The quintessential
poet’s micro-press, above/ground press — founded and published by poet, writer,
and editor rob mclennan out of Ottawa, Ontario — publishes chapbooks by both
newly emerging and established poets alike. What makes above/ground press
titles stand apart from other micro-press poetry chapbooks (besides their
nondescript covers, that is) is that they offer the reader glimpses into
collaborations as well as individual works in progress. It’s these glimpses which
above/ground gives that makes their titles unique, revealing the process of the
poet’s composition, their collaborations, as each waltz’s their muse along the
thin razor’s edge of creation. […] It takes guts to write without a net, and
particularly to publish those early efforts for all to see. Guts, indeed
Ottawa’s above/ground press, a one-man
operation run by writer, editor, publisher and critic rob mclennan, celebrates
nineteen years of publishing in August with a reading and launch party at The
Mercury Lounge.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Door 7pm / readings 7:30pm
Cover $5 (includes a recent above/ground press
title)
With readings and launches by:
Cameron Anstee
(Ottawa ON),
launching Regarding Renewal
Marilyn Irwin
(Ottawa ON),
launching
flicker
Amanda
Earl (Ottawa ON),
launching
Sex First & Then A Sandwich
and Stephen Brockwell (Ottawa ON),
launching Excerpts from Impossible Books, The
Crawdad Cantos
Part of the aesthetic of above/ground press has
closely followed mclennan’s own interest in encouraging and showcasing a
combination of emerging and local Ottawa poets alongside more established
writers from across Canada, the United States and beyond, and in introducing
new writers to the local community. Through over six hundred and fifty
publications so far, the press has been fortunate to be able to be part of a
number of early publications by now-established writers, including Stephanie
Bolster, Gil McElroy, Stan Rogal, Natalee Caple, Stephen Brockwell, Michael
Holmes, Clare Latremouille, derek beaulieu, Pearl Pirie, Jay MillAr, Marcus
McCann and Anita Dolman.
Over the past eighteen months alone,
above/ground press has produced limited-edition poetry chapbooks by three
Governor General’s Award winners—Phil Hall (including a section of his
award-winning Killdeer, as well as a collaboration he did with
Australian poet Andrew Burke), George Elliott Clarke and Robert Kroetsch—and
other titles by Kingston’s first poet laureate Eric Folsom, and Pulitzer
Prize-winning American poet Rae Armantrout, as well as Marilyn Irwin, Amanda
Earl, Barry McKinnon, derek beaulieu, Michael Blouin, Deanna Young, j/j
hastain, Fenn Stewart, Kathryn MacLeod, Sarah Mangold, Stephen Brockwell, Jay
MillAr, Robert Hogg, Paige Ackerson-Kiely, Rob Manery, Monty Reid, Ken Norris,
Lea Graham, Ben Ladouceur, Dennis Cooley, Hugh Thomas, Camille Martin and
Shannon Maguire.
Cameron Anstee
lives and writes in Ottawa ON where he runs Apt. 9 Press and is pursuing a PhD
in English Literature at the University of Ottawa. Recent chapbooks have been
published by above/ground press, The Emergency Response Unit, and St. Andrew
Books. He blogs on things Ottawa, literary, and ephemeral at www.cameronanstee.wordpress.com.
Praise for Frank St.:
“Cameron Anstee’s
serial poem Frank St. (March 2010, $4.00) is a study of house, history
(‘in 1878 this address / was at the city limit’), art and self. He moves
through his new/old home precisely but gently, instructing himself and us how
to relax, ‘learn to stop,’ in order to then ‘see better, poem.’”
This is Anstee’s second above/ground press
title, after the collection Frank St. (2010).
Marilyn Irwin partook in
two of Ottawa poet rob mclennan’s poetry workshops in 2010, and graduated from
Algonquin College’s Creative Writing Certificate Program this Spring. Marilyn
self-published her first chapbook for
when you pick daisies (2010) which was immediately re-issued by above/ground
press. Extrapolated fragments of her
musings can be found in issues of Bywords,
Bywords Quarterly Journal, ottawater
and Peter F. Yacht Club.
Praise for for
when you pick daisies:
“…out
of this complexity grows linguistic beauty.”
Amanda Earl’s poems appear
most recently or are forthcoming in the Puritan, fillingStation, Rampike,
In/Words Magazine, & ripple(s): a postcard press. Her chapbooks have
been published by above/ground press, BookThug, Chapbook Publisher, Free Poetry
For, Laurel Reed Books & Puddles of Sky Press. Amanda is the managing
editor of Bywords.ca & the Bywords Quarterly Journal, &
the (fallen) angel of AngelHousePress. For more information please visit www.amandaearl.com
or follow her on Twitter @KikiFolle.
Praise for Eleanor:
There is something
musical here. something that, like Jeanette Armstrong’s “Winds,” operates like wind
chimes, notes hitting and resounding. Earl’s text jousts images and
expectations, mundane glasses emptying, histories, feuds, mostly
self-referential, domestic images, but still enough surprise here to keep me
grasping through.
Stephen Brockwell
is the author of four trade collections of poems. Fruitfly Geographic won
the 2004 Archibald Lampman Award for the best book of poetry by an Ottawa
writer. His Excerpts from Impossible Books is an interminable work in
progress. Brockwell runs the small business www.brockwellit.com from his
basement, borrowed office space and coffee shops.
Praise for Excerpts from Impossible Books:
The Crawdad Cantos:
Mark
McCawley, Fresh Raw Cuts
Praise for Impossible Books (the Carleton
Installment):
“Stephen Brockwell’s
‘Impossible Books project’ (this above/ground book is its second installment)
is an ongoing series of individual poems that are presented as excerpts from
imagined ‘impossible’ books. The impossible books of this installment range
from Prime Minister’s Nursery Rhymes for Insolent Children, to the Evangelical
Handbook for Engineers, to Metonymies: Poems by Objects Owned by Illustrious
People, and Pindaric Odes to the Objects of Science, among others. This brief
collection of ten poems is imaginative and surprising on every page.
For further information on the authors, event
or the press, contact rob mclennan at 613 239 0337 or rob_mclennan@hotmail.com
