new from above/ground press: BODY BIRTH, by Evan Gray

BODY BIRTH
Evan Gray
$5

the field is the body

and the body is impregnated by tense

and the body hangs low, lower

and the windows enter here

and the frailer flannel body

not hard like a used body

and not reshaped like flattened iron

and not a blanket folded with static

stacks for the body begs for all

of poetry, a vile beginning

remaining only with legs

both a bat and both with legs

crawling as if this body

and in another dream that night my face washed in dew

my body

the body girdled with a reed

the body of the message of god

the body of gnashing teeth

the body with mind is now

for without the mind and ripples

slouching back but not romantically

for decay is with the mind

and with the body a shell

of a ghost of with a vapor

a body of perpetual disgrace

a body shut in a memory care unit

and the body is in the field now

and the body is a holler of denial

time and the body spits and chews

and the body aches and sings

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover by Austin Blake Mays

Evan Gray is from Jefferson, North Carolina and is the author of two other chapbooks: Blindspot (the Rest (Garden-Door Press, 2018) and Dusk Melody (Shirt Pocket Press, 2019). His essays and poems have been featured in DIAGRAM, Tarpaulin Sky, Yalobusha Review, Word For / Word, and others. He currently lives and teaches in Pittsburgh, PA.

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: from Riot, September 2016, an Inside Out Journal, by Dale Smith

from Riot
September 2016, an Inside Out Journal
Dale Smith
$5

Faded leaves hang limp in evening sun. Worried cyclists keep close to curb. Pale sky’s scrim a crib holding no one. Dead things collect in words. To speak of origin brings a quiet rain to ruined global interface. Like messages from stars, light years distant. To grieve or share caravan soul worry. Hold tightly to rafts, the current flows outward, naked, disastrous fool. A beard and exposed torso. Five-days old, born in passage over Mediterranean shame. Image flashes beyond borders. Simultaneity of needs washed clean by hunger’s devotion.

   Stand in trashy yellow field where

   dirty underwear plastic garbage

   eat rations a fate or ratio of

   circumstance the Navigant sun north

   lunar pulse of waves widening long

   mother to love openly sideways

   enter Lesbos on orange life vest already

   squeezed no air lungs like dry leaves grow still

   rocks there are cameras to mediate

one’s digital window. The subway car is overheated. A child cries. Drunk white man covered in face tattoos screams. Beyond one a membrane prevents seeing through remnants of oneself. Not even the color of a concept can restore the ore or ire animating crisis. The dead are not as good. It is not okay.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover image by Stacy Blint

Dale Smith lives in Toronto, Ontario, where he teaches at Ryerson University. His writing appears in Brick, Brooklyn Rail, Chicago Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. He is an editor, with Robert J. Bertholf, of An Open Map: The Correspondence of Robert Duncan and Charles Olson and Imagining Persons: Robert Duncan’s Lectures on Charles Olson. His most recent poetry is Sons published by Knife Fork Book in 2017.

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: Kaminski, Collis, Rosenthal, Lederer + mclennan,

Another article on Megan Kaminski and her new above/ground press title appears, this time via The University Daily Kansan; Stephen Collis has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Sarah Rosenthal has new work posted in all the sins; Katy Lederer is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and rob mclennan has a new poem over at his clever blog.

new from above/ground press: Empire of Dirt, by Virginia Konchan

Empire of Dirt
Virginia Konchan
$5

Odyssey

You are the last vowel
left in the known world,
and I am the placard
saying this table
has been reserved.
A pity, the rain shower never came.
A pity, it lasted so long.
I had hoped to be wafer-thin:
a mere idea, drifting down the hall.
As it stands, I am stolid,
irrefutable but without value,
like an animal.  Aren’t we all.
The pastoral’s end is nigh.
Free love is the con of cons.
This is the hour
of the anonymous poet.
Sail on, high ship, sail on.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image: Tema Stauffer, “Bonneville Speedway, Utah, 2014.”

Author of two poetry collections, Any God Will Do (Carnegie Mellon, 2020) and The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, including The New Alphabets (Anstruther Press, 2019), Virginia Konchan’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Boston Review, and elsewhere. 

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

❡ Call for submissions to the 2019 bpNichol Chapbook Award ❡

from the Meet the Presses website:

The bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry in English published in chapbook form within Canada. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. The author receives $4,000 and the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective.

Chapbooks should be not less than 10 pages and not more than 48 pages. The chapbooks must have been published between January 1st and December 31st of the previous year (2018), and the poet must be Canadian.

Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of eligible chapbooks. Translations into English from other languages are eligible.

Submissions must be sent by Canada Post or courier (and not hand-delivered to a Meet The Presses collective member) and include a completed submission form or accurate facsimile (download the bpNichol Award Submission Form 2019), a brief C.V. of the author, including address, telephone number, and email address. Publisher contact information (contact person, mailing address, email address, and telephone contact) must also be included. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

The opening date for receipt of submissions is Feb. 1, 2019, and they will be accepted until May 31, 2019. If submission confirmation has not been received by email by June 30, 2019, please send a query to Beth Follett at: feralgrl[at]interlog[dot]com.

Send submissions to:
Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award
113 Bond Street, St John’s NL A1C 1T6

*

Chapbooks written by members of the Meet the Presses collective are ineligible for the award. Authors of chapbooks published by members of the collective remain eligible for the award.

new from above/ground press: Codex Mathematicum, by Joshua James Collis

Codex Mathematicum
Joshua James Collis
$5

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fFFOUR)

Do we listen 2 music?

Or do we listen 2 Music?

Music as a lifestyle, Music as a culture

Music as a sense of identity, as it pertains to

How we present ourselves in a society

I am a punk – I listen to Music

I am a hip-hop – I listen to Music

I listen to Music

You aren’t really listening

to music. To an arrangement – of notes and chords

of beats or bass or

something created in a studio. Or something slapped

together in a garage, ,

or constructed carefully

on an acoustic at a party, then fundamentally failing to

get laid.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Joshua James Collis is from the West Cost of Canada. He sold cell phones for a while, then settled on earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts from UVic.

He’s also played the bass in dive bars, been in one of Victoria’s largest art collectives, edited a theatre review and written and directed some University films that no one has ever seen. You can find him at joshuajamescollis.com

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: Hall, Landman, mclennan, Gray + Townsend,

University of New Brunswick writer-in-residence Phil Hall is written up in in the brunswickan; Seth Landman has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; rob mclennan answers the "12 or 20 questions," via Vallum magazine, and has a new poem up at his clever blog; forthcoming author Evan Gray has an essay in the "my (small press) writing day" series; and Jamie Townsend has new work in the second issue of baest : a journal of queer forms & affects.