new from above/ground press: drop, by Billy Mavreas

drop
Billy Mavreas
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Billy Mavreas (he/him) is an interdisciplinary artist working with text, image, found materials.

This is Billy Mavreas’ third above/ground press title, after A MERCY OF SIGNS (2018) and B V A (2019).

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Clayton, Hunter, Kaplan, Boyle + mclennan,

Conyer Clayton has new work in Mineral Lit Mag; Carrie Hunter has new work up at The Pi Review; forthcoming above/ground press author Genevieve Kaplan has a new essay in the "Talking Poetics" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Frances Boyle has some new work up at Mineral Lit; and rob mclennan has new work up at The Pi Review.

new from above/ground press: Dang Me, by ryan fitzpatrick

Dang Me
ryan fitzpatrick
$5

Shouldn’t We Liquidate Poetics?

What do I do when someone holds up a mirror
and it’s just a picture of Irving Layton wearing
sunglasses stolen from the “Deal With It” dog?

It’s Brechtian, you know, the way the sun careens
off the glass enclosures of this Toronto tech
hub directly off this screen and into my eyes.

Everywhere I look, it’s a funhouse where light
serializes experience into a million sources
and I’m left to fumble with the cables behind.

But that’s a metaphor, isn’t it, and here I am
with my reflection. No, what I mean is I’m
here reflecting as if my life depended on it.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover illustration by Rose McLennan

ryan fitzpatrick is the author of two books and fifteen chapbooks, including Fortified Castles (Talon, 2014) and Fake Math (Snare/Invisible, 2007). Right now, he lives in Toronto/Tkaronto, but might be between cities soon.

This is fitzpatrick’s fourth above/ground press title, after STANZAS #25 (“further revisions,” July 2001), Adolesce (2005) and dealingwithit.gif (2015).

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: WHERE FORTH ART THOUGH, by S. Burgoyne and S. Burgoyne

WHERE FORTH ART THOUGH
S. Burgoyne and S. Burgoyne
$5

UNSHARED CUSTODY

The market lemons were too perfect. Almost plastic surge. Your latest urge to go the distance was far too much effort. I couldn't know if I'd stay the same, or if I'd hold it all for you.

Don't forget it, sweetchops.

You feel the distance and yet you know the squids still approach nightly. How was I to know that you can't always have the last peanut?

She was my little peanut. And then your annoying photos from Germany. Why can't I find peace? What is the last time you ever did?

Jump. It's never too high or too scary when
you're not alone.

*

S. Burgoyne and S. Burgoyne, mother and daughter, have been flouting their attempted mastery of all the proper auxiliary verbs and English nouns since S. Burgoyne (the elder) imbued her offspring toward lexicography on many long road trips across our great nation where said offspring were held captive by infant carseats and seatbelts in the enclosed space of the vehicle, unable to escape this attempt to mould them into vocabularists.  Choosing to bypass such infantile games as “Count the Cows” as they traversed the miles, S.Burgoyne (the elder) incorporated light-hearted merriment into a game she invented and creatively entitled “Dictionary” utilizing an approximately 30 pound tome which also served as a booster seat or step stool for her wee children.  This raucous car game involved compelling her young daughters (one a mere babe) into the realm of polysyllabism by reading the dictionary aloud to them and providing examples of usage for future reference (eg. “I was pleased to see your post-jentacular effort to brush your teeth this morning although that tittynope of Cheerios did not go unnoticed on your plate, Sweetie!” or “I expect full impignoration to participate in this car game - ignore those bovines!”  S. Burgoyne, (the elder) was apparently successful in inspiring S.Burgoyne (the second) to follow her bibliophilic tendencies for as it turned out, S. Burgoyne (the second) felt loathe to yield her future to any other professional realm than that of logophile. She thus followed her destiny to become, none other than a delightful amalgam of poetess, librettist, dramaturgist and rhapsodist - which one can easily discern from her manner of speech and the unique intonations with which she speaks, constantly uttering a veritable plethora of gymnastic linguistic phraseologies to the delight of all her compatriats.

Over the years, S. Burgoyne and S. Burgoyne have fully indulged their passionate lingoisms and have spewed forth countless written and spoken words, even to the point of inventing an unusual S.Burgoyne-esque vernacular (perhaps a podcast will be forthcoming - stay tuned!) Although they each reside across a vast geographic expanse, they always manage to indulge their passion for repartee and serendipitously string together nonsensical narratives through wordplay and occasional mild tipsyness (which thereby absolves them of any serious literary accountability or subjectivity to literary criticism of any kind).  And so therefore, most capital and esteemed captives, this is a rare exposure of meaningful, unforgettable and riveting drivel submitted in the spirit of extreme kakorrhaphiophobia.  Please do not hold them responsible for surrendering the time you are about to spend pondering this ludicrous collection.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Susan Burgoyne has created many extensive publications in her mind over the years. This is her first publication on paper.

Sarah Burgoyne’s first collection Saint Twin (Mansfield Press: 2016) was nominated for the A.M. Klein prize. Her second manuscript is coming out with Coach House Press in 2021.

This is Sarah Burgoyne’s third above/ground press title, after A Precarious Life on the Sea (2016) and TENTACULUM SONNETS (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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Betts, Collis, Mohammadi, Kaplan + Tierney,

Gregory Betts has some new work up at The Pi Review, as does Stephen Collis; Khashayar Mohammadi has new poems up at Watch Your Head; Point Loma Nazarene University is holding their 22nd annual Poetry Day on September 24, 2020, featuring afternoon and evening events with forthcoming above/ground press author Genevieve Kaplan; and Orchid Tierney is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Scott Bryson reviews rob mclennan’s Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU (2020) in Broken Pencil #88

Scott Bryson was good enough to provide the first review of rob mclennan’s Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU (2020) over at Broken Pencil (although he seems not to have actually enjoyed the experience). Thanks so much!

A recent TVO documentary, Tripping the Rideau Canal, is a four-hour, real-time voyage down 27 kilometres of the titular waterway, with historical factoids sprinkled throughout. The vicarious ride is not dissimilar to enjoying a batch of rob mclennan’s poetry – but not because reading his chapbooks feel like four hours.

            The poems in this book were produced for various outlets over the years, compiled here, presumably, for the Lunch Poems reading series at SFU in Vancouver. But they don’t drift too far apart from each other, all tethered to landscape. Location is the paramount concern and there are few people present. “This human activity” is mentioned only distantly, as if it were a foreign concept.

            The phrases in the poems are typically brief and enigmatic. In the collection’s opening poem, mclennan lays out an apt warning (and perhaps a challenge) prefacing the surprising work of inspecting one’s environment: “To break this open, / is to understand the weather.”

new from above/ground press: BLINDSIGHT, by Paul Perry

Blindsight
Paul Perry
$5

Love is a Decision


I was determined not
to be tricked into

using words.

He hit me:
what do I feel?

I was about to say pain,
but said nothingness.

The days went on.
I avoided the others,
stopped laughing.

At times, it drove me crazy
rattling in my brain
not allowed to think

of anything else.

I jump up and throw it out.

Other times,
I go down.
Down.
Down with it,
down beneath words

where my breath is gentle.

It’s like looking up
through a lake
and the surface is a sentence -


what it reads is nothingness.

What it says is love.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Paul Perry is the author of 5 full length collections of poetry including Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems. A recent recipient of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, he is also a novelist. He directs the Creative Writing Programme at UCD in Dublin, Ireland.

This is Perry’s second above/ground press chapbook, after The Ghosts of Barnacullia (2019).

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com