new from above/ground press: Origin stories, by rob mclennan

Origin stories
rob mclennan
$6

005 : “Origin Story”


My mother said very little. I came gift-wrapped, delivered. An empty chamber. By the waters of Babylon. They had to collect me. Entangled, form after form. From a stranger’s womb. I was nameless, swaddled. Between names. Frightened shoulders, a wish. They say, to descend from steps, from anything. To descend from the moon. I could not explain it. For eternity, my mentions were silence, what all they could offer. A wandering hand. Some tales remain, unfinished. A plot-line. I emerged from the ash, I came out of the ground. I was formless, formed. I was there, suddenly. After having not been.

Note: In January 2025, Chicago poet Benjamin Niespodziany begun a weekly substack, “Sunday Poem + Prompt,” in which he began to offer exactly that. I took it upon myself to respond to his weekly prompts as best as I could, as they came.

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

cover artwork: Aoife Lydia Judith McLennan, 
“family portrait,” February 2025

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

This is mclennan’s sixty-ninth above/ground press chapbook, following recent titles including the collaborative river / estuaries (with Julie Carr; 2023), edgeless : letters, (2023), The Alta Vista Improvements (2023), Autobiography (2022), the collaborative SOME LEAVES (with Gary Barwin; 2020), Twenty-one stories, (2020), Poems for Lunch Poems for SFU (2020), Somewhere in-between / cloud (2019), Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (2017).

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: Inniss, Carpenter, Lea, benedict, Solomon + Flemmer,

Scott Inniss has new work in the Spotlight series; J.R. Carpenter is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; N.W. Lea is interviewed via the above/ground press substack; alex benedict has a new essay on d.a. levy over at Cleveland Review of Books; Misha Solomon is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series; and Kyle Flemmer is interviewed over at the podcast On Creative Writing.

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Nada Gordon + Lydia Unsworth, March 29, 2026!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the sixteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents: 
The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:

Nada Gordon (Brooklyn NY)
+
Lydia Unsworth (Manchester UK)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, March 29, 2026
3-4pm, Arts Court Black Box Studio
A FREE EVENT / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 24-30, 2026

Nada Gordon: [see a new interview here] I live in Brooklyn and work too hard and too much, teaching courses like “Tyranny and the Absurd” and “The Glamour of Language.” Actually, they are just comp, but isn’t that what all art is, actually? I have two Siberian cats. I make things besides poems: garments, baubles, toys. My Etsy shop is https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScentedRushes. I’ve published nine books and lots of chapbooks besides. My selected, The Sound Princess: Selected Poems 1985-2015 found its way into the world last year by way of SubPress. “The Sound Princess” is a literal translation from the Japanese of “Otohime,” the button you push in a toilet stall to make the sound of rushing water so that others don’t hear you pee. It does sound grand, doesn’t it? I was in the hysterico-transgressive poetry movement called Flarf in the 2000s. Before that, I lived in Japan for over a decade. Before Japan, I wrote a thesis on Bernadette Mayer’s work. I studied with Language Poets in Bay Area in the 80s. I was a hardcore punk after I was a flower child. As an actual child I sometimes wrote poems. I was born in Oakland in 1964.

Lydia Unsworth [see a new interview here] is a poet from Manchester, UK. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Place Writing in Manchester, looking at kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture. She has 6 poetry collections and 4 above / ground chapbooks, and has two new poetry collections coming out in 2026, Stay Awhile (April, Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and This Now Extends to My Daughter (May, Blue Diode Press).

some author activity: Robinson, Solomon, mclennan, Smith, Boyle + Adams,

Ben Robinson has a poem up at NewPoetry; Misha Solomon has a poem in carte blanche; rob mclennan has new poems up at jagged edge; Mahaila Smith has a new poem up at penumbric; Frances Boyle has a poem in Great Lakes Review; and Carrie Olivia Adams has new work in Tupelo Quarterly, not once but twice.

new from above/ground press: Now When, A Poem, by Travis Sharp

Now When, A Poem
Travis Sharp
$6

when the reminder
when the junk mail piles
when the door’s a knockin
when it’s Monday
when the flowers breathe again
when the sound of trees in wind
when the flight gets cancelled
when the present can, in fact, be long
when the sun speaks out
when it snows so early
when there’s cops on every corner
when the metro is locked and guarded
when the escalator gets stuck mid-journey
when there’s another strike
when there’s banners out the windows
when I mean it this time
when the power goes out
when really
when you’re so late again
when the shining is the point
when feelings learn to fester
when the winter market opens
when wind so cold it burns the cheek
when your hair gets tussled
when the grinding labors you

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

cover image: Bradley W. Johnson, 4th of 7 Days, 7 Pieces (detail)

Travis Sharp is the author of the poetry books Monoculture (Unicorn Press, 2024) and Yes, I Am a Corpse Flower (Knife Fork Book, 2021), a poetry pamphlet, Behind the Poet Reading Their Poem Is a Sign Saying Applause (Knife Fork Book, 2022), and the chapbooks Sinister Queer Agenda (above/ground press, 2018) and One Plus One Is Two Ones (Recreational Resources, 2018). He’s a lecturer in the Department of English at Howard University and is an editor at Essay Press.

This is Sharp's second title with above/ground press, after Sinister Queer Agenda (2018).

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

Lit Balm: An Interactive Livestream Reading Series: A tribute to Larry Sawyer, March 7, 2026

Lit Balm : An Interactive Livestream Reading Series presents:
A Tribute to Larry Sawyer

Saturday, March 7, 5pm EST on Zoom: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/461603228
see the facebook event page here

Featuring Friends Reading and Reminiscing by:

Vincent Katz : Paul Hoover : Sheila Murphy : Dale Smith : Tony Trigilio : rob mclennan

With Lina Ramona Vitkauskas

Hosted by Jefrey Cyphers Wright
And the Lit Balm crew : Marc Vincenz, Cassandra Atherton, Jonathan Penton and Jon Wesick.

some author activity: Houbolt, Earl, Campos, Cannon + Niespodziany,

Kyla Houbolt gets a spotlight with some new poems via the SHINE international poetry series; Amanda Earl is interviewed by Kathryn Mockler for Send My Love To Anyone; Earl is also offering poetry mentorships (with scholarships available); Isabel Sobral Campos is running an in-person workshop on Baudelaire, weekly across May, in Somerville MA; Frances Cannon has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Benjamin Niespodziany wrote on Chicago's Test Reading Series for Zona Motel.