above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Stephen Collis

This is the twenty-ninth in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.

As both a poet and an academic, I have the benefit (or the burden) of two offices: one in a corner of my basement at home, where an aging and cobwebbed sliding door leads out into our back yard, and another at my university. Sadly, perhaps, they are both bursting at the seams, with books overflowing shelves and papers piled on desks and spilling onto the floor. Sometimes I pick through the piles that have accumulated, or quickly glance through them as I move things from one pile to another, convinced I am getting something done. The papers are often broadsides, pamphlets, chapbooks and zines, which you really do have to page through to remind yourself what they are (as opposed to the books with their legible spines).

More often than not, as I re-encounter these publications, I turn them over and realise that what I’m holding is an above/ground production. It would be interesting to actually run a count of how many I have: issues of Touch the Donkey and The Peter F. Yacht Club; chapbooks by many poets; and—my favourites really, for their archetypal samizdat simplicity—broadsides and little one-page pamphlets penned by, it would seem, pretty much every poet in this country. These have been arriving in my mail literally for decades now. I don’t know what portion of my archive would be composed of above/ground publications, but it would be considerable. Maybe even embarrassing.

It’s difficult to pick something out and say “this is so above/ground.” Its own sheer profusion is the hallmark of the press. And I have often associated poetry with profusion (as opposed, perhaps, to Pound’s “compression”): poetry is what spreads, is the form of encountering, and moving past, boundaries. Is writing that always seems to be hailing more writing—a continuous script, an unbroken conversation. above/ground is nothing if not profuse, nothing if not continuous. It’s longevity and productivity are legendary and largely unparalleled.  

Also remarkable is the fact that the press’s forms and materials have changed little over the years. There have been no aesthetic leaps, no advances in design, no evolving production values. Simplicity is and always has been the name of the game here. above/ground is “news that stays news.” There was a time when poets could turn to certain journals to get a sense of what was actually happening in poetry at that exact moment. Then certain websites came along to do that (Silliman’s blog, Jacket, Lemonhound). This is exactly what above/ground has always been—and remarkably continues to be, long after many of these others have come and gone, or passed the nadir of their arcs of influence. above/ground is persistence incarnate. It is the pulse of poetry. It’s where it’s at.

How ridiculous would it be if all this—25 years and countless profuse and persistent publications—was the work of one poet-editor. How crazy would that be? No one would ever believe the story. I still don’t (though I feel like I’ve met the guy … maybe he could help me with some storage issues I’m having).

Stephen Collis’s [photo credit: Lawrence Schwartzwald] many books of poetry include The Commons (Talon Books 2008; 2014), On the Material (Talon Books 2010—awarded the BC Book Prize for Poetry), DECOMP (with Jordan Scott—Coach House 2013), and Once in Blockadia (Talon Books 2016—nominated for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature). He has also written a book of essays on the Occupy Movement, and a novel. Almost Islands (Talon Books 2018) is a memoir of his friendship with poet Phyllis Webb, and a long poem, Sketch of a Poem I Will Not Have Written, is in progress. He lives near Vancouver, on unceded Coast Salish Territory, and teaches poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.

Collis is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks, including New Life (2016) and FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN (2017).

Eileen Tabios reviews Amanda Earl's THE BOOK OF MARK (2018)

Eileen Tabios was good enough to provide the first review for Amanda Earl's THE BOOK OF MARK (2018) over at Galatea Resurrects. Thanks so much! You can see her review here.

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Cameron Anstee

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.

I have tried to read every one of the essays posted about above/ground to mark its 25^th anniversary. The through-lines are unsurprising—rob’s generosity, the aesthetic, the distribution, the tireless work—while the unique elements are revealing and fascinating—a first chapbook, something more experimental that didn’t fit in the normal body of someone’s work, an important point of contact to the community when perhaps there wasn’t one before. The more I read, though, the longer I put off trying to write my own contribution to the series as everything I wanted to say was gradually articulated carefully and thoughtfully by someone else, which only goes to show the kindness and support rob has offered to so many over the years. I’ve written about rob before trying to get at some of it and to express my gratitude, and I interviewed him five years ago when the press turned 20 trying to document some of what he’s done.

As a writer, I am deeply grateful for rob’s support. He published two of my chapbooks, I’ve got one entry in the ubiquitous series of poem broadsides, and I’ve been in the pages of more of his magazines, anthologies, and online efforts than I can count.

As a reader, I am astonished by how many things on my shelves have passed through rob’s and above/ground’s hands (and reliable long-arm stapler). I’ve been a subscriber for approximately a decade now (including one year rob gifted me the subscription when I couldn’t afford to keep it up), meaning several hundred chapbooks, poem broadsides, magazines, and other items are somehow held on my bookshelves. Every time I think I’ve managed to wrestle control of the latest above/ground works, a new envelope arrives. No one causes my small press filing system more problems than rob.

The numbers (to say nothing of the energy required) seem more unbelievable every time a new chapbook or four show up in the mail. Is there another chapbook or micro press that has published so many titles, so consistently, for so long? I think when rob is finally done, presumably in another two or three quarter-centuries with a couple thousand more publications credited to the press, it will be an unparalleled act of small press creation.

I hosted a reading last year to mark the 24^th anniversary, and at the time tried to find some comparisons to put the longevity of the press in context. The only one that sticks with me now is that rob was born in 1970, meaning he was 23 when above/ground first appeared, meaning he has now been running the press for two years longer than he didn’t run the press.

I’ll end by saying this, and as a chapbook publisher myself I feel it is the highest praise I can offer—I wish I had published many of the books that rob published with above/ground. You could pick your favourite 25 titles from above/ground, or even just a dozen, and those alone would constitute an impressive list for any chapbook press. There is a great deal to admire and to value in above/ground, as these essays have been arguing collectively. Congratulations, rob, and thanks for all of it!

Cameron Anstee lives and writes in Ottawa ON where he runs Apt. 9 Press and holds a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature from the University of Ottawa. He is the author of one collection of poetry, Book of Annotations (Invisible Publishing, 2018), and editor of The Collected Poems of William Hawkins (Chaudiere Books, 2015).

Anstee is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks, including Frank St. (2010) and Regarding Renewal (2012).

new from above/ground press: Immune to the Sacred, by Stephen Brockwell

Immune to the Sacred
Stephen Brockwell
$5

Sad Child, Happy Child

You were an unhappy child in an unhappy world.
The world hugged you
like a mama anaconda.
You spat in its eyes
and wailed.

You were an unhappy child in a happy world.
You pissed on your privilege
like a drunk on a sacred monument.
The flowers wilted at night;
weeds sprouted in the morning.

You were a happy child in a happy world.
You loved encyclopedias! 
The sparrows chirped
beautiful songs, but sad.
You drew them with crayons for high praise.

You were a happy child in an unhappy world.
You logged an old forest 
to clear a small plot
for your cottage. The flames a beautiful sight,
the stumps a fine source of fuel.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth in the ’80s in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both Véhicule Press, 1982). All of Us Reticent, Here, Together won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in Ottawa in 2017. Brockwell currently operates a small IT consulting company from an office in Ottawa’s By Ward Market.

This is his fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after Marin County Poems (2001), Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment) (2010), Excerpts from Impossible Books: The Crawdad Cantos (2012) and Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films (2014).

[Stephen Brockwell will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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: Nilson, Archer, Robinson + Spinosa,

Geoffrey Nilson is interviewed over at Train : a poetry journal; Sacha Archer has some new work up at X-Peri; Elizabeth Robinson has a new poem up at Bennington Review; and Dani Spinosa is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: Alternative Girders: a collaboration / 2014 - 2017, by Phil Hall and Stuart Kinmond

Alternative Girders
a collaboration / 2014 - 2017
Stuart Kinmond  /  Phil Hall
$5

13.

 To descend   
a staircase     a chair     sits    

 in a chair     warm still     feel                              

another chair     sits     in that one    
 another fits     over that one     rising    

each     plastic     chair-back     leans    

 stuttering     a high curve   
the audience     hoisted    

 into one     ticket stub

one seat     up there     as impossible
 to sit on     as an accent     aigu    

everyone ushered out    

 around     the stack     this denuded   
floor space

 I am not lonely    

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Phil Hall’s [see his 25th anniversary essay here] most recent books are Guthrie Clothing: The Poetry of Phil Hall – A Selected Collage (Sir Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2015), Conjugation (BookThug, 2016), & Le pluvier kildir (translated by Rose Després / Prise de parole, 2015). He lives near Perth Ontario.

Montreal native and long-time architect, Stuart Kinmond has lived in Ottawa since 1984.  He studied painting and printmaking at the Ottawa School of Art in the nineties and began exhibiting in 2000.  He is now a full-time visual artist working in paint, digital media, installation and public art at his Ottawa studio.  He has had numerous solo and group shows in Ottawa/Gatineau, Montreal, Toronto and San Francisco.

This is Phil Hall’s third above/ground press chapbook, after Verulam (2009) and the collaborative Shikibu Shuffle (with Andrew Burke; 2012).

[Phil Hall and Stuart Kinmond will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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

new from above/ground press: A MERCY OF SIGNS, by Billy Mavreas

 
A MERCY OF SIGNS
Billy Mavreas
$4


published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Billy Mavreas [see his 2016 Touch the Donkey interview here] is a Montréal based writer and artist who makes comics, collage, visual poetry and more. His studio and art shop, Monastiraki, is celebrating twenty years of idiosyncrasy in the Mile-End neighbourhood (1998-2108).

[Billy Mavreas will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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

Rusty Priske writes on rob mclennan's It's still winter (2017)

Our pal, Ottawa poet Rusty Priske, was good enough to provide a short review for rob mclennan's It's still winter (2017) over at his blog. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of It's still winter, after Amanda Earl wrote of such as part of a group review over on her own blog. You can see Priske's original review here.

It may seem odd to read a chapbook called ‘It’s still winter’ in August, but hey, that’s just the way it is.

I have said before that while I really like rob, I don’t always ‘get’ his poetry. I don’t mean it is bad – it is absolutely not – I just mean I can’t find my way in.

I mention that because this chapbook it the exact opposite of that. I FELT the words right from the first poem and all the way through. The first poem (‘My daughter is in New York City’) captured a feeling and I never lost it. This book also happens to have my favourite rob poem that I have ever read (though I have read it before), ‘Sentences my mother used’.

Thanks for the book, rob. It was very good. Well done.

new from above/ground press: ESPESANTES, by Stuart Ross

ESPESANTES
Stuart Ross
$5

*

Behind the Dazzler Hotel
in Asunsción

I poured milk into
an old running shoe,

added sixteen
bent staples.

And yet
no woodpecker alighted.

I’d been
bamboozled.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Author’s note
Each of these poems uses as its starting point words or phrases from the poems in Spanish of Sarah Moses’s chapbook As they say (Socios Fundadores, 2016).

Cover art by Kerry Zentner

Stuart Ross is the author of 20 books of poetry, fiction, and essays, and countless chapbooks and ephemera. His most recent books include the novel-in-prose-poems Pockets (ECW Press, 2017) and the poetry collection A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (Wolsak and Wynn, 2016), which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry in 2017. Other titles include the poetry collection A Hamburger in a Gallery (DC Books, 2015), the novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew (ECW Press, 2011), and the story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009). Stuart began his literary career by selling his self-published chapbooks on the streets of Toronto during the 1980s, wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell: Buy My Books.” He was the 2010 Writer in Residence at Queen’s University, and has taught writing workshops across Canada. His poetry has recently been translated into French and Slovenian; other translations, into Nynorsk and Spanish, are in progress. His micropress, Proper Tales, is lurching toward its 40th year of publishing. Stuart lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

[Stuart Ross will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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 25th anniversary essay: Chris Turnbull

This is the twenty-seventh in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.

Twenty five years is nothing to sneeze at

1998 or 1999: A few of us wended our way to a reading on/near Granville St. in Vancouver; rob had embarked on a x-country tour with others that sounded literarily athletic and made his way to Vancouver. I remember a poem that involved apples. That was my first introduction to rob, rob’s writing, and rob’s publishing; rob was ebullient in person that night. I remember above/ground and STANZAS; I liked the form, the give-and-take of the photocopy, staples, the sizing and 20lb. Chapbooks such as these are clearly ideal for travel, for leaving about, for the grace of readings by multiple people, for affordability.

Ambitiously, on one of the rainy days this year, I decided to clear books off my shelves and give some away. Nothing’s alphabetical. As I started to pull, I noticed a sort of colourful splash across the shelves. These were above/ground chapbooks. They filled the floor (I should taken a pic); the plenitude of these chapbooks, which I could look at, in a way, all at once, was revealing. Others have written about the variability of writing that above/ground offers; it supports/fosters literary engagement and presents an intriguing diversity of forms, poetic ventures, and writers. rob’s publishing inclusivity; the generosity of distribution — through readings, affordable subscriptions, hand-offs of poetry packets from rob and other poets, and inevitable “found” chapbooks — at used bookstores, readings, or other poetry venues — makes accessing writing — local and across distances — easy. The longevity of above/ground provides consistency. Exposure and access are important elements of literary culture. From there, curiosity, interest, and x are up to the reader. above/ground is an invitation, the best sort of backyard or porch.

Chris Turnbull is the author of continua (Chaudiere Books 2015) and [ untitled ] in o w n (CUE Books 2014). She has published three chapbooks: Shingles (Thuja1999); continua (above/ground 2012); Candid (dusie kollektiv #8 2014).

She is currently collaborating with text artist/writer bruno neiva; recent work can be found on 3am: Duos #9, and TCR 3.35 (Spring 2018); other visual and text based work can be found online, in print, and within landscapes. She curates rout/e, a footpress whereby poems are planted on trails: www.etuor.wordpress.com.

new from above/ground press: CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS, by natalie hanna

CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS
natalie hanna
$5

b(e(e))ullet


the day i reached down
and picked a bee
instead of fragrant thyme
was fatal for both the bee
and my peace of mind

years of collusion
put ghosts in your head

what is the most
dangerous thing about me?

this is the end of the line:
america bleeds out
unsuspecting donors
expels every cure prescribed

where is that tri-coloured
star spangled wound?

not punctured by a
foreign body
but festering from
exploded middle

bullets hiding in the hands
of every casual neighbour
waiting to deploy
like bees in the garden

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

natalie hanna is a queer, feminist, ottawa lawyer, of middle-eastern descent working with low income populations. her writing focuses on feminist, political, and personal themes. She runs battleaxe press (small poetry press) / is the Administrative Director of the Sawdust Reading Series / serves as newsletter editor and board member at Arc Poetry Magazine.  Her work, interviews, have appeared online and in print in various publications, including with Literary Landscapes, In/Words Magazine, phafours press, Hussy Press, Bywords, the Dusie Blog, the Chaudiere Books Blog, Canthius, shreeking violet press, and Peter F. Yacht Club,  among others. This is her 10th chapbook. Find her at: https://nhannawriting.wordpress.com to learn more

This is hanna’s third chapbook with above/ground press, after “this evidence against you,” produced as STANZAS #21 (October 1999), and dark ecologies (2017). 

[natalie hanna will be launching this title as part of THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY on August 25, 2018 at Ottawa's Vimy Brewing Company!]

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