Friday, April 26, 2024

new from above/ground press: Process, by Julia Polyck-O’Neill

Process
Julia Polyck-O’Neill
$5

Lisa, Lisa
 
velvet
ribbons      
& tender buttonhole

de-influence
me sip
air

powder’s gentlest
breaths its rare
sapidity

surface the
idle she-
capital

the pungency
of new
bloom

the
rose
bud

dew
& warm
air
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Julia Polyck-O’Neill (they/she) is an artist, curator, critic, poet, and writer. They are currently the Michael Ridley Postdoctoral Fellow in Digital Humanities at the University of Guelph and a former SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at York University’s Sensorium Centre for Digital Arts and Technology. Starting in July 2024, they will be an Assistant Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Memorial University in Newfoundland. Her research explores feminist, digital approaches to interdisciplinary artists’ archives and intersections between archives and creative praxis. Her publications appear in Amodern, Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft (The Journal for Aesthetics and General Art History), English Studies in Canada, BC Studies, Canadian Literature, and other places.

This is Polyck-O’Neill’s fourth above/ground press title, after femme (2016), Everything will be taken away (2018) and poem | image | self (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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Friday, April 19, 2024

new from above/ground press: DAWN’S FOOL, by Kyla Houbolt

DAWN’S FOOL
Kyla Houbolt
$5

Dawn’s Fool

In the dawn window
above the night candle
I lift a curtain
to see silhouettes'
slow shift to color
and transparent utility.

Soon day reveals
its sacred flaws
but now sleep's
fugitive magic gentles
what remains shadowed

and there is the dove
who science knows
as a most foolish bird,
gilded now
with a moment's blush
of her ancient roles:
peace bringer, signal
of God's mercy.

I watch her trying
once again to build
a nest where a nest
won't hold
the way she does each year
exactly as I do here.

She will lay
her eggs and some
will hatch to become
more foolish birds
bringing the message of hope
deferred and peace
yet to come.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


cover photo: David Fedor-Cunningham

Kyla Houbolt writes poems and occasional reviews, and takes care of two goats. https://kylahoubolt.us/

Dawn’s Fool was originally published by Ice Floe Press, in 2020.

This is Houbolt’s second above/ground press title, after But Then I Thought (2023).

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

Friday, April 12, 2024

new from above/ground press: Gnomics, by Dale Tracy

Gnomics
Dale Tracy
$5

Ars Poetica

You must eat your midnight and roses
or there’ll be no pounder of spices.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Dale Tracy
is the author of Derelict Bicycles (Anvil Press, 2022), her first full-length poetry collection. She also wrote the chapbooks Lines That Open (Surrey Art Gallery, 2023), The Mystery of Ornament (above/ground press, 2020), and Celebration Machine (Proper Tales Press, 2018) and the academic monograph With the Witnesses: Poetry, Compassion, and Claimed Experience (McGill-Queen’s, 2017). She is a faculty member in the English Department at Kwantlen Polytechnic University.

This is Tracy’s second above/ground press title, after The Mystery of Ornament (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