new from above/ground press: Strange Fits of Beauty & Light, by Karen Massey

Strange Fits of Beauty & Light
Karen Massey
$4

Sting Me


The bees are
Busy murmurous birds, are
Pure mead, are
Tiny emerald flames, are
Small red hats or parasols, are
Jocund sunshine laughing, are
Shimmers in the wind;
Tough little lacquered summer wings

Source: “April Time” or “Nesting Time” or “When
the Bobolink Comes”  May 4, 1894

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

and don't forget 2015 subscriptions; still available!

Karen Massey lives in Ottawa, between the canal and the river. Her poetry has won numerous prizes and been published in literary journals and anthologies including Decalogue: Ten Ottawa Poets (Chaudiere Books). Her erasure poetry has appeared in anthologies including Bukowski Erasure Poetry Anthology (Silver Birch Press, 2014) and online at the Chaudiere Books blog, Bywords.ca, ottawater, Bukowski on Wry, and in Là Bloom, the special Bloomsday issue of the Found Poetry Review featuring poetry sourced from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

The source for these erasure poems is Lampman’s Sonnets 1884-1899: Complete Sonnets of Archibald Lampman. Edited and with an introduction by Margaret Coulby Whitridge. Ottawa: Borealis Press, 1976.

Archibald Lampman was born in Morpeth, Ontario in 1861, came to Ottawa in 1883, and died here in 1899. Whitridge called him “Canada’s most outstanding lyrical poet and exponent of the sonnet.”

[Karen Massey launches Strange Fits of Beauty & Light in Ottawa as part of The Factory Reading Series, December 12, 2014, alongside Pearl Pirie and Marilyn Irwin]

This is Karen Massey’s second above/ground press chapbook, after Bullet (1999).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com