some author activity: Clayton, hanna, Unsworth, Claxton + Johnson,

Conyer Clayton recommends five books (including natalie hanna's above/ground press debut) as part of the TPQ5 over at The Poetry Question; Lydia Unsworth has a new essay in the Talking Poetics series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; a portrait of 2020 Governor General's Arts Award-winner Dana Claxton is now online; and Chris Johnson is interviewed in the Six Questions series at the Chaudiere Books blog.

new from above/ground press: Montcorbier, by Guy Birchard

Montcorbier
Guy Birchard
$5

In this the thirtieth year of my life

Having stomached all disgrace

Neither most foolish nor half wise

Notwithstanding all the clouts

Received

At the hands of Thibault d'Aussigny

Bishop though he be, making the sign of the cross

Down the street, he's no one to me. 

Nor Monsignor nor my lord

I had from him nowt but shite

I owe him nor fealty nor homage

Am nor his serf nor bitch

Who fed me on corn dodgers

And water one whole summer

Proved pure stingy, "beneficent" less than tight,

God render unto him what he to me. 

And if anyone objects

And calls this blasphemy

Well, feel me, it aint idle

Bad-mouthing

I have worse to say

If that's mercy he was showing

Jesus king of paradise

Commend, body and soul, the like to him.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Shy Canadianismo by nature (“having none hath no care to defend it”), Guy Birchard has been just a mother tongue poetry bum these many years with small official second language.  

This is Birchard’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after VALEDICTIONS (2019).

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: Light Waves The Leaves, by Razielle Aigen

Light Waves The Leaves
Razielle Aigen
$5

Hello , World !

i like the way life collects itself around you . wind & sun  .                           you say

i’m in the mood of the night  & then it’s like “ hello world ! ” when our faces touch a touch , like the fetal zone inside a womb where there’s room . warm . womblike , womb life . lifelike . light cast on the dark places where we touch         in the night . reprogramming our basic syntax ,        morning moods our faces ,    a resemblance of who we might have been before we closed our eyes  . blank spaces         just there in the where where life collects itself around you . wind . sun . mood . womb . face .  we will have been         neither happy   nor sad                   like a mother with no hands collecting  life 

around 

     you .

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Razielle Aigen is a Montreal-born writer and artist. Her poems appear in Entropy, Contemporary Verse 2, Deluge, Ghost City Press, Train: a poetry journal, Bad Dog Review, The Anti-Languorous Project, Talking About Strawberries all of the Time, and elsewhere. Razielle holds a B.A. in History and Contemporary Studies from Dalhousie/King’s University, and is an alumna of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser 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

some author activity: Robinson, Maloukis, Campos + Hogg,

Ben Robinson has some new work up at The /tƐmz/ Review; forthcoming author Rose Maloukis has an essay in the my (small press) writing day series; Isabel Sobral Campos is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" interview series; and Robert Hogg has three new poems (text and audio) up on the Pamenar Press website.

Some author activity: Boyle, Spinosa, Barwin + mclennan,

Frances Boyle is interviewed on the Big Little Books podcast, and has a new short story up at The /tƐmz/ Review; Dani Spinosa has a new visual poem up at Train : a poetry journal; Gary Barwin posts the text of a talk he recently gave as part of his writer-in-residence gig at Wilfrid Laurier University; and rob mclennan has a new poem upon his enormously clever blog.

new from above/ground press: Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU, by rob mclennan

Poems for Lunch Poems at SFU
rob mclennan
$5

Four poems for Kathleen Fraser

1.

If I were to pin my favourite quotes,
this wall might collapse.

Stitched from fragments, and held,
for an instant.

Everything destroyed, Spicer wrote,
must be tossed.

There is always a truth, you wrote,
to such restlessness.


2.

The elegy speaks to an absence
both unexpected

and abrupt. Applies
lyric pressure. She speaks to me

in sentences. Solitude

as capital. Echo, across
these crystalline structures. Poem

as carved diamond, or
a certain uneven panic.


3.

The heart, in whatever language, wants, or
does not care. Incorporate this into what

we have already learned. The water heater
sound like a bird. The furnace

sound like a bird. Everything
sounds like a bird.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press, in part for a reading with Christine McNair in Vancouver on February 19, 2020 as part of Lunch Poems at SFU, with special thanks to Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Simon Fraser University and The League of Canadian Poets.
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

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 poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019) and the perpetually-forthcoming Household items (Salmon Publishing). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, 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-second above/ground press chapbook, following Somewhere in-between / cloud (2019), Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (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