new from above/ground press: 310 Consecutive Life Sentences, by Ken Sparling

310 Consecutive Life Sentences
Ken Sparling
$6

Sitting On A Blue Curb

Me and Kitty were sitting on the sofa trying to decide if this guy in the movie we were watching was hot or not. I paused the movie when Kitty started asking what I thought about this guy. Nowadays, whenever you paused a movie on Netflix, they had this thing where a static ad came onto the screen and stayed there till you unpaused your show. So there was this ad for an insurance company up there and we had to keep unpausing it to see if this guy in the movie was hot. Then we had to re-pause it while we continued our discussion based on what we had seen while the movie was unpaused. The character we were discussing wasn’t the star of the movie, but he had a pretty big role. We’d seen him in other movies, but he looked quite different in this one. His hair was a lot shorter, and he was dressed in period costume. To tell the truth, I thought he was pretty hot, and that is what I told Kitty, but she didn’t agree. “He’s sort of pretty,” she told me, “but I’d never say he was hot.” “What’s the difference between pretty and hot?” I asked her. She looked away from me, back at the tv. “I hate this new thing with the ads when you pause a show,” she said. “Unpause it for a second, would you. I need to look at the guy again.”

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirty-second title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
February 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover image by Mary Sparling

More Ken Sparling
- Not Anywhere, Just Not (Coach House, 2023)
- the girl arrived (above/ground, 2021)
- This Poem is a House (Coach House, 2016)

Available from the author at dadsayshesawyou@gmail.com:
- Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
- [untitled novel]
- For Those Whom God Has Blessed With Fingers
- Book
- Intention, Implication, Wind

Online:
kensparling.github.io
instagram: @kensparling 
kensparling.ca

This is Sparling's second title with above/ground press, after the girl arrived (2021).

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: LONG SPEECH FROM MY FATHER AS MY FATHER AS WU TAO TZU ET AL, by Jake Kennedy

LONG SPEECH FROM MY FATHER AS MY FATHER AS WU TAO TZU ET AL
Jake Kennedy
$6

Oh my son my son it’s cold without proper clothes on 
-colder than a witch’s tit – colder than the balls on a brass 
monkey – colder than a well-digger’s ass 

with my little gods hereabouts: watch and keys and wallet
– shit, just look at them – very dutiful –calm and sincere – I 
look away and quickly look back and they’re still here 

jellyfish exist – crazy debutantes –twirling in their electric 
ball gowns through the old seascape– wow – such 
splendours – they exist my son – wow wow

tiny windows on the backs of ants – so bright - oh my son 
inside their lacquered bodies it’s pure light - the gods 
rattling in the attic and the gods shushing in the trees –

but seriously my son come in come in how are you? – I 
think it’s time to admit them – I’ve been so afraid – I might 
admit them– come in! – 

another patient said to me, George we’re just dreams sent 
into a world of brute material – no wonder it’s tricky out 
there my son- rocks know how to be and we don’t

son son my son – like you I’m at home with the plain old 
typical nouns – trying to find the one word (Knife! 
Cigarette! Car!) that splits the hour open – 

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

cover image: “Baudelaire,” 1911
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918)

Jake Kennedy does not know if it’s real or artificial or even intelligence at all therefore he appreciates the three squirrels this season that play maniacal tag on his front lawn. Every morning he tells them that he respects their speed / that he is in awe of their purposeless play. Every morning they retreat to the high branches and they perch above him and they go, “clickclickclick hisshisshiss booboo tryagainhuman” which is only right.

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: Armantrout, Maloukis, Heroux, Cannon, Bolster + Nećakov,

Rae Armantrout has a new poem up at the London Review of Books; Rose Maloukis offers a list of what she's been reading lately over at The New Quarterly; Jason Heroux has work up in the Spotlight series; Frances Cannon is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Stephanie Bolster is included in the "Canadian Poets Series" via Peripety and/or Tronies; and Lillian Nećakov has a new poem up in Paul Vermeersch's "In the Third Sleep" series.

The Nelson Ball Prize: Margaret Christakos wins! and Peter Jaeger's shortlist write-up,

Congratulations to Toronto poet Margaret Christakos, who recently won The Nelson Ball Prize for That Audible Slippage (University of Alberta Press, 2024)! 2025 judges Bev Daurio and James McDonald included, as you might already know, Peter Jaeger's Selected Memoirs (above/ground press, 2024) on their shortlist, so here's the judge's citations for such (you can see the citations for all five of the shortlist titles, including Christakos', as well as a short interview with Christakos, here):

Selected Memoirs (above/ground press)
by Peter Jaeger

Peter Jaeger is the author of several books and has written on a wide variety of topics, from ecology to John Cage. His chapbook Selected Memoirs addresses six and a half decades of one life, in thirty passages varying in length from twenty-five words to a couple of pages. Some passages cover several years, some only one. Much is missing; most of the life under consideration; yet the book feels complete and open at the same time. Its observations are as much by omission as by what they state; there are great gaps of time and context between some sections, between years, between sentences within entries. The passages and the spaces between them combine to create a perfect broken mashed-together record of existence, implying that much is forgotten.

Jaeger touches on the intellectual, the mundane, sweetness and regret, the greater world, the inner world, worlds imagined. There is a tipping between the real, and memory. Jaeger touches on horror (2001), a puzzling comment by a colleague (1997-98), unique experiences in the real world, "Scuba drift in the Red Sea" (2002-03) and times of want: "That winter Frank and I wore our heavy coats inside the house and clutched empty whiskey bottles filled with hot water to keep our hands warm." (1983).

Listing topics and descrying polarities and their subtle tensions, however, does not do the book justice, because so much of its joy is contained in its delicate, startling details and striking, unexpected shifts. The entry for 1966 reads: "Meditating in Bellwoods Park on a sunny afternoon in Toronto, I saw myself and the world as a continuous field of subatomic particles. I still remained deeply interested in the alphabet."

Although written in seemingly straightforward prose, Selected Memoirs is replete with moments of incredible writing, and a participatory poetics, where gaps and leaps ask the reader to consider all that is not there and what is hidden. Jaeger creates a small world of serenity, by turns warm, winsome, vulnerable, and quietly profound.

some author activity: Boyle, Betts, Banks, Barwin, Sawyer + Barwin,

Frances Boyle has new work up at Bad Dog Mag; Gregory Betts has a poem up at NewPoetry; Chris Banks has a new poem and a short essay up at The Woodlot; Betts also appears with collaborators Lillian Allen and Gary Barwin via "Poetry in Utter Space," The Poet Speaks Podcast S10E7; Larry Sawyer has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Gary Barwin has a poem up in Paul Vermeersch's "In the Third Sleep" series.

new from above/ground press: Weeds of Canada, by Dawn Macdonald

Weeds of Canada
Dawn Macdonald
$6

Horsetail Family

down she dug damp-hollow, found
underground terminal cones, frowned, sad.
for this may cause a sand-like deficiency
of animals, she said. I’ve read
that a veterinarian could tell. whatsoever
you’ll use for the scouring shall
well sink hollow, drain, black teeth out
the spore-case. take the stairs
at every chance. name
rootstock, flush
water-table, pass
from this table, salt, to be excused,
whorl, sheath, grace.

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

Dawn Macdonald lives in Whitehorse, Yukon, where she grew up without electricity or running water. Her poetry collection Northerny (University of Alberta Press) won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize and was longlisted for the Nelson Ball prize.

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: Tardi, Sawyer, Melancon, Gordon, Kemp + Naughton,

Mark Tardi writes on the late Larry Sawyer for the Poetry Foundation website; Jérôme Melancon appears in the Canadian Poets Series via Peripety and/or Tronies; a trio of videos of Nada Gordon reading in Manhattan, along with a short note, sit at the end of this substack post by Vladislav Davidzon; Penn Kemp has a series of poems for the late Barry Dempster now up at Public Reverie; and Katie Naughton has a poem up at Poetry Daily.