 her poetry has appeared locally in the Peter F. Yacht Club, & In/Words Magazine (as well as three chapbooks with above/ground press) & in literary magazines in Windsor, Calgary, Toronto, the UK, France, the USA and Australia. For more info, please visit amandaearl.com or connect with Amanda on Twitter @KikiFolle.

Brecken Hancock’s [pictured] poetry, essays, interviews, and reviews have appeared in Riddle Fence, Event, CV2, Grain, and Studies in Canadian Literature. She is Reviews Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and Interviews Editor for Canadian Women in the Literary Arts. The Art of Plumbing, her most recent chapbook, is out with above/ground press and her first full-length manuscript of poems, Broom Broom, is forthcoming with Coach House Books. She lives and walks dogs in Ottawa.

David O'Meara lives in Ottawa, Ontario. He is the author of three collections of poetry, including most recently A Pretty Sight (Coach House Books, 2013), and a play, Disaster, nominated for four Rideau Awards. His poetry has been shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the ReLit Award, the Trillium Book Award, a National Magazine Award, and he has won the Archibald Lampman Award twice. He is the director of the Plan 99 Reading Series, Artistic Director of VERSeFest (www.versefest.ca) and was the Canadian judge for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize.

Most of the talks in this series subsequently appear online in seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, including previous talks by Monty Reid, Marcus McCann, Barry McKinnon, Cameron Anstee, Pearl Pirie, Gil McElroy and Nicole Markotić.

above/ground press (today!) at word on the street: toronto,

During our recent move I unearthed an absolute ton of above/ground press "poem" broadsheets, and decided they should be distributed! If you make your way to The League of Canadian Poets booth at this year's WOTS today in Toronto, be sure to pick one up! I've sent along copies of numerous broadsheets from over the past decade or so, including poems by Steven Heighton, Stuart Ross, Max Middle, Shawna McCabe, Fred Wah, Gregory Betts, Sarah Mangold, Nathaniel G. Moore, A.J. Levin, Kristina Drake, William Hawkins, Nathanael, Karen Clavelle, Peter Norman, Gwendolyn Guth and Gary Barwin, among others. Go pick up copies! And don't forget, 2014 subscriptions are now available!

some author activity: Barwin, Hancock, McNair, Ladouceur + Fisher Small Press Fair: a report,

Gary Barwin writes on the work of Nico Vassilakis over at Jacket2; Brecken Hancock features at In/Word's The Reading Series in Ottawa on September 25 (Clocktower Pub, 575 Bank Street, 9pm); Christine McNair and Ben Ladouceur get mentions over at the Toronto Book Dump; and Ryan Pratt was good enough to mention above/ground press (among other presses, such as BookThug) in the report he posted over at his blog on the Fisher Small Press Fair we recently participated in at the University of Toronto.