some author activity: Perry, Pirie, Ross, La Rocque, mclennan, Burdick, Dennis + Hogg,

Paul Perry has a new essay in the "On Writing" series at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Pearl Pirie writes on her writing space for The New Quarterly; Jenya Stashkov asked Stuart Ross to gather poems by fifteen Canadian poets to translate those poems into Russian, and to create a drawing inspired by them, which are now online, including translated poems by Lance La Rocque, rob mclennan, Alice Burdick, Michael Dennis, Robert Hogg and Ross himself; Robert Hogg has two further poems posted as part of the "Robert Kroetsch 2020" up at The Typescript; and Lance La Rocque is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.

J.R. Carpenter is UAlberta's 2020-21 Writer-in-Residence

University of Alberta's EFS Writer-in-Residence Committee has announced that J. R. Carpenter will be their 2020-21 Writer-in-Residence. Congratulations, J.R.! It is a very good gig (I can say that with experience, as you most likely know). And of course, copies of her above/ground press chapbook, A General History of the Air (March 2020), are totally still available.

new from above/ground press: Cloud Game with Plums, by Rose Maloukis

Cloud Game with Plums
Rose Maloukis
$5

Oh! Those shrubs!

That one! lays

itself on top of itself

variegated swell over

dark serried quick

mound upon mound

                                          

fan fingered leaves

reach to the earth

its body so godly—

if it could stand

and walk away

I would follow

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

Rose Maloukis is a poet and visual artist, with a BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. She was born and grew up in the United States but has dual citizenship and resides in Montreal. Her poetry appears in a limited-edition bilingual artist’s book, From the Middle ~ Sonoritiés du Coeur, which is held in the collection of both the national and provincial libraries. She was short-listed for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize and two poems were published in Matrix Magazine, Issue #105. A winning Second Place poem has been published in Geist’s 2018 Spring Issue #108.

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

poetry pause : the league of canadian poets

Thanks to The League of Canadian Poets' "poetry pause" series for helping celebrate twenty-seven years of above/ground press! The series allowed me to curate ten authors for recent slots, all of whom are Canadian (and/or Canadian-based) authors with 2020 above/ground press publications. Most of the poems included in the series are reprinted from their collections, but a few even provided new poems! Here are the authors' names, with the links to their "poetry pause" poems: Dani Spinosa, George Stanley, Khashayar Mohammadi, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sarah Burgoyne, Lance La Rocque, J.R. Carpenter, Leesa Dean, Razielle Aigen and Dale Tracy. Can you believe we're twenty-seven years deep? What might the rest of the year bring? We are so close to thirty!

some author activity: Unsworth, Earl, Tierney, mclennan + Spinosa/Siklosi,

Lydia Unsworth has some new work up at Tentacular; Amanda Earl offers some nice words for the above/ground press anniversary (and a visual poem!) over at her blog; Orchid Tierney has some recent work up at Ethel; Jenya Stashkov asked rob mclennan for an interview and a poem, both of which appear here in English, as well as translated into Russian; Dani Spinosa and Kate Siklosi answer the "ottawa small press book fair : home editions" questions over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

new from above/ground press: TENTACULUM SONNETS, by Sarah Burgoyne

TENTACULUM SONNETS
Sarah Burgoyne
$4

at the enunciation of you, bloom
                of witch broom
autumn. love brocades its long lung game    
    and lets me in your house.         running
the cold gold line to find you,   
                winters:

a slender limb rushing as flex or bright
animal bough, especially opiate around
the night-mouth of a mollusk or urchin, an opal is you
used for grasping, moon-mouth, aloof, moving
about, your moon-bearing sense organs, vervain (in this, a gazebo)
a light which is the moon (in a plant) a tendril
the night's noon or a tender glandular hair.
            a look across the mim-
icking glass, the form which
is sound and pines bursting with ice, my voice
is the spider in your alley, its
                haunting shake.

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

Cover art: Mara Eagle

Sarah Burgoyne’s first collection Saint Twin (Mansfield Press: 2016) was nominated for the A.M. Klein prize. Her second manuscript is coming out with Coach House Books in 2021.

This is Burgoyne’s second above/ground press title, after A Precarious Life on the Sea (2016). A further 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

Robert Kroetsch 2020 tributes: Lea Graham, Dennis Cooley, Robert Hogg, Frank Davey, Nicole Markotić, rob mclennan + Amanda Earl

A gathering of tributes to the late poet, critic, editor and novelist (and above/ground press author) Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) have begun to appear online at The Typescript under the heading "Robert Kroetsch 2020," and includes poems by a variety of other above/ground press authors such as Robert Hogg (see his poems here), Dennis Cooley (see his poems here), Frank Davey (see his poems here), rob mclennan (see his poem here), Nicole Markotić (see her poems here) and Lea Graham (see her poems here). The feature even includes an updated version of Amanda Earl's above/ground press chapbook The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (originally published in 2008 and copies are still available), as well as a new essay by Earl on composing the original sequence.

new from above/ground press: Another Tricky Day, by Buck Downs

Another Tricky Day
Buck Downs
$5

not right now


    I felt that wave
of what nicotine
    could do for me

extended form of mind
    full of capture

breathing in and out
share the same seat

    doing all that math
on the day I would die

        satisfied
        that ruin
    in the cadaver
    is the bottom-line

        come and get
        your feeling
    of every kind

    the world of not
    spending the night

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

Another Tricky Day is Buck Downs' third above/ground chapbook, after Shiftless [Harvester] (2016) and The Hack of Heaven (2017). A native of Jones County, Miss., he currently lives in Washington, DC. Furniture Press Books (Baltimore) published a selected poems, Unintended Empire, in 2017. Other books and printed matter are available at www.buckdowns.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

some author activity: Boyle, Birchard, Barwin, Hofmann + Eleftherion,

Frances Boyle has some new poems up at FEED; Guy Birchard is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Gary Barwin has a piece on writer's block up on the AllLitUp site; forthcoming author Ava Hofmann is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Melissa Eleftherion is featured over at the sundress blog.

new from above/ground press: dieting Herb Wit, by Kevin McPherson Eckhoff

dieting Herb Wit
kevin mcpherson eckhoff
$5

EEL AROUND THE FOUNTAIN


I, the sparkling sloth,
initiate the stranger’s
rafter. School
before schism, practice.
He kissed chard.

Slips to lisps,
harp teeth tore sheep teeth.
Ass ritual.

Yay from the gong.
I wouldn’t watch
fearsome acrostics clothe sloths.
Honest practice.

The note:
I’d shit at the top of the bleachers,
trying to stink into their wood,
watching pee glands glistening towards a joke.

*

I shave dreams of water.
I shave dreams of fire.
I dream of bloomed
ham. All of these things

infer I, ever marrowy.

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

kevin mcpherson eckhoff is a writer, editor, actor, and comedian. His book their biography (Book*hug) was described by The Globe & Mail as “wide-ranging” and “incredibly playful,” while Michael Dennis called his chapbook Circadia (Gaspereau Press) “scatalogical gold”. When not writing, kevin acts in films, like Nuptials and Recon; when not acting, he teaches essay demolition and creative wording at Okanagan College; when not teaching, he manages our teeth, a micropress dedicated to making small, odd bookish objects; when not micropressing, he daddles and hubbubs in a log home on 16 acres within traditional Splats'in territories.

This is Eckhoff's third above/ground press title, after dissections from their biography (2012) and faux foe (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

TODAY IS THE TWENTY-SEVENTH BIRTHDAY OF ABOVE/GROUND PRESS!

Happy birthday, above/ground press! (the press is currently at some 1055 published items-to-date, by the by) This year is different, obviously; we can't have a big anniversary reading/launch/party the way we've had in other years. I suppose that means we'll just have to make next year's party bigger, then, yes? See my report on last year's 26th anniversary event here, the 25th anniversary event in 2018 (and the big list of numbers I compiled that same year), the 23rd anniversary event in Ottawa and a further 23rd anniversary event in Toronto back in 2016, the twentieth anniversary event from 2013, and the 19th anniversary event back in 2012; remember those? We will do events again, promise! And there will most likely be cake! But once we emerge: will people still dance? will dubstep still be a thing? will food trucks still be a thing? (Most likely answers: yes. no. yes.)

Don't forget that the pandemic/summer sale is still going on for another week or so (or something), and the Black Lives Matter : chapbook give-away is ongoing (until I run out of the mound of chapbooks I pulled out for the idea) (oh, and I still have t-shirts left over from the 25th anniversary, by the by). But do not worry! The press will still be here throughout this ongoing crisis, attempting to produce chapbooks, journals and broadsides as best as possible (you should totally be following all of the poetry-related activity going on at our newish online journal, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics), and promote authors as best as possible (don't forget Michael Sikkema's call for submissions as part of his issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors], yes?), as well as attempting to help push the world into a far healthier, open, equal and thoughtful space for all to live with dignity and respect. We can do that, right? And when we emerge from all of this, we shall be better for it, in part because we chose to be better. But for now: stay home! wash your hands! please be safe! and be nicer to everyone. We can make it.

new from above/ground press: my beatrice, by Orchid Tierney

my beatrice
orchid tierney
$5

VII

My Beatrice & I watch the primary

debates because we are monstrous fictions.

This, excites Beatrice, is the moment when

the evil Brain arrives from Planet Arous.

I look backward to the nuclear sequence

where everyone is incinerated. Then it is

three minutes to midnight. A woman without

perfume refuses Dante’s future. I believe in

demons & sprites. I believe in canopies

so tired from painful touching. There is

little difference between twilights & mourning.

Beatrice, some days her muse will ace her desire.

“If you’re ever going to love me,” put on the drier.

I will deliver her punchline after I forget my joke.

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

Orchid Tierney is an Aotearoa-New Zealand poet and scholar, currently living in Gambier, Ohio, where she teaches at Kenyon College. She is the author of a year of misreading the wildcats (Operating System, 2019) and Earsay (TrollThread 2016), and chapbooks ocean plastic (BlazeVOX 2019), blue doors (Belladonna* Press), Gallipoli Diaries (GaussPDF 2017), the world in small parts (Dancing Girl Press, 2012), and Brachiaction (Gumtree, 2012). Other poems, reviews, and scholarship have appeared in Jacket2, Journal of Modern Literature, and Western Humanities Review, among others. She is a consulting editor for the Kenyon Review.

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