new from above/ground press: Other Brief Discourses, by Abby Paige

Other Brief Discourses

Abby Paige
$4

I. Embarking

Should my point of departure be the dust

to which I will return? Or the water of which

I am composed? Or

I’m told the poet asked, are birds free

from the chains of the skyway?

So I depart from air.

One accustomed to the sea takes not long

to trust air’s buoyancy.

So let breath be

the place we start from. Let the sun

rise in our wake and our ship shudder

as we descend through cloud.

The river below, a forked black tongue

darting through the snow, I named

for the patron of cooks, put to death on a grill.

The maps I drew four centuries ago

I compare with land from the vantage of birds

and am not dissatisfied.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Abby Paige is a poet, performer, and freelance writer whose work has appeared in the United States and Canada, most recently in ottawater #9. Her solo show, Piecework: When We Were French, has toured in New England and Quebec. She received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a former Fulbright scholar.

[Abby Paige launches Other Brief Discourses in Ottawa at TheFactory Reading Series on February 22 alongside Brecken Hancock, Hugh Thomas and Michael Blouin]

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: ZOOM, by Stephen Cain

ZOOM

Stephen Cain

$4

Crowds

hello men hello men left it liminal

women you scale it out

bomb ball a bungle

a chasm glass toll a fire of film flimsy

hello minuscule Pluto crash

rally an adagio

Andre man sax as a flu men float boat at all

feel abashed fall jade a folly die

flu emboss

zero bad add rad day

gray lewd gig load a god dash

glue glad men Golgotha road a gland rib-eye

hello men hello men left it liminal

women you scale it out

bomb ball bungle

a chasm glass toll a fire of film blister

hello minuscule Pluto crash

rally an adagio

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

January 2013

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Zoom is a reverse-homophonic translation of sound poems by Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, Aleksei Kruchenykh, Paul Scheerbart, and Claude Gauvreau.

Stephen Cain is the author of five collections of poetry, the most recent being I Can Say Interpellation (Bookthug, 2011).

This is Stephen Cain's third above/ground press chapbook, after CIRCA DIEM (1997) and the collaborative  Hijinks: A Sequence from Double Helix (with Jay MillAr; 2003).

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: The Art of Plumbing, by Brecken Hancock

The Art of Plumbing

Brecken Hancock

$4

Beforetimes. Uranus culls his gilded camels and bathes in the Baikal, the Zaysan, the Lanao. He wades in low-lying planes; spas in every rain-filled meteor crater. Sixty-fourth parallel, March. Sunlight fires a salvo off his lover’s collarbone. Gaia’s slums hoard water, asmat mud and patches of pubic forest. Her valleys are aqueducts feeding antechambers of lakes: caravans of bathtubs clawing overland talon by talon according to deep time, glacial wake, geochemistry. Lake Agassiz Basin. Morass hollow, calderas. Gathering my hair off the pillow, I rise from the spill on our sheets to bathe.

Oceanus—Titan of the brackish Atlantic, master of Ketos and Kraken, conductor of sky to land. Half man, half serpent; horizon marks the fix. Biceps of accumulated cloud ceiling the sea. He’ll rip your ship apart for a violin. His tail’s a woman’s braid dropped deep. And over its mucus and muscled carbuncles, legions of mollusc princes ascend, knot by knot by octopus tapis—crabs’ pincers and half-spumed clams—through bergs of cloying oil slick, plagues of dross, black-blooming purple, and a drowned Cassiopeia of phosphor. Abyssss. Germs fermenting in the kegs of their slow-moving shells. Up through the punch holes of Poseidon’s belt, out through the tunnels of his prosthetic manifold, svelte pipelines, immaculate taps—an invertebrate army comes to kiss the slit where my tail splits, two legs.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

January 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Brecken Hancock’s poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in CV2, Grain, Arc, The Fiddlehead, and Studies in Canadian Literature. Originally from Middle Lake, Saskatchewan, she’s since lived in Fredericton, Reykjavik, and Kyoto, but she’s also been home to hold residencies at The Bruno Arts Bank, a converted historical building in rural Saskatchewan. Her first full-length manuscript of poems, Broom Broom, is forthcoming with Coach House Books. She has work in the latest issue of ottawater and poems in an upcoming issue of Event. Brecken lives and walks dogs in Ottawa

[Brecken Hancock launches The Art of Plumbing in Ottawa at The Factory Reading Series on February 22 alongside Abby Paige, Hugh Thomas and Michael Blouin]

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: Scientia, by Jordan Abel

Scientia
Jordan Abel
$4

Oecanthus ladon

All colour terms are reduced, cut short, not the usual
length. Acephalous: without a head. Those muscid ad-
ditions that give the glandular structure that branching
apex. Abrupt or hidden. Rubbed or scraped. The third
abductor extending past the honeycomb of the op-tic tract.
The tapering surface made white like a siphon.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2013
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jordan Abel is a First Nations writer whose work has been published in CV2, Grain and Canadian Literature. He is a contributing editor for Geist and a former editor for PRISM international. His first collection of poetry is forthcoming from Talonbooks. Visit him at www.jordanabel.ca.

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.

some author activity: Anstee, McKinnon, mclennan, Landman, eckhoff, Hall + Bowering,

Over on his mighty blog, Cameron Anstee (briefly) discusses a couple of things, including above/ground press, and his poems in the new issue of ottawater; the first of a four-part interview with Barry McKinnon, conducted by rob mclennan, is now online at the filling Station magazine website, as an extra to their new issue focusing on Prince George BC poets and poetics; Seth Landman has something new in HTMLGIANT; kevin mcpherson eckhoff is offering a series of what he calls "inside fridge painting originals"; and Phil Hall and George Bowering perform along with many others at The Al Purdy Show in Toronto, February 6, 2013, as a celebration of poetry and music to benefit to the Al Purdy A-Frame.

The Factory Reading Series presents: Hugh Thomas, Michael Blouin, Brecken Hancock + Abby Paige,

The Factory Reading Series presents:

Hugh Thomas (Fredericton)
Michael Blouin (Kemptville)
Brecken Hancock (Ottawa)
+ Abby Paige (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, February 22, 2013;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern (upstairs)
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale)

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), BookThug (Mutations, 2004), and above/ground press (Opening the Dictionary, 2011), which was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Franzlations, the imaginary Kafka parables, a book of variations on Kafka texts, a joint project with Gary Barwin and Craig Conley, was published by New star Books in 2011.

Michael Blouin‘s critically acclaimed first novel Chase and Haven (Coach House) was a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and won the 2009 ReLit Award. In 2007 his first collected poetry I’m not going to lie to you (Pedlar Press) was a finalist for the Lampman Scott Award. In 2011 Pedlar Press released Wore Down Trust, which won the Lampman Poetry Award in 2012. He was a finalist for the 2010 CBC Literary Awards and his work has been published in many literary magazines includingDescant, Arc, The Antigonish Review, Event, Queen’s Quarterly, The New Quarterly, and The Fiddlehead. He is currently completing work on his second novel and is represented internationally by Westwood Creative Artists. His collaborative chapbook with Elizabeth Rainer, let lie/ (above/ground press, 2011), was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol Chapbook Award.

Brecken Hancock's [pictured, above] poetry and essays have appeared in Grain, CV2, The Fiddlehead, PRISM, Arc, and Studies in Canadian Literature. Originally from Middle Lake, Saskatchewan, she's since lived in Fredericton, Reykjavik, and Kyoto, but she's also been home to hold residencies at The Bruno Arts Bank, a converted historical building in rural Saskatchewan. Her first full-length manuscript of poems, Broom Broom, is forthcoming with Coach House Books. She lives and walks dogs in Ottawa.

She will be launching her chapbook The Art of Plumbing (above/ground press).

Abby Paige is a poet, performer, and freelance writer whose work has appeared in the United States and Canada, most recently in ottawater #9. Her solo show, Piecework: When We Were French, has toured in New England and Quebec. She received her MFA from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a former Fulbright scholar.

She will be launching her chapbook Other Brief Discourses (above/ground press).