new from above/ground press: F I V E O ’ C L O C K O N T H E S H O R E, by Allyson Paty

F I V E   O ’ C L O C K   O N   T H E   S H O R E
Allyson Paty
$5

A   R I T E

When a person dies the hours. That comprise
a total life.  Have stripped their clothes and
buried them in mud. The days have.
Shaved their perfect heads. Floated the hair
downriver and out. Out to sea. A body
of water where day. After day the ships are.
Carrying their freight. To market to uses
to garbage. Once beyond the shore where
land. Is worked and fucked and full
for harvest. Like a field in wartime the weeks.
Have already lit themselves. Have smoldered.
And we with our timeless. Ashes to rake.

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

cover image: Anonymous, Swiss Watch, c.a. 1820, Gold and Silver, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Allyson Paty's poems can be found in Boston Review, BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, jubilat, The Literary Review, Tin House, the PEN Poetry Series, and elsewhere. Five O'Clock on the Shore is her fourth chapbook, following Score Poems (Present Tense Pamphlets/The Block Museum, 2016), In Medias Res (Monster House Press, 2016), and The Further Away ([sic] Detroit, 2012). She was a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry and a participant in the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's 2017-2018 Workspace Program. With Norah Maki, she is co-founding editor of Singing Saw Press. She is Assistant Director of the Writing Program at NYU Gallatin, where she runs a website for student writing, art, and research, and produces a print journal with the students in NYU's Prison Education Program.

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

some author activity: Mangold, Burgoyne, Cantrell + Aigen,

Sarah Mangold is interviewed at talking about strawberries all of the time; Sarah Burgoyne has a poem in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Andrew Cantrell has a new poem in the Tuesday poem series via the dusie blog; and Razielle Aigen has new work up at Terse Journal.

some author activity: Eleftherion, Sikkema, Aigen, Clayton + Robinson,

[did I mention I'm doing both a small press fair and a panel conversation at IFOA in Toronto next weekend?]

Otherwise, Melissa Eleftherion was recently interviewed by Andrea Blythe about her above/ground press chapbook; Michael Sikkema has some new work up at talking about strawberries all of the time, as does Razielle Aigen, and Conyer Clayton is interviewed in the same issue; and forthcoming author Ben Robinson has a poem posted in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets.

new from above/ground press: Furigraphic Horizons, by Hawad, trans. Jake Syersak

Furigraphic Horizons
by Hawad
translated from the French by Jake Syersak
$5

The Haulers of the Horizon


I hear the ember
incubating the names
of shooting stars
And I demand from the cricket
once again
that it strip nude the night
any night
that would not deliver a dawn
suspended from the droplet
blood ink bile
tear of my brothers
sweat condensed
in the interstices of my quill
Quill rifle
leveled point-blank
against the temple of oblivion
Quill stinger
frothing and vomiting up rumors
swarms and abrasions
memory
isles and reptiles
insect letters
Tifinagh
crawling with fury
over the deserts and the stars ahead
already laughter and grimaces
lines peopling our faces
as haulers of the horizons

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

Hawad is a visual artist and poet originally from the Aïr region in the central Sahara. He composes his work in his native Tuareg tongue of Tamazight, in Tifinagh script, which is then co-translated into French with his wife, Tuareg scholar Hélène Claudot-Hawad. Hawad’s work is unique for its deployment of what he has coined “Furigraphy” (a therapeutic poetics involving the frenetic repetition of words, gestures, sounds, and images to evoke a vertiginous and obsessional rhythmic trance), a means by which he achieves “Surnomadism” (a nod to both Surrealism and the nomadic heritage of the Tuareg people). Surnomadism, according to Hawad, is a literary transcendence of the self to encompass ubiquity and escape the superficial physical and mental constraints of time and space, to investigate the breach between the inner and outer self, the self and others, and the past, present, and future. Common themes of his poetry include anti-colonial resistance, Anarchism, exile, nomadism, and the prolongation of Tuareg heritage. Hawad is the author of multiple books of poetry, including Furigraphie: Poésies 1985 – 2015, from which the poems in this book are taken.

Jake Syersak is the author of Mantic Compost (Trembling Pillow Press, 2020) and Yield Architecture (Burnside Review Press, 2018). Two of his full-length translations of Mohammed Khaïr-Eddine’s work are forthcoming in the coming year: the poetry collection Proximal Morocco— and the hybrid novel Agadir, co-translated with Pierre Joris. He edits Cloud Rodeo, an online poetry journal, and co-edits the micro-press Radioactive Cloud.

This is Syersak’s second above/ground press chapbook, after These Ghosts / This Compost : An Aubadeclogue (2017).

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

new from above/ground press: Five Mothers, by N.W. Lea

Five Mothers
N.W. Lea
$5

Five Mothers


1.

Distinctions: she hates every one.
A fate worse than life.
A fate-worm, then laugh.


2.

I wandered under mammoth trees,
under a super moon. To me, though,
it was just a supper moon.


3.

O, how I love supper,
with its numbing little kisses.


4.

Nothing heals...
not even the drunk of a bath.


5.

Contained
and venerated, this
private hell.

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

N.W. Lea is the author of two collections of poetry, Everything is Movies (Chaudiere, 2007) and Understander (Chaudiere, 2015) which was a finalist for the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry; as well as a number of chapbooks, including more recently, Nervous System (above/ground, 2018). He currently makes his home in Whitehorse, Yukon with his parter and their baby girl.

This is Lea’s fourth above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014) and Nervous System (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

above/ground press at IFOA's Small Press Market + Small Press, Big Ideas: A Roundtable, Saturday, October 26, 2019

Saturday, October 26, 2019 - 12 - 5pm
Special Event: 40th Festival Edition | Festivals | Free Events
West Bays, Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto M5J 2G8
Cost: Free

Join us for an afternoon in celebration of the small press and its roots as a driver for creative exchange! As part of the 40th anniversary edition of the Toronto International Festival of Authors, the Small Press Market will feature twelve of Canada’s most prominent independent presses:

above/ground press,

Augur Magazine,

Baseline Press,

Coven Editions,

Gap Riot Press,

Invisible,

NoirZ,

Proper Tales Press,

serif of nottingham editions

and Simulacrum Press.

Explore their collections of chapbooks, zines and more, to uncover the big ideas created by these small shops. Admission is free and registration not required.

FOLLOWED BY Small Press, Big Ideas: A Roundtable
Panel Discussion, Q & A: 40th Festival Edition | Festivals
Studio Theatre, Harbourfront Centre
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto M5J 2G8
Cost: $18

Join us for a special presentation in celebration of the small press. We’ll learn about the strengths and challenges of the small press by hearing from some key members of the community, and exploring the roots of the chapbook and the zine as objects of creative exchange. Featuring rob mclennan, Stuart Ross, Dani Spinosa and Terese Mason Pierre. Event co-curated and moderated by Kate Siklosi, author and co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press.

some author activity: Aigen, Siklosi, Campanello, mclennan, Archer + Banu,

forthcoming author Razielle Aigen is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Kate Siklosi is interviewed in the new issue of talking about strawberries all of the time, as is Kimberly Campanello, and where rob mclennan also has a new poem, and Sacha Archer also has some new work; and Simina Banu has some new work up at pioneertown.

new from above/ground press: Tomorrow, adagio, poems inspired by the work of Mihai Eminescu, by Simina Banu (item #1000

Tomorrow, adagio
poems inspired by the work of Mihai Eminescu
Simina Banu
$5

Un singur dor

I have a singer’s door.

Afloat, let me be

moored in margarine.

I mean, on the edge

of the sea. This one:

Cer senin. Relax,

I knitted a bed

from young branches.

Ten thousand

trees fall

in my throat:

do they make

or break?

Simon Cowell

covers his ears

at the thought of my heart.

I know we all groan

when the sea sings.

I will be earth

in my solitude.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as above/ground press' 1000th publication
October 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover illustration and design by the author

Simina Banu enjoys investigating the way meaning falls into the crevices—between people and across languages. She’s propelled by a fascination with pop music, consumerism and advertising. Her poetry has appeared in magazines including The Feathertale Review, untethered and In/Words. POP—her first full length collection of poetry—is forthcoming with Coach House Books. She lives in Montreal.

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

some author activity: Caple, mclennan, McCulloch, Robinson, Unsworth + hanna,

Natalee Caple has a new essay in the my (small press) writing day series; Tim Atkins has recent work in Tentacular; rob mclennan has composed a poem for the late Ian McCulloch; forthcoming author Ben Robinson has some new work up at Train : a poetry journal; Lydia Unsworth is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time; and natalie hanna has a poem included in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets (reprinted from Canthius).

new from above/ground press: I Have Not Led a Serious Life, by Lydia Unsworth

I Have Not Led a Serious Life
Lydia Unsworth
$5

’tempting

I want to make something more gentle than someone like me is capable of making. If I curl up on the tapijt and press my bones against skin, can I make a shell emerge? Can I think marble configurations into keratin and harden? It appears. The thing. Pushed from my ribs. A pea pressed through a slippery morsel of conduit. An egg dropped onto a cloud from a kittiwake in headwind. A shower of benedict. Oily palms. The egg is caught and caught and caught and. A delight. We whip the cream and then we eat it. We step back in sync―a dance, a masquerade―and that tiny silent offering passes hands, soars, is surreptitiously scrambled.

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

Lydia Unsworth is the author of two collections of poetry: Certain Manoeuvres (Knives Forks & Spoons, 2018) and Nostalgia for Bodies (Winner, 2018 Erbacce Poetry Prize), and one previous chapbook, My Body in a Country (Ghost City Press). Recent work can be found in Ambit, Litro, para.text, Tears in the Fence, Banshee, Ink Sweat and Tears, Train and others. Manchester / Amsterdam. Twitter @lydiowanie.

Cover image: Stuart Buck, "Still Life #4"

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

natalie hanna receives diana brebner prize honourable mention

above/ground press author natalie hanna, publisher of battleaxe press, was recently announced as the honourable mention to this year's annual Diana Brebner Prize. Congratulations! above/ground press has been fortunate enough to publish three chapbooks by hanna over the years, including “this evidence against you,” produced as STANZAS #21 (October 1999; copies are available, but extremely limited) as well as the more recent dark ecologies (2017) and CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS (2018), both of which are still very much available.

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 late lamented Sawdust Reading Series / served as newsletter editor and board member at Arc Poetry Magazine. She has published nearly a dozen poetry chapbooks to date, and 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.

The Diana Brebner Prize [see my 2012 profile on the award here] is awarded yearly for the best poem writ­ten by a National Cap­i­tal Region poet, who has not yet been pub­lished in book form. The prize hon­ours the late Diana Breb­ner, an award-winning Ottawa-based poet who was devoted to fos­ter­ing lit­er­ary tal­ent among new, local writers.

This year the judge for Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize was Ian Letourneau. As the winner of the $500 prize, he selected Dawn Steiner’s poem “Morning Walk,” as well as choosing Natalie Hanna’s “light conversation” for the honourable mention. Dawn Steiner had work in the above/ground press workshop anthology assignment: zero (2015).

The poets will be honoured and will read their poems at the 2019 Lampman Award Shortlist Reading, on October 3rd, 2019.

new from above/ground press: A Box of Light, by Ian McCulloch

A Box of Light
Ian McCulloch
$5

Preamble to a Denouement


I woke this morning
in an empty house
and lingered
through the hours
in quiet spaces
with transitory
angles of illumination
and undulating shadow
then followed a voice
like the rustle of leaves
down a long hallway
with floors that seemed
to shift and warp
beneath each step
of my naked feet
and found daylight
was a different grief
in every room

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

Ian McCulloch (April 18, 1957 – September 23, 2019) was born in Comox, B.C. and raised in Northern Ontario. He was the author of three books of poetry: The Moon of Hunger (Penumbra, 1982), The Efficiency of Killers (Penumbra, 1988) and Parables and Rain (Penumbra, 1993), and a chapbook, Balsam To Ease All Pains (Alburnum Press, 1998). He was also the author of the novel Childforever (Mercury, 1996). A founding member of Northern Ontario’s longest-running reading series, “The Conspiracy of 3,” he read twice at Toronto’s prestigious Harbourfront series. More recently two of his poems were included in the anthology Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century (LUMMOX Press, 2018). His writing was deeply influenced by family and his indigenous heritage. Ian was the father of three and lived with his wife and dog in Redbridge, Ontario.

A second above/ground press chapbook is forthcoming.

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

above/ground press: 2020 subscriptions now available!

TWENTY-SEVEN YEARS! The race to the half-century continues! And with nearly ONE THOUSAND TITLES produced to date, there’s been a ton of above/ground press activity over the past year, including some FORTY-FIVE CHAPBOOKS (so far) produced in 2019 alone (including titles by Andrew K Peterson, Guy Birchard, Susanne Dyckman, Ben Meyerson, John Newlove, Natalie Lyalin, Zane Koss, Michael Dennis, Jane Virginia Rohrer, Pearl Pirie, Chris Turnbull, Stuart Ross, Marilyn Irwin, Ken Norris, Chris Johnson, Conyer Clayton, Frances Boyle, Michael Sikkema, Kemeny Babineau, Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Gary Barwin, Kate Siklosi, rob mclennan, Mairéad Byrne, Kimberly Campanello, Stephen Cain, Kyle Kinaschuk, Paul Perry, Gregory Betts, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Gil McElroy, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Stephanie Gray, Billy Mavreas, Alice Burdick, Heather Sweeney, R. Kolewe, Franco Cortese, Evan Gray, Dale Smith, Virginia Konchan, Joshua James Collis, Laura Farina and Jennifer Stella, all of which are still in print), to The Factory Reading Series and the poetry journals Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and The Peter F. Yacht Club (all of which is included as part of the above/ground press subscription!). And don't forget the 'backlist and rarities' list of nearly out-of-print items still available (for now...). 

Just what else might happen? Forthcoming items include works by Dennis Cooley, Isabel Sobral Campos, Mary Kasimor, Hawad (trans. Jake Syersak), Simina Banu, Allyson Paty, Lydia Unsworth, N.W. Lea, Ben Robinson, Jessica Smith, Amanda Earl, Dale Tracy, Ian McCulloch, Zane Koss, Margaret Christakos, Pete Smith, Eric Baus, Barry McKinnon, Leesa Dean, Rachel Kearney, Razielle Aigen, Stan Rogal, Amanda Deutch and Melissa Eleftherion, as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet. 

2020 annual subscriptions (and resubscriptions) are now available: $75 (CAN; American subscribers, $75 US; $100 international) for everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2020, including chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T and Touch the Donkey (have you been keeping track of the dozens of interviews posted to the Touch the Donkey site?).  I hate having to increase the price, but Canada Post has been killing me the past couple of years (cut down on the amount of titles I make? I mean: that’s just silly), which really ends up meaning mailouts get delayed yet again and again (and it still manages to work out to a dollar a title). 

Anyone who subscribes on or by November 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package (or two or three) of 2019, including those exciting new titles by all of those folk listed above, plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year, as well as Touch the Donkey #23 (scheduled to release on October 15), a journal that turned five years old in 2019! 

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal button at robmclennan.blogspot.com).