some author activity: Johnson, Earl, Drescher, Kaplan + Novak,

Chris Johnson has a new poem up at The Pi Review; Amanda Earl has a visual poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; Julia Drescher has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and both Genevieve Kaplan and forthcoming author JoAnna Novak have work in the latest issue of Posit.

some author activity: Boyle, O'Reilly, Dennis, Pirie, Trivedi + Solomon,

Frances Boyle has been on fire (again) lately, with new work up at MookyChick, The Wild Word and Vox Viola; Nathanael O'Reilly has a new piece as part of the "Talking Poetics" series at the ottawa poetry newsletter ; Pearl Pirie has posted a short piece on Michael Dennis; Amish Trivedi is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Misha Solomon has started a newsletter of weekly poems, some gay poems, which you should totally sign up for.

Stefanie Ucci reviews Dani Spinosa's Civilization (2020) in Broken Pencil

Stefanie Ucci was good enough to provide the first review of Dani Spinosa's Civilization (2020) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

‘Civilization’ will blow you right through the classroom wall

Chapbook, Dani Spinosa, 7 pgs, above/ground press, genericpronoun.com, @genericpronoun, $4

It’s the first day of school, class is in session, and today’s subject is history — or something like it. Oh, and hopefully your desk has a seatbelt, because Civilization will blow you right through the classroom wall. Dani Spinosa, an experimental poet, typesetter, and co-founder of the experimental feminist outfit Gap Riot Press, lives up to her reputation as a proven poetry punk as she takes you on lurching and disorienting tour of domination across oceans and centuries.

The chapbook’s voice is a practice in momentum, and each page brings a different colonization and a new opponent. It visits Victorian England and the fall of Rome, speaking as Moctezuma, but a unique version of the conqueror, one who is hellbent on capturing Charleston. Spinosa’s references spin and spill forth with such confidence that you’ll regret not paying attention in history class more so than you’ll question what you know or don’t about eons long past.

This chapbook’s shape-shifting time-traveling speaker might actually be power itself, personified. Collapsing space and time with such weight and gusto, able to justify anything in the name of expansion and control. Empire is the protagonist, but in the grand scheme of things, isn’t it always?

“It’s 1690. I’m in the Modern era. I declare war on the Spanish and start to move south,” Spinosa writes. “First, I take Rouen, which the Spanish conquered from the French. Later I’ll take Paris, too. The French have lost so much before I even arrive.”

I enjoy the barrage of early civilizations and, as the poet likely intends, I feel confused and challenged by the personality these eras are given. The text’s considerable nonchalance around defeating countries is paired with a fear that eventually they will be the one to get defeated, and I felt the same way about the chapbook — I get it, I’m in on it, or maybe I don’t, I’m not? Of course, defeat is not an option for you, nor for civilization. Wild.

some author activity: Campos, Earl, mclennan, Cooley + Stuart,

Isabel Sobral Campos has some work in Folder magazine; Amanda Earl has contributed an experimental review to Carousel on Bahar Orang's debut; rob mclennan and Dennis Cooley read in the online 2Poets2 Tuesday Reading Series via Turnstone Press' YouTube channel; and Cecilia Stuart has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" at the dusie blog.

new from above/ground press: Geometric Mantra, by Andrew Brenza

Geometric Mantra
Andrew Brenza
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Andrew Brenza’s recent chapbooks include Poems in C (Viktlösheten Press), Bitter Almonds & Mown Grass (Shirt Pocket Press), and Waterlight (Simulacrum Press). He is also the author of four full-length collections of visual poetry, Automatic Souls (Timglaset), Alphabeticon & Other Poems (Redfoxpress), Gossamer Lid (Trembling Pillow Press) and Album, in Concrete (Alien Buddha Press).

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Bryce Warnes reviews Dennis Cooley's i see i said (2020) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Dennis Cooley's i see i said (2020) over at his brand-new site, The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Dennis Cooley | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2020

Staple bound, 20 pages | Purchase

Keep your eye on the ball—changeups abound: Between you and I, sight and sound, left field experiments and lyrical crowd pleasers. Centrepiece “take me out to the ball game” prosily puns upon a dugout lexicon—”I’m a bit wild on the mound, it’s true,” admits the speaker—to deliver an ars knuckleball. Elsewhere, the titular poem belongs to a suite of stuttering dialogues, woven throughout, that unstitch subjectivity. And the playful “chimera” picks apart our urge “to say what we would / say if we knew / what we thought / or what we thought / we could say / to one another.” Who’s on first?

new from above/ground press: The Universe in an Earth-Shaped Urn, by Amish Trivedi

The Universe in an Earth-Shaped Urn
Amish Trivedi
$5

There is a moon in the window and it’s burning even if we can’t see it. When it was overcast before, there was an indelicateness. What was meant has never mattered— what we call ourselves, how defined the boundaries of the self, matters more to everyone I am not. But do not generalize: maybe there is a me I have never seen because there is nothing anyways.

 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Amish Trivedi wrote Sound/Chest (Coven 2015) and Your Relationship to Motion Has Changed (Shearsman 2019). He has an MFA and PhD and lives in Maryland.

This is Trivedi’s third above/ground press chapbook, after The Destructions (2015) and What We Remembered Before the Fire (2018). A fourth 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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

parentheses zoom reading : Jan 13/21 : Pattie McCarthy, rob mclennan, Christine McNair + Kevin Varrone,

Please join us at parentheses for a celebration of our fourth issue, with readings by rob mclennan, Christine McNair, Kevin Varrone & Pattie McCarthy.

When: Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 3pm EST

Where: https://zoom.us/j/2730238369https://zoom.us/j/2730238369

parentheses: A Barcelona-based magazine of poetry and fiction. To obtain copies of issues 1, 2, 3, or 4, please email us at parenthesesbcn@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/parenthesesbcn/ 

Michael Dennis (September 1, 1956-December 31, 2020)

Ottawa poet Michael Dennis has died [see my obituary for him, here]. above/ground press was fortunate enough to publish three chapbooks by Michael over the years, including the on-going dilemma of small change (1995) and what we pass over in silence (1996), as well as the more recent The President of the United States (2019). He also had work appearing in above/ground's second publication, the FREE VERSE anthology (July 9, 1993), as well as in: TEN (August 28, 2003), a chapbook anthology produced for a reading celebrating the press' tenth anniversary; in STANZAS #4 (October 1994); and a WHIPlash 2 Reader (June 1997) for the second annual WHIPlash poetry festival. He was a great friend to writing and to poetry, as well as to the press, and we will miss him a great deal.

some author activity: Adams, Desbarats, mclennan + hanna,

Carrie Olivia Adams is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Michelle Desbarats is interviewed over at the Who Cares if You Listen? podcast; rob mclennan has a new poem up at his blog, and offers his tenth annual 'best of Canadian poetry books' list via dusie; and natalie hanna is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.