new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #21!

The Peter F Yacht Club #21
edited by rob mclennan
[see the link here for information on the previous issue]
[see the link here for a history of the publication]
$6

With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars and irregulars alike, including Cameron Anstee, Steve Artelle, Jason Christie, Anita Dolman, Amanda Earl and Tom Walmsley, Laurie Fuhr, Marilyn Irwin, Chris Johnson, Michael Lithgow, Karen Massey, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost and Sandra Ridley.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[launching tonight at the peter f yacht club annual regatta/reading/christmas party!]

above/ground press 2015 subscriptions still available!

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

2014 ReLit Shortlists : eckhoff, Rogal + Brockwell,

Congratulations to the three above/ground press authors, along with all else, who made it onto the 2014 ReLit Awards Shortlist: kevin mcpherson eckhoff (Forge, Invisible), Stan Rogal (Love's Not the Way to, BookLand) and Stephen Brockwell (Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books, Mansfield).

some author activity: Earl, Pirie, Prevost, McCann, Lea, McNair, Bolster + Gordon,

Amanda Earl writes about some of the successes of the members of her former writing group -- Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost, Marcus McCann, Nicholas Lea, Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley -- over at her enormously clever blog; Cosmonauts has added, as their podcast #2, Stephanie Bolster discussing poetry and literature; Pearl Pirie has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and Noah Eli Gordon has a new poem up at ink node.

happy seasonal, christmas, holidays, etc;

Cameron Anstee's 2014 Poetry Chapbook Round-up: Baker, Schmaltz, Pirie + Tokar,

Ottawa poet, publisher and blogger (and above/ground press author) Cameron Anstee was good enough to mention Jennifer Baker's Abject Lessons, Eric Schmaltz' Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: keyboard poems, Pearl Pirie's today's woods and Janice Tokar's Arrhythmia as part of his 2014 poetry chapbook round-up. Thanks much!

You can see his original post here, with far more titles than the ones excised.

Jennifer Baker. Abject Lessons (above/ground press). Debut chapbook! Smart, funny, thoughtful, steeped in Ontario (literary) history. Jennifer Baker is growing as a poet and you’ll want to have this earliest one on your shelf in another few years time.

Eric Schmaltz. Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: keyboard poems (above/ground press). Visual/concrete poems build “using a disassembled keyboard, black paint, black ink, and white cardstock.” Engaging visual work taking apart and reconstituting the mechanical means of production. Possibility and order (possibility of order?) set against decay, imprecision, and disorder.

Pearl Pirie. today’s woods (above/ground press). A hugely entertaining re-telling of Goldilocks and the Three Bears that thinks through the implications of each decision in the story, and what the conditions of their home says about their family dynamic.

Janice Tokar. Arrhythmia (above/ground press). Tokar’s first chapbook (I believe). A meditative lyric sequence in 12 parts. I was glad to encounter Tokar’s work for the first time this year, and look forward to seeing where it goes in the future.

Jim McCrary recommends: Megan Kaminski's Wintering Prairie and Touch the Donkey

Jim McCrary recommends a short list of small press publications over at Galatea Resurrects #23 (A Poetry Engagement) including Megan Kaminski's chapbook Wintering Prairie (2014) and the small poetry journal Touch the Donkey. Thanks much, Jim! See his original list here.

some author activity: Robertson, Smith, hastain, Reed + Armantrout,

Lisa Roberton's "Essay on Origins" is included in the new issue of The Rusty Toque; Jessica Smith has a new poem up at Open Letters Monthly; j/j hastain has new work in issue #8 of summer stock; Megan Burns interviews Marthe Reed over at The Conversant; and Rae Armantrout has four new poems up at Jacket2.

"poem" broadside #330 : "Semantic Analysis: Ways" by Jennifer Kronovet

I

                                      alley     highway     path    street     trail      road

[way]                               +             +             +          +          +         +

[backs of buildings]         +              -            +/-         -           -           -

[government]                   -              +            +/-       +/-       +/-     +/-

[intersections]                 +/-           -              -           +          -         +/-

[wilderness]                      -            +/-          +/-         -          +        +/-

[made for cars]                +/-          +             -           +          -          +

[way]=the features these terms share: strips of land, width shorter than length, which one can travel upon.

II

English doesn’t like two words to mean the exact same thing. They become magnetized. Slowly repel each other across sentences in separate rooms in separate towns in the same tongue in different mouths. Then, they warp and alter—a fish growing to the size of its bowl. A fish changing sex when the local males have left. My path, my street, my road, my alley. I own nothing, and yet I own these sentences as traffic in my mind. They own themselves as separate via words’ talent for singularity. For being multiple as roads, alleys, highways, paths, streets, trails. This is how the language owns us: by being specific and general enough to trick us into choosing a way.

Semantic Analysis: Ways
by Jennifer Kronovet
above/ground press broadside #330

Jennifer Kronovet is the author of the poetry collection Awayward. She co-translated The Acrobat, the selected poems of Yiddish writer Celia Dropkin. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in A Public Space, Aufgabe, Best Experimental Writing 2014 (Omnidawn), Bomb, Boston Review, Fence, the PEN Poetry Series, Privacy Policy: The Anthology of Surveillance Poetics (Black Ocean), and elsewhere. She has taught at Beijing Normal University, Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. A native New Yorker, she currently lives in Guangzhou, China.

new from above/ground press: The Doxologies, by Gil McElroy

The Doxologies
Gil McElroy
$4

Some sort
of afternoon. The heat
will soon be
at home
in its touches. There will be
balanced ones, & other ones
resolved in flames, & then
the sky we will be awaiting like this
will become
really rather
dear.

Do not go
away. Do not go
heavy, tired
of something in
this moment that’s going one mile west
of somewhere one mile east. Simple
attentions call, you know, a
garden of days here
in the long now.

2456629

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

and don't forget 2015 subscriptions; still available!

Poems from The Doxologies appeared in Touch the Donkey #1 and #3, and online. See a recent interview with him on the series on the Touch the Donkey blog.

Gil McElroy is a poet, independent curator, and visual arts critic. He is the author of four books of poetry, a non-fiction memoir, and a collection of essays on visual art. In 2013, he was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award. McElroy currently lives in Colborne, Ontario.

This is Gil McElroy’s sixth above/ground press chapbook, after “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (March, 1999) “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (November, 2005) and Twentieth (February, 2013).

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

The Factory Reading Series : Babineau, Christie + Johnson, January 9, 2015;

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series presents
three readings and chapbook launches by:

Kemeny Babineau (Brantford)
Jason Christie (Ottawa)
+ Chris Johnson (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, January 9, 2015;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Kemeny Babineau [pictured] is a bookseller, micro-presser, and poet living in Brantford Ontario.

He will be launching THE BLACKBURN FILES (2014), his second above/ground press chapbook after AFTER PROGRESS (2012).

Jason Christie is the author of i Robot, Canada Post, and Unknown Actor. His chapbook, Government, published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Jason lives in Ottawa with his wife and their one-year old son.

He will be launching Cursed Objects (2014), his third above/ground press chapbook, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004) and Government (2013).

Chris Johnson is a has-been. He used to be an editor at In/Words Magazine & Press. He used to be a student at Carleton University. His poetry has previously appeared on bywords.ca, The Steel Chisel, The Peter F. Yacht Club and in a few nice little zines.

Rebecca Anne Banks reviews Stephen Brockwell's Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films (2014)

Rebecca Anne Banks was good enough to review Stephen Brockwell's Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films (2014) over at Subterranean Blue Poetry. Thanks, Rebecca! See the original review here.

Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films: a brilliant read from Stephen Brockwell and above/ground press.

by: Subterranean Blue Poetry
Title: Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films
Author: Stephen Brockwell
Publisher: above/ground press
Date of Publication: 2014 

Page Count: 11

“The sound of silence” by Paul Simon plays quietly in the grey lilt of a winter afternoon. Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films is a brilliant read by Canadian Poet Stephen Brockwell, born in Montreal and living in Ottawa. He has 4 published Chapbooks with above/ground press and has written 5 books of poetry, including Fruitfly Geographic (2004) which won the Archibald Lampman Award. He runs a small information technology company.

As This Writer goes to pick up the Chapbook to read, the title, “Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films” I am reminded of the movie “Dr. Strangelove” and all the slapstick paranoia associated with the nuclear weapons age. The series of poems are presented in 3 parts, the first perhaps a series of files from someone’s impressions of old film reels of nuclear tests, the second is titled “Inaudible Dispatches from Radio News” and the third is titled “Wednesday Morning, 3 AM”.

The first poems begin, he is looking at a girl, perhaps a love interest and something is wrong. Then the poems move to an image of a burning tree and perhaps the image of a man before the catastrophe or was it a trick of the light of a photo? Images of desert flowers, the sun, stars and the idea of digging with a heavy water spade. The images unfold in intrigue, mysterious, of the desert, presenting post-apocalypse landscape, someone hovering and observing. As if questioning a presentation of violence that should not be, perhaps a response on a personal level as well as a response to geopolitics and nuclear warfare.

“0800055,
No Date,
“Let’s Face It”,
9:35-10:04

Her hair.
Say that – all the voices
Murmur.

What skin tone
adjustments, I can’t
imagine – who could?
No categories for that
declassification, too much
gamma
to see it.

And of the trees,
what survival?
Match stick does not
survival make
as beautiful as sunsets.

There are no creams
for alpha particles.”

and,

“0800017,
February 18-May 15, 1955,
Operation Teapot

So many objectives:

desert flowers,
mountain sunset,
cup and horizon
at the moment
of creation.

Intimate art
of dust, sand
made glass,
heart lens

of the perishable
mood, desire,
its pitch and yaw,
an orientation

flexible, but its progeny
vivid, immediate,
blood-stopping.

The second presentation of “Inaudible Dispatches from Radio News” is a running presentation of “what if” in the news with counterpoints of dialogue as if a send up of the artefact of culture that is war.

The third presentation of “Wednesday Morning, 3 AM” is a series of sentences, as if playing on the theme of silence after a bomb has been dropped. The idea of silencing, an ending after devastation, the enforcement of a power paradigm, the idea of muzzling, the end of freedom, the idea of death.

“Nothing more silencing than loss of employment in the cathedral ceilings of the boxmall.”

“Nothing more silencing than the derisive laughter of intimate companions you have never met but who have eyes and ears.”

“Intoxication seldom begins with silence, frequently erupts into deafening slurs and always ends with silence.”

“Nothing more silencing than a hand over a mouth.”

The writing immediately draws you in, the style minimalist, blunt and spare in the first presentation morphing into poetic prose with a staccato delivery. As if borrowing from the Beat Poets and the war misery of the legacy of T.S. Eliot (The Wasteland), the disconnected thought forms build a picture of emotional and perhaps actual violence. As if a reminder of the devastation of nuclear warfare and the out of control cursehold, the stranglehold of love lives and geopolitics in North America. Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films is a study in truth and violence, a classic rendering that addresses the issues of the post-modern world as it morphs into the New Age.

Available @ above/ground press.

some author activity: Prevost, Adams, Rogal, Earl + the 2014 Indie Market,

Roland Prevost is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; "The Poem as Archive: A Conversation Between Carrie Olivia Adams + Kristina Marie Darling" is now online at The The; Stan Rogal is interviewed over at Open Book: Toronto; Amanda Earl has some visual poems up at Extreme Writing Community; and Ryan Pratt was good enough to mention the press in his report on the recent 2014 Indie Market organized by Meet the Presses!

new from above/ground press: transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress, by derek beaulieu

transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress
an essay by derek beaulieu
$6

if poetry is going to reclaim even a shred of relevancy for a contemporary audience then poets must become competitive for your readership and viewership    as graphic design  advertising and contemporary design culture expand to redefine and rewrite how we understand communication  poetry has become ruefully ensconced in the traditional    if  as brion gysin argued  writing is fifty years behind painting then poetry is even further behind contemporary design    the vast majority of poets are trapped in the 20th (if not the 19th) century  hopelessly reiterating tired tropes    mcdonalds golden arches  the nike swoosh and the apple logo best represent the contemporary descendants of the modernist poem    poet lew welch famously wrote raids ubiquitous advertising slogan raid kills bugs dead as a copywriter at advertising firm foote  cone and belding in 1966    los angeles-based poet vanessa place argues that

today we are of an age that understands corporations are people too and poetry is the stuff of placards. or vice versa.   

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

and don't forget 2015 subscriptions; still available!

cover image by amaranth borsuk

derek beaulieu is the author or editor of 15 books, the most recent of which are Please, No more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2013) and kern (Les Figues press, 2014). He is the publisher of the acclaimed no press and is the visual poetry editor at UBUWeb. Beaulieu has exhibited his work across Canada, the United States and Europe and currently teaches at the Alberta College of Art + Design. He is the 2014-2016 Poet Laureate of Calgary, Canada.

This is derek beaulieu’s sixth above/ground press chapbook, after an issue of the long poem magazine STANZAS (“calcite gours 1-19,” issue no. 38), the interview chapbook ECONOMIES OF SCALE: rob mclennan interviews derek beaulieu on NO PRESS / derek beaulieu interviews rob mclennan on above/ground press (2012) and single-author chapbooks “A? any questions? (1998), [Dear Fred] (2004) and HOW TO EDIT, Chapter A. (ALBERTA SERIES #8; 2008).

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

the return of The Peter F. Yacht Club regatta/reading/christmas party!

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan;

The Peter F. Yacht Club annual regatta/christmas party & issue launch for The Peter F Yacht Club #21: edited/produced by rob mclennan

at The Carleton Tavern (upstairs)
233 Armstrong Avenue (at Parkdale Market)
Monday, December 29, 2014
doors 7pm, reading 7:30pm

with readings from yacht club regulars and irregulars alike;

DUSIE #17 : Reed, Kaminksi, Poe, Prevost, Sand, Reid, Shapira, Simpson,

Dusie #17, lovingly guest-edited by Marthe Reed, features a slew of work by above/ground press authors, including Megan Kaminski, Deborah Poe, Roland Prevost, Kaia Sand, Monty Reid, Kate Shapira, Natalie Simpson and Reed herself, as well as a host of others.

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

some author activity: Young, Tucker, Adams, Smith + Hajnoczky

Deanna Young has a poem posted as part of the "Sunday poem" series over at the Vehicule Press blog; Aaron Tucker has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; Carrie Olivia Adams has a new poem posted up at The Design Observer Group; Jessica Smith has new work up at Entropy; and Helen Hajnoczky recently posted "earknowseye," a video poem for a. rawlings.

Cordite Poetry Review: Robertson, beaulieu, Abel, Christie, Bolster + Barton,

As part of the collaboration between Arc Poetry Magazine and Cordite Poetry Review, the new issue of Cordite, "Oh Canada," includes work by a variety of above/ground press authors including Lisa Robertson, derek beaulieu, Jordan Abel, Jason Christie, Stephanie Bolster and John Barton, as well as work by non-above/ground press authors (as yet) Margaret Christakos, Stephen Collis, Sharon Thesen, Sachiko Murakami, Sonnet L'Abbé, Sandy Pool, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Aisha Sasha John and much much much more. Go read it now!

above/ground press participates in The Capilano Review's epic kickstarter!

above/ground press has donated a mound of chapbooks for The Capilano Review's epic fundraiser! For a donation for $50 or more, you can pick up a set of fourteen above/ground press chapbooks. Only three sets available!

Each set includes: Gregory Betts, Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin (2014), rob mclennan, How the alphabet was made (2014), Rae Armantrout, Rituals (2013), Fenn Stewart, An OK Organ Man (2012), Robert Manery, Richter-Rauzer Variations (2012), Mark Cochrane, Cat. (2012), Shannon Maguire, Vowel Wolves & Other Knots (2011), Ken Norris, GREEN WIND (2010), Natalie Simpson, The writing that should enter into conversation (2005), ryan fitzpatrick, Adolesce (2005), George Bowering (as "Ellen Field"), A, You're Adorable (2004), Meredith Quartermain, "Highway 99" (STANZAS #35) (2003), Donato Mancini, @phabet (2003), bpNichol, KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch (2002).

some author activity: Schmaltz, Kaminski, Martin + mclennan,

Eric Schmaltz writes a report on the Avant-Canada conference recently held at Brock U; Megan Kaminski is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Camille Martin is nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her work in Posit; and rob mclennan has ten new poems in the second issue of Pallaksch.Pallaksch., edited by Elizabeth Robinson and Steven Seidenberg.

Jason Christie reads an excerpt of Government (2013)

Jason Christie recently posted this short video/reading from Government (2013), his above/ground press title shortlisted for this year's bpNichol Chapbook Award (which is still available, as is his new title, Cursed Objects). You can see the entire shortlist here, by the by. We offer our congratulations to Christine Leclerc, who won for Oilywood (Nomados, 2013)!

Ryan Pratt reviews Touch the Donkey #s 1-3

Ryan Pratt reviews the first three issues of Touch the Donkey (one, two, three) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks much, Ryan! Of course, copies of all three are still available, as are subscriptions (whether separately, or as part of the annual above/ground press subscriptions).

some author activity: Hajnoczky, Hancock, Ursuliak, Adams + Armantrout,

Helen Hajnoczky has five new poems up at Lemonhound; Brecken Hancock is interviewed by Ariel Gordon over at The Jane Day Reader; Emily Ursuliak has a new essay posted as part of the "On Writing" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Carrie Olivia Adams has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and Rae Armantrout has some new poems posted in print and online in Lana Turner #7

Frank Davey reviews Pearl Pirie's today's woods (2014)

Poet and critic Frank Davey was good enough to review Pearl Pirie's today's woods (2014) over at his blog. Thanks much, Frank! Usually we have to wait weeks or months for a review, and he posted one before I even finished sending out subscriber copies!

See his original post here.

Today’s Woods, by Pearl Pirie. Ottawa: above/ground press, 2014. 6 pp.

This very small chapbook came in the mail yesterday along with several other subscription items from rob mclennan’s also small but many-windowed publishing emporium. Once past the cryptic title, this one is more than worth the price of subscription.

The long lines of Today’s Woods retell the story of the Three Bears’ apocryphal encounter with Goldilocks – including several non-Goldilocks versions that preceded the 1918 one that turned out to be “just right.” And Pirie’s lines are long – editor mclennan works hard to confine them to their pages, reducing all four margins, and in one case running a line across the gutter onto the adjacent page. So there's a lot of words for only 4 pages.

The retelling filters the familiar Eurobear story through the “woods” of both current cultural politics and the physical and behavioral attributes of Canadian grizzly bears. Who cooked the porridge, she asks – was it mom or dad? – which do the details of the story imply? Why did the bears go for a walk and allow their bowls of porridge to reach their varying temperatures? Would bears so skillful as to be able to cook porridge be unwise enough to let it cool? Why is each bear “oblivious to all but own distress. no apparent care about tampering with child’s objects, only each to self, my chair! my bed!”? Is Goldilocks a runaway? Does her occupation of baby-grrrl bear's bed constitute a symbolic sexual assault? Is she a colonial home-invader in a house of indigenous non-white bears? “side note: these are not polar bears in cultural transference to Canada. culturally coded against dark-toned dark-haired bears to be threatening.” The bear parents use the incident to teach their daughter that “she must be self-reliant because humans are running feral”. Like a reality-TV star, Goldilocks labours to believe her own implausible excuses. “Goldy went to therapy to talk about” taking “refuge in good conscience in what she thought / was an abandoned cottage, / despite the fresh cooking scent / and fresh bouquets on table”.

But Goldy cannot get out of the woods in this skillfully and amusingly critical parable -- because those woods were darker and more complicated even back in 1918 than we readers first noted. Dark and complicated woods, which in Pirie's interrogative narrative become fresh woods too.

On the last page of the chapbook is a note that Pirie has a larger book coming from Toronto’s BookThug next spring. Could be interesting.

FD

The Factory Reading Series : Massey, Pirie + Irwin, December 12, 2014;

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series presents
three readings and chapbook launches by:

Karen Massey (Ottawa)
Pearl Pirie (Ottawa)
+ Marilyn Irwin (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, December 12, 2014;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Karen Massey [pictured] 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 Bywords.ca, ottawater, Bukowski on Wry, and in Là Bloom, special Bloomsday issue of the Found Poetry Review featuring poetry sourced from James Joyce’s Ulysses.

She will be launching the chapbook Strange Fits of Beauty & Light (above/ground press, 2014), her second above/ground press chapbook, after Bullet (1999).

Pearl Pirie’s next collection, Pet Radish, Shrunken is with BookThug, Spring 2015. Host of Literary Landscape on CKCUfm.com, she has organized Ottawa’s Tree Seed Workshops since 2009 and gives workshops and talks on poetry for various organizations. She blogs and photographs Ottawa’s rich, amazing literary scene. www.pearlpirie.com

She will be launching the chapbook today's woods (above/ground press, 2014), her fifth above/ground press publication and third chapbook, after vertigoheel for the dilly (2014) and oath in the boathouse (2008).

Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published by above/ground press, Arc Poetry Magazine (where she is a Contributing Editor), Bywords, Dusie, In/Words, and New American Writing, among others.
A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative Writing program and winner of Arc’s 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, she has three chapbooks: for when you pick daisies (2010), flicker (2012), and little nothings (2012). for when you pick daisies was reprinted in the Chaudiere Books collection Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013.

She will be launching the chapbook tiny (In/Words, 2014).

Neal Armstrong reviews Eric Schmaltz's Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: Keyboard Poems (2014) and Stephen Cain's ZOOM (2013) in Broken Pencil #65

Neal Armstrong was good enough to review Eric Schmaltz's Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: Keyboard Poems (2014) and Stephen Cain's ZOOM (2013) (both of which are still available) in Broken Pencil #65. Thanks, Neal!

This is actually the second review of Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: Keyboard Poems, after Ryan Pratt was good enough to review such over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

Mitsumi Elec. Co. Ltd.: Keyboard Poems
Eric Schmaltz

This chapbook is kind of boring, but in an interesting way. Maybe that's not a good way to start a review, but it's true.
    The poems in this collection are actually little visual art pieces made with a disassembled keyboard and black paint. Calling them poems is even a stretch, because there is very little that can be read; a few words and a few letters. This process violently brings the digital world into physical space, reminding us of the abstract visual quality of printed language. The page becomes a field, a space ripe for exploration.
    Schmaltz plays with chaos and order, alternately presenting Dionysian smudges and intricate latticework mandalas in an Apollonian mode.
    These pages are wry works of minimalism and the book contains no semantic content besides an ironic little note about safe typing posture and practices, hence why I called it boring. But maybe that's the wrong way to go into it -- these are meditations on the ambience of language and the tools we use to express ourselves.
    This zine should be approached with a mindset of contemplation, like a poet yogi waiting for the dance of the cosmos, perfect in its imperfections, to reveal itself in a quiet moment. It is compulsively re-readable, hypnotic like looking at a fire or the stars at night.

Zoom
Stephen Cain

This is an excellent collection of poetry for people who don't care if the words make sense. Cain plays with sound, sight, and meaning in a chapbook that harkens back to the Dada days of early modernism. He engages with sound poems by the likes of Kurt Schwitters and Claude Gauvreau in a process of reverse-homophonic translation. He listens to poems that lack semantic meaning and finds words in them. It's all quite fun.
    Compare Hugo Ball's lines "zitti kitillabi billabi billabi / zikko di zakkobam / fisch kitti bisch" with Cain's "city kitty liable billy's bi billy's bi / sicko the psycho man / fish kitty bisque." The transfer from meaningless sounds into words with definitions pits sense against nonsense. Cain is a man drunk on word splitting and hollering joyful absurdities. His joxtapositions are rapid and twitchy and unexpected. The work demands to be read aloud.
    Cain is a professor at York University, where he has initiated many a student into the secrets of Dada, Surrealism, and the avant-garde. This guy is deep in the history of experimental poetry, and thus finds himself in line with innovative Canadians like The Four Horsemen, Chris Dewdney, and Christian Bok. His work strikes a balance between thoughtfulness and playfulness that is appealing even when it doesn't make a lick of sense. Highly recommended to weirdos.

some author activity: Reed, Prevost, Pirie, Irwin + beaulieu,

Marthe Reed has a new poem up at TRUCK; Roland Prevost and Pearl Pirie read today at 2pm in Kemptville, Ontario; Marilyn Irwin has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series at dusie; and derek beaulieu is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: THE BLACKBURN FILES, by Kemeny Babineau

THE BLACKBURN FILES
Kemeny Babineau
$3

The House Next Door


You need another
text to work of off.

Literature
is a building of a building
building a building.

A tenement
square. Attended
attending, intent
& sediment.

The windows, with ovals
Line upon line
                           Movement
moving meant.

-

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

Cover image by R.B. Kitaj

Kemeny Babineau is a bookseller, micro-presser, and poet living in Brantford Ontario.

This is Kemeny Babineau’s second above/ground press chapbook after AFTER PROGRESS (2012).

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

above/ground press at Meet the Presses' 2014 Indie Market!

Saturday, November 22, 11:30 am – 5 pm

The Tranzac Club, Toronto

The Meet the Presses collective presents the 2014 Indie Literary Market, where handpicked literary presses and magazines stand behind their work!

The Market will also feature the announcement of the winner of the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award! See the shortlist for 2014 here.


Participating publishers and mags tentatively include:
above/ground press (Ottawa) • Mansfield Press (Toronto) • Proper Tales Press (Cobourg) • Pedlar Press (St. John’s) • Rampike (Windsor) • Apt. 9 Press (Ottawa) • Porcupine’s Quill (Erin) • Cough (Toronto) • Baseline Press (London) • Serif of Nottingham (Hamilton) • Frog Hollow (Victoria) • Coach House Books (Toronto) • Laurel Reed Books (Mt. Pleasant) • Gesture Press (Toronto) • Thee Hellbox Press (Kingston) • BookThug (Toronto) • Taddle Creek  (Toronto) • Sunnyoutside Press (Buffalo) • Little Brother Magazine (Toronto) • Biblioasis (Windsor) • Wolsak and Wynn (Hamilton) • Underwhich Editions (Toronto) • Imago/Red Iron (Toronto) • Junction Books (Toronto) • Phafours (Ottawa) • words(on)pages (Toronto) • OutWrites (Toronto)

Facebook event page here.

Scott Bryson reviews Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) in Broken Pencil #65

Scott Bryson was good enough to review Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) (both of which are still available) in Broken Pencil #65. Thanks, Scott!

This is actually the second review of After Swann, after Ryan Pratt was good enough to review such, and the third for Otherwise Smooth, following reviews by Ryan Pratt and Pearl Pirie.

We might not agree with Bryson's take on these works (apparently he's never heard of "constraint-driven poetry" before), but very much appreciate his attention. But the poetry chapbook reviews in Broken Pencil always make me wonder: if the reviewers don't seem to really understand poetry at all (there seems a tone of dismissal in much of Bryson's comments on the work in these chapbooks), why do they bother to write reviews?

After Swann
Marthe Reed

The words and phrases that constitute this series of poems were culled and collaged from Swann's Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time series of novels. Repurposing text from what Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "one of the supreme achievements of modern fiction," is never a bad way to start a poetry collection.
    The way Marthe Reed -- New York resident and chapbook publisher -- uses that text, however, may appear peculiar at first glance. She makes no attempt to vary the style of the verse she presents in After Swann; each entry consists of 10-12 three-line stanzas, and lines rarely go on for more than four words. These restrictions are more an indication of a singular vision, than a lack of creativity; she refers to her verse as "constraint-driven poetry" -- a style in which the author voluntarily applies limitations or rules, in an effort to spark inspiration.
    As a result of the succinct nature of Reed's lines, the segments of an individual poem never completely coalesce into a definable event. From time to time, you're awarded a brief flash of comprehension. A vague scene forms, then quickly fades into the next: "she suggested / my dress wasn't ready / some excuse // charming / she would jump in / and hold him in her arms." After Swann, in this way, pays homage to a crucial element of Proust's Swann's Way: involuntary memory -- when a particular cue evokes an unexpected recollection of a past event.
    A decent chunk of this, thematically, appears to deal with femininity and the tribulations and desires at play in the lives of women, 100 (or more) years ago. Those who've read Swann's Way will likely see more substance in this than those who haven't


Otherwise Smooth
Rosmarie Waldrop

The tone of a written work has likely never been set as quickly as it is in the first sentence of this collection: "How daily my life."
    Otherwise Smooth, an assemblage of nine prose fragments, rarely strays from that initial promise of despondency. There are tangible losses -- "a sister's death, a friend's," and the resulting funerals -- but Rosmarie Waldrop is more interested in the passing of what could be called the now-component of time, or what she describes as "the immediate between the ticks of the watch." Events and chances constantly evade her grasp; everything is instantly history: "A cosmic storm slips between my fingers... only once it's past I latch on."
    Language and cognition are to blame for the loss of immediate perception, Waldrop suggests: "Only once we've said 'I' with all that follows do we become aware of pure experience... But then it's already over... pronouns do not refer to anything in space and time except the utterance that contains them." This clearly isn't cheery material, but a nugget of hope does creep in to lighten the closing paragraph: "And yet. Already so many pear trees blossom."
    Otherwise Smooth reads as a complete cycle, with no loose ends, and Waldrop stays loyal to her theme throughout. It tends to wallow into heady territory, but always manages a tactful balance between poetic language and comprehensibility.