Maguire, Ladouceur, Cooley + Ackerson-Kiely (+ mclennan) make Amanda Earl's favourite chapbooks of 2011 list

Ottawa literary maven Amanda Earl has posted a list of "favourite chapbooks of 2011," and she includes titles from an array of literary presses, including Apt. 9 Press, Pooka Press, BookThug and various others, highlighting four titles by above/ground press: Book About a Candle Burning in a Shed, by Paige Ackerson-Kiely; have you learned / nothing kroetsch, by Dennis Cooley; Lime Kiln Quay Road, by Ben Ladouceur; Vowel Wolves & Other Knots, by Shannon Maguire (all of which are still available). For a list of other recent chapbooks, click here! And then of course, subscriptions...

She was even nice enough to mention my own C. (little red leaves, Textile Editions). Thanks, Amanda!

A review of rob mclennan’s The underside of the line, by Megan Burns (Rain Taxi Review)

Poet Megan Burns wrote a lovely and positive review of my chapbook, The underside of the line, (above/ground press, 2011) as part of her “chapbook corner” in Rain Taxi, alongside reviews of Travis Cebula’s Jamaica (bedoin books) and Bhanu Kapil’s (a poem-essay, or precursor: NOTES: for a novel: Ban en Banlieues) (Belladonna #127). I did a review or two for Rain Taxi moons ago, but haven’t managed to write a second, but for them publishing my essay on Don Quixote. Unfortunately, the magazine somehow missed the misspelled Ottawa, and Megan Burns (who is also hosting a reading by myself and Stephen Brockwell in March, down there in New Orleans) somehow calls above/ground press “coedited” by me, misunderstanding that above/ground press is a solo show, and has never been co-edited by anyone (I suspect she mistook for Chaudiere Books, which still, is co-run with Jennifer Mulligan, and still singularly edited by myself). But enough nit-picking: this is a lovely, positive and attentive review, Megan Burns, and I thank you for it!

Here is a fragment of said review (the whole review is available in the print edition of their new issue), posted with permission:

mclennan’s lines are short and rhythmically sudden; the sounds of these lines, even in the midst of a prose poem, cause the reader to paint the picture from a flurry of images. […] The tableau would seem surrealistic, but mclennan’s images are grounded in the everyday; the poems function as collages where disparate but familiar tropes are given back to us for subjective sorting. Furthermore, mclennan’s lines are satisfying because he plays on the musicality of hard syllables and recurring assonance as well as the surprise of what will turn up next. […] In the same way that a song uses rhythm to bridge sense with emotion, mclennan winds his images in rhythms that allow one to suspend disbelief for the greater return of amusement.

above/ground press 2012 subscriptions! + update of forthcoming titles,

Hey, above/ground press enthusiasts! This is a notice to see who might be interested in subscribing to our 2012 annual subscriptions, $50 (in the United States, $50 US; $75 international) for everything above/ground press makes from now until the end of 2012. Can you believe, 2012 marks nineteen years above/ground?

There are a whole bunch of publications in the works for 2012, including new publications by Rae Armantrout, derek beaulieu, Sarah Mangold, j/j hastain, Kathryn MacLeod, Rob Manery, Allison Grayhurst, Lars Palm, Fenn Stewart, kemeny babineau, rob mclennan, a collaboration by Andrew Burke + Phil Hall, and plenty of others. How is it you’ve stayed away for so long?

You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) at (new address!) 402 McLeod Street #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A5 or drop the money on my recently-acquired Paypal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

And keep checking author and publication updates on the above/ground press blog as well, including recent new interviews with Dennis Cooley and Camille Martin, a tribute to Robert Kroetsch, and the online appearance of Ross Brighton's above/ground press chapbook as a free pdf as part of the Dusie Kollektiv 5, as well as the occasional online reissue of a number of above/ground press “poem” broadsides, with recent and forthcoming appearances by Stephanie Bolster, Marilyn Irwin, Amanda Earl and Jamie Bradley.

We, alone, are keeping Canada Post in business. Don’t you forget it.

Happy seasonal things, and best for the New Year.

yer wayward publisher,

"poem" broadside #306: this side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht, by Marilyn Irwin

concave
sparks
a heart
a feather

the weight
of the world
in a wink

weather wax drips
stellar sip trips
fire pours poorly

mothing
light-bulb
shades shadows

from star tangle
and everything
contained


this side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht
by Marilyn Irwin
above/ground press broadside #306

Marilyn Irwin’s work can be found in issues of ottawater, Bywords, Bywords Quarterly Journal, X-Ray Magazine, and Peter F. Yacht Club. She self-published her first chapbook in 2010 which was re-issued by above/ground press the same year. She is amassing pieces of things for her second chapbook.

Cameron Anstee at the Bah! House Band Reading Series, Thursday, Dec. 15, 2011

above/ground press author Cameron Anstee reads at the Bah! House Band Reading Series alongside Ottawa poet David Currie on Thursday, December 15, 2011; 9pm-11pm, Raw Sugar Cafe, 692 Somerset Street West, Ottawa.

The return of the House Band Reading Series, featuring DJ Komsomol & McNally in the band, with Special Guests Cameron Anstee and Dave Currie.
The House Band Reading Series mixes music with words, a DJ scoring each piece as it is read/performed with special guests bringing other genres of writing to round out the evening.

Mashing a musical score with prose, the House Band will be performing two seasonal pieces.

Dave Currie: a man haunted by schemes. Writing is one of them, he's been working on this racket for a while now and if it doesn't work out he might take up glass blowing or dream interpretation. He can often be seen stroking, chewing or raking his facial hair. He currently serves as the fiction editor of In/Words Magazine where he is often quite grumpy.

Cameron Anstee: Apt. 9 Press (Ottawa ON) publishes handmade book in limited editions by new and established writers. We publish poetry, fiction and non-fiction. Our publishing emphasizes local writers, but strives for broader dialogue. Our first titles were launched in August 2009. His chapbook Frank St. (above/ground, 2010) is still available, here.

some author activity: Amanda Earl, Emily Carr + Camille Martin,

above/ground press author Emily Carr has a new poem online at Front Porch, and Amanda Earl's March, 2011 VERSeFest reading of her above/ground press chapbook, The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (still available, here), is now on-line (as well as a number of other VERSeFest readings), and Camille Martin blogs on her recent Kingston + Ottawa chapbook launches.

new above/ground press broadsides by Marilyn Irwin, Jamie Bradley, Nick Ravo + Amanda Earl

"This side of pyr | ryp fo edis siht"
by Marilyn Irwin
above/ground press broadside #306

"Sex at 31"
by Jamie Bradley
above/ground press broadisde #307

"A Boab in Broome, Western Australia"
by Nick Ravo
above/ground press broadside #308

untitled
by Amanda Earl
above/ground press broadside #309

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive complimentary copies

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2)

copies available by sending a s.a.s.e. (or $2) to:
rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON Canada K2P 1A6

paypal available at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

a tribute to Robert Kroetsch: a selection from his writings edited by Nicole Markotic

A tribute to recent above/ground press author Robert Kroetsch on The Capilano Review website, the second issue of their free web folio: a selection from his writings edited by Nicole Markotic.

a new interview with Dennis Cooley

A new interview with recent above/ground press author Dennis Cooley, conducted by American poet Lea Graham, author of, among other titles, the chapbook Calendar Girls (above/ground press, 2006).

Ross Brighton's above/ground chapbook, TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE, is now on-line as pdf

New Zealand poet Ross Brighton's above/ground press chapbook, TEMPORAL MAZE DENTURE (2011), originally published as part of the Dusie Kollektiv 5, is now available on-line as part of the same (along with nearly one hundred other works, including one by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan, published by Brighton; see the full list here). Check out the link to Brighton's chapbook here.

"poem" broadside #289: Night Zoo, by Stephanie Bolster

Dogs ravaged the yard where yesterday
rabbits and toads. The dead
fed to the cages and the dark.
The mouth of the mouth.

Plants dangled from pegs
beside padlocks. Reaching,
though they weren’t.

A dark stain on concrete.
A little water.

Let’s go, I said,
meaning stay.


Night Zoo
by Stephanie Bolster
above/ground press broadside #289

Stephanie Bolster lives in Montreal. Her fourth poetry collection is A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011). She has published two different chapbooks through above/ground press.

Camille Martin: On Writing

An interview with Camille Martin, "On Writing," is now posted at Open Book. Her chapbook If Leaf, Then Arpeggio is still available here.

new from above/ground press: Shannon Maguire's Vowel Wolves & Other Knots

 

THE MIDWIFE’S HANDS

(Palms up, Ready to Catch)

Left

threat to deer from the covered hook
extended extended the extended deer

bend deer hair wing to the upright hook
attach extended behind from a tail
wrap fur covered thread over wing
hook to the upright furry worm

right up deer bend hair extended behind wing
attach thread to fur wing
from behind wrap deer hair over a worm
bend hook to the tail wing

hook hair to the covered tail
right from a bend attach deer to the hook
wrap fur up from behind the coveted
to hook upright attach bend right


Right

from marsh all-night moose send night
lava image all forms passing a hider
night forms the “send moose” button from a marsh
marsh pearl from a hidden sail

send marsh from a sail letter
forms passing raw button pearl under the lava
moose trail from image letter
left all buttons...send pearl future-passing letter

marsh from an all-night imagery lava
raw image hidden trail under letter
moose future passing forms the sail
send button pearl letter from an all-night marsh

future future a future button
trail from button forms a hidden marsh

Vowel Wolves & Other Knots
by Shannon Maguire
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Shannon Maguire is a poet and playwright. She is the co-cultivator of AvantGarden, an experimental text and sound based performance series in Toronto. "Fur(l) Parachute" was shortlisted for the 2011 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her work has appeared in CV2, Gulch: An Assemblage of Poetry and Prose (Tightrope) and Nightwood Theatre's 4X4 Off Road Festival, among other places.

Shannon Maguire launches in Toronto on November 22 at the Art Bar Reading Series, alongside rob mclennan and Pearl Pirie.

Verulam: Phil Hall wins the GG for Killdeer (BookThug)

It was announced today that Perth, Ontario poet Phil Hall has won this year's Governor General's Award for Poetry for the collection Killdeer (Toronto ON: BoookThug, 2011). Congrats to Phil Hall and everyone (Jay, Hazel, Jenny) at BookThug! It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, a more deserving poet, or a more deserving book. For further information on Hall's work, check out the lengthy essay I wrote, up at Poetics.ca.

One of the sections of Killdeer was originally published as a chapbook through above/ground press. Produced in 2009 in a run of two hundred copies (hand-stamped by Hall), there are still a few copies left, if anyone is interested.

Verulam
by Phil Hall
August 2009
$4

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Ken Norris’ LOOKING INTO IT

WRITING POEMS
I'm writing poems,
trying to find a place to stand.

Sometimes you can awaken
yourself with a poem.

It doesn't always have to be
about the reader's pleasure.

Sometimes you're just desperately trying
to save your damaged soul.

LOOKING INTO IT
by Ken Norris
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He emigrated to Montreal in the mid-1970s, and became a Canadian citizen in 1985. He currently teaches Canadian Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Maine. His previous above/ground press titles include Windward - St. Lucia Poems (1995), THE COMMENTARIES (1999), SONGS FOR ISABELLA (2000) and Green Wind (2010).

new from above/ground press: Camille Martin's If Leaf, Then Arpeggio

 ~

Right now is what dwindling feels like, despite
the mulberry outside my window steadfastly
anchoring its taproot. The new century counts planets
that might support rooted beings and ravenous predators.
But stardust piles up on lines connecting dots
in constellations, blurring them into nebulae. Shapeless
experience waffles between concrete and abstract, accounting
for the popularity of horoscopes, especially when Jupiter enters
Aries and we vacillate, like volcanoes heaving ash
before the pyroclastic flow, collapsing before tsunami, dwindling
until the next cycle. I abstractly shake dew from ripe mulberries.
Or I lie down, gazing at shivering green tracery non-existent
a couple of months ago and just as soon to vanish.
A more or less concrete cup of coffee balances on my belly,
wobbling to the diastolic and systolic rhythms of my heart.

If Leaf, Then Arpeggio
by Camille Martin
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Camille Martin, a Toronto poet, is the author of Sonnets (Shearsman Books, 2010) and Codes of Public Sleep (BookThug, 2007). Her work has been widely published in journals in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Her current work in progress is a collection of double sonnets. She is also engaged in a project funded by the Ontario Arts Council: a long poem (working title: “The Evangeline Papers”) based on her Cajun/Acadian heritage and her recent visit to Nova Scotia to participate in an archaeological dig at Beaubassin and to research Acadian and Mik’maq history and culture. She earned an MFA in Poetry at the University of New Orleans and a Ph.D. in English at Louisiana State University. Currently she teaches writing and literature at Ryerson University. Her website is http://www.camillemartin.ca and her blog is http://rogueembryo.wordpress.com

some author activity: Stephen Brockwell + Emily Carr,

Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell read from his "Impossible Books" work-in-progress (that includes his above/ground press chapbook) at the In/words reading series the other night, and Odourless Press was good enough to post selected audio of the evening. In other news, Calgary poet Emily Carr, author of the above/ground chapbook, & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil, has new poems online at Web Conjunctions, and even a new book. Did you know any of that?

2012 subscriptions now available!

The 2012 above/ground press subscription is now available. $50 for everything above/ground press produces to the end of the 2012 calendar year sent directly to your mailbox (or, in some cases, hand-delivered).

And be sure to check out the above/ground press group on facebook, including The Factory Reading Series (celebrating 20 years in January 2012) events at The Carleton Tavern.

YES! I WANT EVERYTHING ABOVE/GROUND PRESS HAS TO OFFER! GIVE ME A 2012 SUBSCRIPTION (STARTING TODAY, THANK GOD) FOR ONLY FIFTY (50) DOLLARS (IN THE US, $50 US).

with recent and forthcoming above/ground publications by: Camille Martin, Rae Armantrout, Dennis Cooley, Robert Kroetsch, Andrew Burke + Phil Hall, Sarah Mangold, Ben Ladouceur, rob mclennan, Ken Norris, Hugh Thomas, Michael Blouin, Christine McNair, derek beaulieu, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, kemeny babineau, Eric Folsom, Ross Brighton, Marilyn Irwin, Shannon Maguire + plenty of others.

give $50 to rob mclennan, or mail:
c/o 402 McLeod Street #3, Ottawa Ontario Canada K2P 1A6

paypal available via www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

regular notices are also sent out through an email list of Ottawa-area literary events. to get on the list, email me at az421@freenet.carleton.ca

new from above/ground press: Hugh Thomas’ Opening the Dictionary

Opening the Dictionary
by Hugh Thomas
$4

Opening the Dictionary

I.
 

good family, the King, ten crowns, evil, a ring
himself, his looks, chance, profit, income
white blossoms, tears, burning zeal
principle, meat, that account
lack of curiosity, bake cakes
undress, clear the table, break in two
go to sleep, pine away

II.

milk, light, book, loaf
the main thing
near, first, alone
as he works
suddenly, absolutely, quite simply

III.

to glance at, to blow a kiss
to spend the night
to afflict, to throw out
to accuse, to speak ill of
to hanker after

IV.

memory, writing, works, friend,
days, folly, portrait,
tending to corrupt, suitable, full,

there were a lot of people in the streets today

V.

to whine, to whimper
to squeak, to crinkle, to crunch
to twinkle, to shine
to take out, to utter, to publish
to hollow
to rummage in
to write, to be written
to wake up

VI.

pocket dictionary letter
bird ballad gadget
snowfall whisper

VII.

ink by force to talk to itself
engaged in reading
too, also, as well
and so am I

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Hugh Thomas lives in Fredericton, where he is a professor of mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. Chapbooks of his poetry have been published by Paper Kite Press (Heart badly buried by five shovels, 2009) and BookThug (Mutations, 2004). Franzlations, the imaginary Kafka parables, a book of variations on Kafka texts, which is a joint project with Gary Barwin and Craig Conley, will be published by New Star Books in the fall.



To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Hugh Thomas reads in Ottawa as part of The Factory Reading Series on Friday, September 23, 2011.

new from above/ground press: rob mclennan's The underside of the line,

The underside of the line,
by rob mclennan
$4

Future Bakery: Interim Report

1.

Tumble awake, this morning. Start from fragments. A gauntlet. Urge others, speak slowly, more. Unity precedes. A cranial. Decline to leave names.

2.

Regular harbour, weave. Brunswick House, girlfriend. Ease down like an astronaut. What brief integrity, dialed. Composure governs. I pull my soldiered hands, small fortunes.

3.

Children, the frame. Agency of water, fresh and unremarkable, rare. Brace, with low chairs. The sun strikes everything, rattling plastic clouds. Who is this, really? Table this, divide.

4

Windspeck, taste of rain. Illusions in this distance, blue. Compulsive fingernails. Battered, cleared and crawled. Hotel concordance, congress. In passing, spark tongues. Suppress. These rooms are legion. 

5.

Mechanical lineage. By the way, no longer. Sorry flightless birds. Submit is not the word. The right lane ends. All these coloured pencils. A shelf-life. Blueprint grit. She worries: where we cease to be.

6.

A corkscrew, distance. Impatient, leaf. Sweet fragrance. Hotel, sustains. Time changes colour. Coffee cools, and something moves. Synopsis: boundaries. Hips and dashed integrity. Relieved, we plummet.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the poetry collections A (short) history of l. (BuschekBooks, 2011), grief notes: (BlazeVOX [books], 2011), Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Jennifer Mulligan), The Garneau Review (ottawater.com/garneaureview), seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

rob mclennan reads next in Ottawa on September 17, 2011 as part of the League of Canadian Poets fundraiser.

new from above/ground press: Eric Folsom's NORTHEAST ANTI-GHAZALS (second printing)

Northeast

If you picked any story but this,
I wouldn’t know where to begin.

The grey November sky predicting early snow,
The ground already resisting footprints.

A young doe in my garden looks up;
How the mind seeing, loses sight.

Inside where I stand, one cobweb on the ceiling
Delicately twists when the furnace comes to life.

What if I turned my face away
And when I looked back you were gone?

The freezing mud in the driveway
Seizes the tires in their ruts overnight.

I wish for multiple eyes like a spider,
My forehead of shining cobblestones.

NORTHEAST ANTI-GHAZALS
Eric Folsom
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
second printing, September 2011
(first printing, January 2005)
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Eric Folsom writes poems, works at the Kingston Frontenac Public Library, and occasionally bakes cookies. He has written a handful of poetry books, including Icon Driven (Wolask and Wynn, 2001) and Poems for Little Cataraqui (Broken Jaw, 1994). He helped edit the literary magazines Next Exit and Quarry, served as the Ontario rep for the League of Canadian Poets, and has hung around in Kingston, Ontario since 1974. He was told once he looks pretty good for his age. In 2011 the Kingston City council appointed Eric as Kingston's first Poet Laureate.

Eric Folsom reads in Ottawa on Saturday, September 17, 2011 as part of a League of Canadian Poets benefit.

new from above/ground press: have you learned / nothing kroetsch by Dennis Cooley

have you learned / nothing kroetsch
three poems by Dennis Cooley
$4

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Dennis Cooley grew up in Southern Saskatchewan. He has studied at the University of Saskatchewan and the University of Rochester, and has lived with his family in Winnipeg since 1973. His latest title is correction line, which draws heavily on memories of family and of his life in and around Estevan. He is working on several manuscripts, including a collection of essays on Robert Kroetsch.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod St #3, Ottawa ON K2P 1A6 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Paige Ackerson-Kiely’s A Book About A Candle Burning in a Shed

A Book About A Candle Burning in a Shed
by Paige Ackerson-Kiely
$4

:

They called me down and I went down and arrived. My uniform was basically clean; a life alone makes the need for external demonstration almost disappear, but not fully. One thing I hate is when you get there and it’s all over. Like felled trees after a storm you have to cut up and drag them off the road. But not really the same thing. I knew it would be an important day when someone first hollered help in my direction. Mostly it is small jobs, unlocking cars and checking on the elderly. Sometimes they think I am their son and cry when I leave. Other times they are pretty much dead and I call the paramedics. None of the situations is good. I was north of town when the dispatcher crackled to me. Her clothes found in the river, hung up on some rocks, probably she got taken in the storm—but I was still uneasy, even though nature is out of my hands, which should be a relief like it is to be a child and not a man. Beside the river there was an old mattress and a woman’s swimsuit, the kind that was in style 5 years ago, with ties on either side of the leg openings that you cinch or relax, depending on company. Water’s high and full of silt, and it smelled like squash bugs and my ex-girlfriend’s neck when she worried about money. There was never enough of anything but I guess I got used to it. She was still beautiful from a distance and always in my memory delivered on a soft cloud. I didn’t make a grab for her shirt as it drifted away, there on the banks, sun as bright as I’d ever seen it. I was afraid to be pulled under.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2011
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 402 McLeod Street, Ottawa ON Canada K2P 1A6, or simply drop $ on paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Paige Ackerson-Kiely [see her 12 or 20 questions here] authored the poetry collections In No One’s Land (Ahsahta, 2007), My Love is a Dead Arctic Explorer (Ahsahta, forthcoming) and a limited edition art folio/ collaboration, This Landscape (Argos Books, 2010). Paige lives in rural Vermont, edits the poetry annual A Handsome Journal, and works at a homeless shelter.

"poem" broadside #294: Incidental Kill, by Monica Kidd

Friend, I've been thinking about that day on Temperance Street, before you packed up, before any of it, when Ken sat at your table to eat whale. All dark glasses and skinny elbows, drunk on the place. His homecoming. A Fogo Island minke, caught by someone's father, was the story. Wrong time, wrong place: how she goes. Mason jars marked with a letter and passed from kettle to coat pocket. How he grinned. The meaty greasy on his plate, the fork in his ham-fist. He wanted a picture and I took one. His serious stare. His joy bursting.

We all climbed Topsail Bluff later and I still look for myself in his poem. And still I find: your hand, his cigarette, even my faded red truck. Wrong place, wrong time. Incidentally, did you ever tell him the W on that jar was really an M? Someone's bottled moose forgotten in your bachelor fridge? How that piece of lead shot stuck in your teeth like a little white lie?


Incidental Kill
by Monica Kidd
above/ground press broadside #294

Monica Kidd is the author of four books, including Actualities (poetry from Gaspereau Press, 2007). A former biologist and journalist, she lives and writes in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she now works as a physician.

Ben Ladouceur + William Hawkins poems reprinted at Odourless

Ben Ladouceur and William Hawkins poems reprinted from their above/ground press chapbooks on the Odourless Press blog.

"poem" broadside #298: this used to be a sestina, by Fenn Stewart

they don't know that/ the earth is a magnet
when they are released/ they cannot find their heads
they navigate/ they don't know where

they move/ confused/ into the swamps

to live! slowly they remember
to experiment! they have magnets!
they seek crocodiles!

O those scientists,
we will swath their heads
extrememly. in black bandages. in thick technique.
in florida.

we will disrupt these territorial scientists
they are unique/ and valuable creatures
we will disrupt them/ at a rate of 10 miles per week

to increase their numbers!
this is our radar/ this is our responsibility

their eyeballs are magnets
they roll/ their gait/ their heavy eyes inside their heads
they watch

they are less

their eyes
their magnet eyes
shine deeper in the swamps/

the disruption is over

it is safe to


this used to be a sestina
by Fenn Stewart
above/ground press broadside #298

Fenn Stewart reads and writes in a skinny old house in Toronto. She used to live in Montreal and Vancouver and probably will again, someday. Recent work also appears in The Capilano Review and the "Toronto issue" of The Peter F. Yacht Club.

Mark McCawley's mini-review of rob mclennan's "First you know, and then so ordinary,"

Edmonton writer/editor Mark McCawley's mini-review of rob mclennan's First you know, and then so ordinary (above/ground press, 2010) at Fresh Raw Cuts.

above/ground press is moving!

After fifteen years in Ottawa's Chinatown, we're finally moving. The new mailing address for above/ground press, effective September 1, 2011, will be:

402 McLeod Street, #3
Ottawa ON Canada
K2P 1A6

update your records! And keep your eyes out for information on various upcoming new titles, as well as 2012 subscription information. 


Have you taken advantage of the end-of-summer sale yet?

above/ground press' end-of-summer sale!

Celebrating (so far, at least) eighteen glorious years (1993-2011)

poetry chapbooks: 3 for $10 / 6 for $20 / 9 for $30 / 12 for $40 (until September 1, 2011)

Given eighteen years of publishing [thanks to Amanda Earl for the image, from a lovely blog post a couple of years back], it means parts of the warehouse are overflowing, so I'm clearing out some backlist in anticipation of forthcoming titles by derek beaulieu, Dennis Cooley, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Ken Norris, Hugh Thomas, Shannon Maguire and others. Watch here for updates.

Some of the titles available include: Robert Kroetsch, Further to Our Conversation (2011), Julia Williams, MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS (2004), Donato Mancini, @phabet (2003), Jessica Smith, Shifting Landscapes (2006), Phil Hall, Verulam (2009), Amanda Earl, The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (2008), Emily Carr, & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil (2009), Matthew Holmes, SHORTS, BRIEFS and curlies (2005), Josh Auerbach, in/form/al measures (2002), Marcus McCann, Town in a long day of leaving (2010), Nelson Ball, Scrub Cedar (2003), Artie Gold, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS (2003), Lea Graham, Calendar Girls (2006), Gwendolyn Guth, Good People (2010), rob mclennan, 16 Yonge (2010), Alessandro Porco, Autobiographia Cinematica (2005), K.I. Press, FLAME (2002), rob mclennan, Some Forty (2010), George Bowering as “Ellen Field,” A, You're Adorable (2^nd printing, 2004), Gregory Betts, the curse of canada (2008), Helen Hajnoczky, A history of button collecting (2010), Marilyn Irwin, for when you pick daisies (2010), William Hawkins, the black prince of bank street (2007), rob mclennan and Lea Graham, metric (2010), kath macLean, ten: ways to skin a cat (2003), Shauna McCabe, land over time (2005), Gil McElroy, (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Ken Norris, SONGS FOR ISABELLA (2000), Douglas Barbour, It's over is it over: Love's Fragmented Narrative (2005), Larry Sawyer, A Chaise Lounge in Hell (2003), D.G. Jones, standard pose (2002), bpNichol, KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch (2002) and The Peter F. Yacht Club #15, VerseFest Ottawa special (2011).

Inquire for titles not listed here, at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com. In Canada, add $2 for postage; outside, add $4; paypal now available (via rob mclennan's blog), or send cheques c/o rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7.

Amanda Earl's The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman mentioned on Goodreads

Amanda Earl's chapbook The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (2008) mentioned on Goodreads.

"poem" broadside #304: Future Bakery: Interim Report, by rob mclennan

1.

Tumble awake, this morning. Start from fragments. A gauntlet. Urge others, speak slowly, more. Unity precedes. A cranial. Decline to leave names.

2.

Regular harbour, weave. Brunswick House, girlfriend. Ease down like an astronaut. What brief integrity, dialed. Composure governs. I pull my soldiered hands, small fortunes.

3.

Children, the frame. Agency of water, fresh and unremarkable, rare. Brace, with low chairs. The sun strikes everything, rattling plastic clouds. Who is this, really? Table this, divide.

4.

Windspeck, taste of rain. Illusions in this distance, blue. Compulsive fingernails. Battered, cleared and crawled. Hotel concordance, congress. In passing, spark tongues. Suppress. These rooms are legion.

5.

Mechanical lineage. By the way, no longer. Sorry flightless birds. Submit is not the word. The right lane ends. All these coloured pencils. A shelf-life. Blueprint grit. She worries: where we cease to be.

6.

A corkscrew, distance. Impatient, leaf. Sweet fragrance. Hotel, sustains. Time changes colour. Coffee cools, and something moves. Synopsis: boundaries. Hips and dashed integrity. Relieved, we plummet.

Future Bakery: Interim Report

by rob mclennan

Produced for small press fairs Toronto + Ottawa, June 2011

above/ground press broadside #304

Born in Ottawa, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa. He is the author of nearly two dozen trade publications in multiple countries, including the poetry collections Glengarry (Talonbooks, 2011), kate street (Moira, 2011) and 52 flowers (or, a perth edge) – essay on Phil Hall – (Obvious Epiphanies, 2010) and a second novel, missing persons (The Mercury Press, 2009). He is currently working to complete a third novel, various short stories, and a non-fiction project concerning grieving, loss and family archives, tentatively titled “The Last Good Year.” http://www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

"poem" broadsides "inside cow barn at Ecotay," near Perth, Ontario; photo by Brian Pirie,

new from above/ground press: Robert Kroetsch’s Further to Our Conversation

Further to Our Conversation
by Robert Kroetsch
$3

You May Not Know the Sender

This message is from you.
It says: Please do not open.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
write for submission/subscription info, c/o 858 Somerset
Street West, main floor, Ottawa ON K1R 6R7,
or check out abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2 & in US $) to: rob mclennan, 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7. (for paypal options, drop $5 on www.robmclennan.blogspot.com, & email me yr address at rob_mclennan@hotmail.com)

Renowned poet, novelist, essayist and teacher, Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) [see my obit/tribute for him here] was one of Canada’s most accomplished authors. With a career spanning well over 40 years, Kroetsch received numerous honours, including the prestigious Governor General’s Literary Award for his book The Studhorse Man, and penned 9 internationally acclaimed novels, 14 books of poetry, and 5 books of non-fiction, essays, and exploration.

Celebrated as a leading creator of contemporary Canadian literature, his writing, teaching, and critical vision helped shape Canadian literature and culture. His works have been translated, published, and studied extensively worldwide, and he gave readings in countries as various as China, Japan, Finland, Italy, and Australia. Kroetsch taught and mentored countless writers throughout the world. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, he was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2000 for The Hornbooks of Rita K.

A Distinguished Alumnus of the University of Alberta, his most recent award was the Manitoba Arts Council Arts Award of Distinction.

“poem” broadside #302: Morrisburg Ontario, by Michael Blouin

a lot of what gets said isn’t true

some things become more true over time

this place grew me

been lying on this bathroom floor long enough

to speculate that the intricacies of the tile work are beyond standard motel applications

the word byzantine might come into play

was it usual for this particular motel? did the tile layer have a momentary vision and set aside the wrinkled paper plan? run back and forth to the pickup or the store? get fired for it at the end but happy with an emptied head finally and dreams of a future beyond mere tilery and motel splendour? this is what I end up hoping.

that the man spent the rest of his life fabricating elaborate mosaics living on chocolate and water and feeling things more deeply than was strictly good for him

after dusk I wander into the tree line behind the soft vinyl sided building slowly driven by something I do not know fingers lightly brushing the rough tree edges

my neck becomes sore from looking up

no stars.

Morrisburg Ontario

by Michael Blouin

Produced for a reading at the Dusty Owl Reading Series

June 12, 2011

above/ground press broadside #302

Michael Blouin’s Chase and Haven (Coach House) won the Re Lit Award for Best Novel in 2009. His current Wore Down Trust (Pedlar Press) is garnering national attention. This new work is from a manuscript in progress. http://www.minor-poet.blogspot.com

“poem” broadside #305: January 9: Before Kroetsch’s visit to my meteorology class, by Nicole Markotić

thank you for boosting precipitation in Alberta. I confess I have always endeavoured to write the weather into line-breaks, wind speeds as enjambment, cirrus as infernal semi-colon, today’s high as the exact moment I read The Snowbird Poems aloud and hear you perusing Jack Spicer. The space between breaks a mutual breathing.

You begin me beginning. The Chinook stretches and reaches and pulls my exhalation across the prairies. Louis and I passed beneath Manitoba last week, when we took a cross-country detour to visit Lorine Niedecker’s birthplace and home town. We started in Windsor, drove to Chicago, then through Wisconsin, up towards Saskatchewan, into Moose Jaw, and on to Alberta. At the wheel, I quoted from Alberta, citing driving records and crocus alerts and overly coddled spring gardens. I craved myself back into the prairies, your prairies, back into provinces where Schmier and the rules that don’t make logical sense, make sense.

You remind me, when you repeat “diadem” back to me, that ancient Greek does not accommodate the word blue. How to crown the poem without a pure lambent sky? Lorine Faith Niedecker lived in a small hut by the Rock River, her mother’s breath supplying the room’s temperature, and wrote, “don’t be afraid / to pour wine over cabbage.” She is buried in the same grave as her parents, her husband’s headstone a footnote beside them. On the family stone, “Neidecker” posthumously insists on e-before-I: direction is important in weathered stones.

What is it about the grave, you ask, that institutes plot? I can only answer with Picasso blues and wavering humidity, with the idea of horizon flames on a crown of winter, and with snowflakes sprinkling over your head in the dead heat of a Calgary January. You lose yourself in disproportionate narrative, on purpose. And we smectite readers follow, determined to unbury the plot, unspell surnames, unpave the TransCanada, and unwrite the inclement page.

In between morning rain and afternoon hail, you noticed what I forget: pronunciation matters. And the invention of the telephone did change how we write.

January 9: Before Kroetsch’s visit to my meteorology class

by Nicole Markotić

July 2011

above/ground press broadside #305

Nicole Markotić is author of two poetry books, Connect the Dots and Minotaurs & Other Alphabets, the novella Yellow Pages, and the novel Scrapbook of My Years as a Zealot. She has edited a collection of poetry by Dennis Cooley, By Word of Mouth, has worked as a freelance editor, and has edited special issues for the literary journals Open Letter and Tessera. She was poetry editor for Red Deer Press for six years and has recently joined the NeWest literary board as one of its fiction editors. She publishes a chapbook poetry series, Wrinkle Press, which includes work by Louis Cabri, Robert Kroetsch, and Nikki Reimer. She lives in Windsor, and is working on a book of poems.

“poem” broadside #301, Stolen Wind, by Hugh Thomas

why

by the window

rain in my arms

*

the wide boulevards

trailing blue smoke

*

his sad smile

prepared

*

waiting to speak

to death

this happened

we were alive

*

notebook

the tricky steps

and green panoramas

*

after lovemaking

combing

orange streaks of light

*

i was never anything more

than the perpetual threat of rain

*

food and pleasure

the lake and the sky

little songs

that elude me

*

coffee

meanwhile

meanwhile

*

waiting for

the nightingales

we say goodbye

*

I am a tired, bleary-eyed man

in love with a beach

*

the scaffolding comes apart

the heat, the light, the green rice fields

a few clouds

slowly making for that further shore

Stolen Wind

by Hugh Thomas

above/ground press broadside #301

Hugh Thomas teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Heart badly buried by five shovels, a chapbook of his poetry, was recently published by Paper Kite Press. “Stolen wind” is composed of words and phrases from the chapbook Green Wind (above/ground press, 2010) by Ken Norris.

“poem” broadside #303: “to fret thy soul with crosses and with cares,” by Christine McNair

1.

interspliced – my fingers lick

dashboard drip syrup lose venue

slip diagonal beneath

stringed instruments

soft sand sucks toes

black bays my hips

tilt to the wash of it

shoe blunt with beach

my perpetual chafe of

wet

2.

fae folk require raw cherries

devilish red sticky

goblin

3.

shoulder span cool

stone sweet there’s

no ocean where there’s

no ocean no ocean

my tongue coasts

4.

beloved bellatrix

beautiful belladonna

flash fictions

5.

my heart’s root hem lonely

sweet murmur

“to fret thy soul with crosses and with cares”

by Christine McNair

Produced for small press fairs Toronto + Ottawa, June 2011

above/ground press broadside #303

Christine McNair’s work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, ditchpoetry.com, CV2, the Bywords Quarterly Journal, Descant, Arc, and a few other places. She is one of the hosts of CKCU's Literary Landscapes and works as a book doctor in Ottawa. http://cartywheel.wordpress.com