new from above/ground press: CO—STAR & RESPONSE, by Shelagh Rowan-Legg

CO—STAR & RESPONSE
Shelagh Rowan-Legg
$6

Destroy with purpose


        Or perhaps I will force my heart
        to an earthquake —
        a dismantling that I refuse
        to allow but in a precise
        fissure — a tremulous shift
        that will be brief as possible,
        the musculature will find
        new companions in this
        rearrangement, a necessary
        reshuffling of salvation.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Shelagh Rowan-Legg is a writer and filmmaker in Montréal. Her poetry and short stories have been published in numerous journals such as The Windsor Review, The Ampersand Review, and New Poetry. Her short films have screened at festivals around the world, and she is a Contributing Editor at ScreenAnarchy. Find her at shelaghrowanlegg.com and on Bluesky.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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

some author activity: Robinson, Earl, Melançon, Niespodziany, Zhang, Braun + Crosby,

Ben Robinson is included in the "Canadian Poets Series" via Peripety and/or Tronies; Amanda Earl's "14 Weeks with Jérôme Melançon" continues; Elena Zhang is the most recent poet featured in Benjamin Niespodziany's Sunday Poem and Prompt; Jacob Braun has new work in the eunoia review; and Gregory Crosby has new work up at Forget Cool.

above/ground press: 2027 subscriptions now available!

The race to the half-century continues! And with nearly FIFTEEN HUNDRED TITLES produced to date over the past thirty-three years, there’s been a ton of above/ground press activity over the past calendar year, including MORE THAN FIFTY TITLES (so far) produced in 2026 alone, including: poetry chapbooks by Ken Norris, Pete Smith, Peter Carl Anderson, Lori Anderson Moseman, Mark Tardi, Geoffrey Young, Lea Graham, Cara Goodwin, James Spyker, Grant Wilkins, Mark Goldstein, Harold Hoefle, Cary Fagan, Jason Heroux, Ken Norris, Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot, David Currie and IAN MARTIN, Jérôme Melançon, Dag T. Straumsvåg, Mrityunjay Mohan, Jon Cone, Emily Shafer, Derek Beaulieu, rob mclennan, Fred Wah, Daphne Marlatt, J.R. Carpenter, ryan fitzpatrick, Elena Zhang, Sarah Burgoyne and Clara Yeager, Susan Rudy, Shelly Harder, Misha Solomon, Stephanie Bolster, Jennifer Baker, Travis Sharp, John Levy, Christina Wells, Sarah Burgoyne, Ken Sparling, Jake Kennedy, Dawn Macdonald, Noah Sparrow, Glenn Bach, Jon Cone and K.Lipschutz, Robert van Vliet and Rose Maloukis, as well as three (quarterly) issues of Touch the Donkey and an issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club! There’s even two bilingual anthologies co-edited by Ottawa’s two poets laureate, Véronique Sylvain and David O’Meara, as part of their laureate tenures, and a further solo edited by O’Meara (all of which are still in print, at least for the moment).

SLIDING SCALE SUBSCRIPTIONS (AND RESUBSCRIPTIONS): As with last year, I am offering a sliding scale subscription rate; to simultaneously respond to ongoing postal/printing increases, as well as not automatically price everyone out. Honestly, if you are open to subscribing, whatever works within that particular range is completely fine! Not everyone has the same kinds of resources, and the main goal is to have the books available to those who want them. Subscriptions include everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2027, such as chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and quarterly poetry journal Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] (and whatever else the press can dream up, obviously):

CANADIAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (CAN $)
AMERICAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (US $)
INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS : $100-$140 (CAN $)

As well, anyone who subscribes on or by November 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package of 2026, including those exciting new titles by a number of those folk listed above, plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year.

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal/donate button at robmclennan.blogspot.com).

Forthcoming items through the press also include individual chapbooks by Ryan Di Francesco, Paul Elter, Laura Carter, Noah Berlatsky, Michelle Lynn Dyrness, Tyler Mills, rob mclennan, Hassen Saker, Lisa Fishman, Shelagh Rowan-Legg, Katy DeCoste + David Phillips, another issue of Touch the Donkey, a further chapbook edited by David O’Meara (a couple of which have already been sent to the printer, by the by), as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet. Who knows what might happen next.

And don’t forget our glorious substack! I’ve been posting author features/interviews over there for a while now; nearly forty interviews posted so far, most recently with Jennifer Baker, Jason Heroux, Lea Graham, Grant Wilkins and Lori Anderson Moseman. Lots of other cool updates that way, including clusters of new publication announcements every two months or so (because one at a time might be too much).

And don’t forget (also) that groundswell:the best of the third decade of above/ground press, 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2024) is also still available,

I’m sure you’ve also seen the posts, as well, through the (ottawa) small press almanac? lots of information on above/ground press and everyone else in town who makes chapbooks/ephemera etcetera! And the next edition (32^nd anniversary!) of the ottawa small press fair is November 14th! We will see you there, yes?

new from above/ground press: Spirit House, by Ken Norris

Spirit House
Ken Norris
$6

Being me, it’s hard
to believe. Faith

so often seems like
a scam. Forget

about this life. Be humble,
be poor, don’t delve

into revolution.
The orthodox stories

are so lame, smell strongly
of lying. Priests

in black gowns
always have a lot to say

about renunciation. They
gave up on living years ago.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover drawing: Marlene Konyves
Cover graphic design: Janet Kennedy

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a PhD in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

This is Ken Norris’ fifteenth above/ground press chapbook, after Windward – St. Lucia Poems (1995), The Commentaries (1999), Songs For Isabella (2000), Green Wind (2010), Looking Into It (2011), Hong Kong Blues (2019), Hawaiian Sunrise (2021), Stray Dog Café (2021), The Traveling Wilburys Collection (2021), False Narratives (2022), Echoes (2023), Broken River (2024), What’s Left (2025) and Traveller (2026). See his 2025 above/ground press substack interview here.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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: Self-Portrait in a kaleidoscope, by Pete Smith

Self-Portrait in a kaleidoscope
Pete Smith
$6

SELF-PORTRAIT IN A KALEIDOSCOPE.

I, clad
in clown-costume:
down-turned, exaggerated 
white lips glabbering
with the antiphrastic glow of sadness.
It isn't the spotlight, the ring or the whoopie cushion;
it isn't the kinder section letting rip
tides of guffaws and rippled applause;
it's the geometry of the trapeze artists,
the arcs and loops and dissected sectors,
fallen angles, the gibbous death pinch
mirroring an unself 
filled with true/false sequinned memories,
light-years from any known galaxy,
that calls me
home. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Bio. Born in Coventry, England, & raised there during its post-war boom years. Worked for forty years in institutional & community settings with people dually diagnosed with intellectual & psychiatric issues. They taught him a lot. A piece of slow writing under the working title Among Us is in progress.

Has lived in & around Kamloops, BC, since emigrating from England in 1974. Poetry is what he thinks he thinks & feels with. A ListServ of poets with closely shared interests revived his writing practice in the late 1990s. Agenda, Wild Honey Press, Poetical Histories, the Gig, Oystercatcher, Great Works, Alterran Poetry Assemblage, fortnightly review, Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, Capilano Review, W, Shearsman Books (Bindings with Discords) in 2015, & the various outposts of the whirlwind known as rob mclennan, are among the places he has published poems, essays & reviews. A comprehensive list is found at peripetyandortronies.blogspot.com in the October 2025 archive.

This is Pete Smith's fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after Strum Of Unseen (2008), A New Love/ An Aching Stone (2016), Sing . . . Despite (2019) and Some Failed Eternity (2024).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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: MUTTER, by Peter Carl Anderson

MUTTER
Peter Carl Anderson
$6

CONCEPTION

We could not conceive of such a thing and yet it came to be, carrying its own luggage with it. A tray of seedlings from the windowsill of a past life, flowers of reincarnation blooming but once a century. The desert deep inside us waits for an opening in the conversation to spread across the landscape and soak up rivers until the fish are left nowhere to spawn. Each day’s count less than the day before. Numbers falling like dandruff. We try to understand but we’re like one-armed backstrokers swimming in circles. Maybe a rise in screen time is yoking us to a downward trend. Maybe our underwear’s too tight, our cycles not monthly enough. We adopt an air of resignation, bury our miscarried explanations and try to look satisfied.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover design: S. Grand Black / Alias Ink

Peter Carl Anderson is an actor and writer, author of the chapbook Indistinct Chatter & Character Breakdown (our teeth imprint) and a finalist in the 2023 Raven Chapbook contest. He has written more than twenty plays, available on the Canadian Play Outlet, and is the recipient of multiple awards for his acting and playwriting. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, artist and playwright Melody Anderson.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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

report: Fisher Small and Fine Press Fair 2026

This past Saturday, above/ground press participated, once more, in the Fisher Small and Fine Press Fair in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto, which was pretty cool. I mean, I've been there a few times [see my report on the 2022 fair here], but this is my first visit since Star Trek: Discovery filmed part of an episode in this space, which made it far cooler (naturally). They've been holding small press fairs in the space every two years or so since 2013, and I think this either my third or fourth fair, after the first, the 2022 event and now (I think I also attended the 2015 fair, but I can't find a record for such).

The fair leans into more letterpress works, so publishers such as myself have been invited on more of a rotating basis, given the space is only so large, but this time around, the first floor space was held as an overflow, featuring more of the small chapbook presses, including myself, Knife Fork Book [above], Anstruther Press [above] and Proper Tales Press (Gap Riot Press had been scheduled, but they were unable). The main floor, below us, held many of the usual suspects, including Flycatcher Press, Book*hug Press, Wesley Bates, Grayweathers Press/The MacOdrum Library Book Arts Lab at Carleton University, George A. Walker and Coach House Books.

There was even Jason Dewinetz [above; above/ground press author of a quarter century back] of Greenboathouse Press, who I hadn't seen in person in some two decades-plus, so that was quite nice.

It was good to see above/ground press author Ken Norris (one of the most published authors through the press, at this point; his new title is forthcoming momentarily) and Toronto writer, artist and lawyer Kate Sutherland [above], who I hadn't seen in a while. Poet and critic Bruce Whiteman came by, briefly, as did Canadian poet Sheila Stewart, Victoria writer/editor Kathryn Mockler, former Ottawa-based poet Barâa Arar, above/ground press authors Cary Fagan and Lillian Nećakov and Mark Goldstein and plenty of others. It was far busier than I might have thought, given the small press material was a bit of a side-bar for the letterpress publishers, but there was a consistent crowd most of the day. above/ground press author Conal Smiley (with a new title with Anstruther, by the way) came by to introduce himself, which I appreciated. Always good to actually meet my own authors, face to face. Although it was rather odd to have a couple of tour groups float through, twenty-plus circling our tables, taking photos of the space. Keep moving, keep moving. But an impressive day, all in all.

[Jay MillAr, Book*hug] A young person floated through, introducing themselves as the partner of above/ground press author Noah Sparrow (I didn't catch his name), in Toronto for two years for school; we ended up in a half-hour long conversation on late 1980s Montreal punk bands, which was cool. As well, Brendan Allen introduced himself as a long-time admirer of the press, having been mentored by above/ground press author Megan Kaminski in Kansas, as well as spending time at Temple University, interacting with such as Philadelphia poet Pattie McCarthy and above/ground press author Kevin Varrone, among others. Clearly this fella, in Toronto studying digital poetics, has some very good taste in mentors.