Monday, April 29, 2019

G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #3 now available! guest edited by Geoffrey Young,

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #3
edited by Geoffrey Young


the third issue features new work by:

Elaine Equi
Ron Padgett
Terence Winch
Thomas Fink
Annabel Lee
Michael Lally
Jerome Sala
Lydia Davis
Barry Schwabsky
Clark Coolidge
Tony Hoagland

Tony Hoagland (In Memoriam)


Click here for the link to order

Bottom of Form
Author biographies:

Clark Coolidge lives in Petaluma, CA with his wife Susan. Recent books include Life Forms Here (Pressed Wafer 2016); Selected Poems 1962-1985 (Station Hill 2017); POET (Pressed Wafer 2018). He continues to play drums with the free-jazz band Ouroboros.

Lydia Davis’s most recent collection of stories is Can’t and Won’t (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2014). Her translation of Proust’s Letters to His Neighbor appeared in 2017 from New Directions, and a collection of her essays will be published by FSG in the fall of 2019. She is currently preparing a second volume of essays and completing a translation of stories by the Dutch writer A.L. Snijders.

Elaine Equi lives in New York City with her husband, the poet, Jerome Sala. Her books include Sentences and Rain, Click and Clone, and Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems (all from Coffee House Press). A new collection, The Intangibles, is forthcoming in 2019. She teaches at New York University and in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The New School.

Thomas Fink, Professor of English at CUNY-LaGuardia, is the author of 9 books of poetry, most recently Selected Poems & Poetic Series (Marsh Hawk P, 2016), 2 books of criticism, and 3 edited anthologies. His paintings hang in various collections. His work appears in The Best American Poetry 2007, selected by Heather McHugh and David Lehman.

Tony Hoagland was the author of seven collections of poetry, including Priest Turned Therapist Treats Fear of God, What Narcissism Means to Me, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Donkey Gospel, winner of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets. He was also the author of two collections of essays, Twenty Poems That Could Save America and Other Essays and Real Sofistikashun: Essays on Poetry and Craft. He received the Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, the Mark Twain Award from the Poetry Foundation, and the O. B. Hardison, Jr. Award from the Folger Shakespeare Library. He taught for many years at the University of Houston. Hoagland died in October 2018.

Michael Lally’s thirtieth book came out in 2018, Another Way To Play: Poems 1960-2017, from 7 Stories Press, with an introduction by Eileen Myles. Award-winning books include The South Orange Sonnets (92nd Street Y “Discovery Award”), Cant Be Wrong (PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award “For Excellence In Literature”), and It’s Not Nostalgia (American Book Award). He writes a blog called Lally’s Alley.

Annabel Lee is the author of Minnesota Drift (forthcoming from Wry), Basket (Accent Editions), Continental 34s (Vehicle Editions) and At the Heart of the World, translations of Blaise Cendrars (O Press). As publisher of Vehicle Editions, in 2018 she co-published, with her daughter Irene Lee, A Book of Signs: The Women’s March, January 21, 2017. She lives in Brooklyn.

Ron Padgett lives in New York and spends time in northern Vermont, near Canada. His forthcoming (2019) book of poems is Big Cabin (Coffee House Press). Other poems of his were used in Jim Jarmusch’s film Paterson. One of Padgett’s favorite contemporary poets is George Bowering.
  
Jerome Sala’s books include Corporations Are People, Too! (NYQ Books), The Cheapskates (Lunar Chandelier) and Look Slimmer Instantly (Soft Skull Press). He lives in New York City, with his wife, poet Elaine Equi. His blog – on poetry, pop culture and everyday life, is espresso bongo: http://www.espressobongo.typepad.com

Barry Schwabsky’s most recent book of poetry is Trembling Hand Equilibrium (Black Square, 2015). Other publications include The Perpetual Guest: Art in the Unfinished Present (Verso, 2016) and Heretics of Language (Black Square, 2018); forthcoming is The Observer Effect: On Contemporary Painting (Sternberg, 2019). He is art critic for The Nation.

Terence Winch’s most recent book of poems is The Known Universe (Hanging Loose, 2018). Born and raised in the Bronx, he has lived in the Washington, DC area for many years. The son of Irish immigrants, he has also played traditional music all his life and was a founder of the original Celtic Thunder, the acclaimed Irish band. His most recent recording is a CD called This Day Too: Music from Irish America (2017).

Friday, April 26, 2019

new from above/ground press: Rain Play, by Kemeny Babineau

Rain Play
Kemeny Babineau
$4


light rain
doorless
entry

-

Naiad

Earth
Sky
Rain
Drain
Rained

Naiad

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kemeny Babineau
lives in Stratford ON with his partner. He works as a cook in a downtown restaurant and runs Laurel Reed Books an out of print book store specializing in Canadian poetry and ephemera but with much else besides.

This is Babineau’s third above/ground press chapbook after AFTER PROGRESS (2012) and The Blackburn Files (2014).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

new from above/ground press: poem | image | self, by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

poem | image | self
(after Adrian Piper and Lucy Lippard’s Catalysis)
Julia Polyck-O'Neill
$5


I hold monologues with myself


a meditation on what it means to practice
in 2019 what it means to be a body when bodies
are public when bodies are anti-monuments—when
the self is reshaped according to a framework of

autonomy

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Julia Polyck-O’Neill
is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. Her writing has been published in B.C. Studies, Feminist Spaces, Tripwire, Touch the Donkey, Fermenting Feminisms (a project of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, curated by Lauren Fournier), The Avant Canada Anthology (WLU Press, 2019), and other places. She recently co-edited a special issue of Canadian Literature with Gregory Betts, “Concepts of Vancouver: Poetics, Arts, Media.” She currently lives in Toronto, where she is completing her SSHRC-funded PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Brock University).

This is Polyck-O’Neill’s third above/ground press title, after femme (2016) and Everything will be taken away (2018).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

The Café Review "Canadian issue" launch: Anstee, Clayton, Hall, Weaver, Hogg + Turnbull

above/ground press authors Cameron Anstee, Conyer Clayton, Phil Hall, Andy Weaver and Chris Turnbull read alongside poets Sandra Ridley and Bruce Whiteman in Ottawa as part of the launch of the "Canadian issue" of Maine's The Café Review.

Guest-edited by poet and above/ground press author Robert Hogg, the issue features new poetry by multiple above/ground press authors (highlighted) and non-authors alike, including Cameron Anstee, Nelson Ball, bill bissett, Conyer Clayton, Stephen Collis, Neil Flowers, Phil Hall, Daphne Marlatt, Don McKay, Barry McKinnon, Sandra Ridley, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Carolyn Smart, Sharon Thesen, Aaron Tucker, Chris Turnbull, Andy Weaver and Bruce Whiteman. This issue also features work by artists Jim Andrews and Judith Copithorne with a review by Dana Wilde.

Saturday, May 11, 2019
2-4:30pm
Bar Robo: 692 Somerset St W, Ottawa


Monday, April 22, 2019

new from above/ground press: Dust of the Wren: poems and translations, by Gary Barwin

Dust of the Wren
poems and translations
Gary Barwin
$5

Five Translations about Death
after Bill Knott

1.
when I was young, I used my head
this is my sentence
I have no head.

2.
I breathe
a babyful of air
connect to all other babies

3.
open your mouth
wanderer
do not forget
death
to floss

4.
yes, hello—
your power
mysterious in the middle of waving


published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


The author of twenty-two books of poetry and fiction, Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Hamilton, Ontario and the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House) which won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His poetry includes No TV for Woodpeckers (poetry; Wolsak & Wynn, 2018), many chapbooks some with his own serif of nottingham editions, and, forthcoming, A Cemetery for Holes, a poetry collaboration with Tom Prime (Gordon Hill Press, 2019), Muttertongue (book/recording with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts (Book*hug, 2019) and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019.) A new novel,  Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted will appear from Random House in 2021. garybarwin.com

This is Barwins’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001), Seedpod, Microfiche (2013) and the collaborative PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Alice Burdick; 2018) and gravitynipplemilk anthroposcenesters (with Tom Prime; 2018).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Thursday, April 18, 2019

new from above/ground press: 1956, by Kate Siklosi

1956
Kate Siklosi
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kate Siklosi
is a Toronto writer, scholar, and business witch. Her most recent work includes two pamphlets: She Bites (Happy Monks Press, 2019) and fragile armies (Penteract Press, 2018) as well as three chapbooks: po po poems (above/ground press, 2018), may day (no press, 2018), and coup (The Blasted Tree, 2018). She is the co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a neat little feminist experimental poetry small press.

This is Kate Siklosi’s second above/ground press title, after po po poems (above/ground press, 2018).

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Tuesday, April 16, 2019

new from above/ground press: Somewhere in-between / cloud, by rob mclennan

Somewhere in-between / cloud
rob mclennan
$5


I was trying to write an elegy. Contrails. What is our relationship to the human body? A land we stand upon and spoil. Tales of villainy, richness. Darkness. The earth provides.




Colonizers
name

and rename.

No longer of being,
but belonging.

How, then,
to write?

Truth lies
in the destruction.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


published in Ottawa by above/ground press, April 2019 as part of Dusie Kollektiv 9: “Somewhere in the Cloud and Inbetween”—A Tribute to Marthe Reed (1958-2018) as an unofficial/official element of this year’s New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 18-21, 2019. Much thanks to Susana Gardner for her ongoing support.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collections How the alphabet was made (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2019). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

This is mclennan’s sixty-first above/ground press chapbook, following Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (2017). This chapbook, along with snow day, is part of the as-yet-unpublished manuscript, “snow day.”

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Friday, April 12, 2019

new from above/ground press: har sawlya, by Mairéad Byrne

har sawlya
Mairéad Byrne
$5


1.           fwee shivy outsa


fwee shoey outsa
shall b’ug garridjj
imask muh gheena
air il-lawn mara;
eh shool cush clodda
modjin iss traw knowna
o loo-un
guh sahrun
here ig balyev.

fwee shivee outsa
shall b’ug garridj
imask muh gheena;
oh craaaw cree

o woortch agna
o wegness guick
och ann tronn toch
here ig baljiv

published in Ottawa by above/ground press for the sake of the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mairéad Byrne’s
most recent publication is In & Out (Smithereens Press 2019), and poems in the Chicago Review Online, Poetry Ireland Review, Smithereens, Icarus, StepAway, Past Simple, and Decals of Desire. Her poetry collections include Famosa na sua cabeça (Dobra Editorial 2015), You Have to Laugh: New & Selected Poems (Barrow Street 2013), The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius 2010), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions 2007), Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007), and Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press 2003). She emigrated from Ireland in 1994, earned a PhD in Theory & Cultural Studies from Purdue University, and works as a Professor of Poetry & Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She is a co-curator of Policromia, an annual international festival of poetry and translation across the arts in Siena.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Wednesday, April 10, 2019

new from above/ground press: running commentary along the bottom of the tapestry, by Kimberly Campanello

running commentary along the bottom of the tapestry
Kimberly Campanello
$5

they didn’t expect


hedges steeples the time it takes
to cut away the chutes purpling
lips down the promenade past
nations stepping forward fire
blocking fire important speech
looped in a darkened room
hardy sightseers in rainproof
jackets everlasting bunkers
farmers or farmers wives or
farmers children blown
up mundane tasks running
commentary along the bottom
of the tapestry build up
of bodies where do we go
when we die the lovers
eating their crêpes her
outrageously classy flowers
their rolling cigarettes like sex

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


cover image: The Fall and Redemption of Man:  The Embrace of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate, 1515. Albrecht Altdorfer (German, c. 1480-1538). Woodcut; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1932.330.5

Kimberly Campanello’s poetry books include Consent, Strange Country and Imagines (both on the sheela-na-gig stone carvings), and Hymn to Kālī (her version of the Karpūrādi-stotra). Her poems have appeared most recently in Banshee, Blackbox Manifold, para·text, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, and in Laudanum Publishing’s Chapbook Anthology Volume Two. MOTHERBABYHOME, 796 poems on the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland, is out with zimZalla Avant Objects in April 2019. In 2018, Kimberly joined the University of Leeds and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre as Programme Leader for Creative Writing. She lives in York, UK. www.kimberlycampanello.com

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Monday, April 8, 2019

new from above/ground press: Tag & Run: Canto One, by Stephen Cain

Tag & Run: Canto One
Stephen Cain
$4


1.

No! I am not Madame Cezanne
Nor was meant to be

Those wine bottles in your neighbour’s garden
Have they begun to sprout?

The Art of Work in the Age
Of Mechanical Oppression

A future right turn
Overwhelm your comfort zone

A lyric in flight

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Cover image by Cyan Cain (ca. 2007)

Stephen Cain is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently False Friends (Book*hug, 2017). Tag & Run: Canto One is his fourth chapbook from above/ground, following Zoom (2013), Hijinks: A Sequence from Double Helix (with Jay MillAr, 2003) and Circa Diem (1997). He lives in Toronto where he teaches Canadian and avant-garde literature at York University.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Friday, April 5, 2019

new from above/ground press: COLLECTIONS-14, by Kyle Kinaschuk

COLLECTIONS-14
Kyle Kinaschuk
$5

[collection-009]

& once more through a wounded sonnet blows
a little room for breath now swollen late
although each line i pluck is broken, parched,
bruised.
& you’re july summer dead at 26 
the boilermaker with the face tattoo
who i got used to seeing at sunrise 
exhaling those leaden calgary months
our ritual silent ash inventories
after loss blossomed to a dull litany.
there’s nothing monumental about it
the slow, ordinary life of mourning, but 
i apostrophize dead friends now because i’m not capable—
the white towel beneath my father’s jaw.  

when you have washed the face,
close the mouth
before the body starts to stiffen.
if the mouth will not stay shut,
place a rolled-up towel or washcloth under the chin.
if this does not provide enough support
to keep the mouth closed,
use a light-weight, smooth fabric scarf.
place the middle of the scarf at the top of the head,
wrapping each end around the side of the face,
under the chin and up to the top of the head
where it can be gently tied.
these supports will become unnecessary
in a few hours and can be removed.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Cover Photo by Clarke Kinaschuk 2013

Kyle Kinaschuk is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where he researches the politics and form of lament in contemporary poetry situated within Canada. His poetry has appeared in journals such as The Capilano Review, filling Station, PRISM international, The Puritan, Hart House Review, Poetry is Dead, and FreeFall Magazine.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Wednesday, April 3, 2019

new from above/ground press: The Ghosts of Barnacullia, by Paul Perry

The Ghosts of Barnacullia
Paul Perry
$5

To a Ghost

We sit in the room. We talk. It is my life you describe.
You say it is your own. Tell me again how it was.

The rain is lashing. Your handwriting uneven.

The other details you maintain are unimportant.

Talk about the moonlight then. In your childhood. It was thin as blood.

It was never there.

So sleep – whose kiss is this on your hot forehead?
Whose kiss?
So sleep –

There is a noise from downstairs. Imagine your mother baking.
It is not her. Or your father singing.

It is not him.

Downstairs, while you sleep or try to sleep, is something else.

It matters what you call it.

It matters that you can. So speak to me again of your life.
It is mine as well.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Cover image: Bláithín de Poire

Paul Perry is the author of 5 full length collections of poetry including Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems, and two pamphlets of poetry. A recent recipient of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, and co-author to 4 Karen Perry best-sellers, including the Penguin published The Innocent Sleep. He is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at UCD

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com