Monday, August 30, 2021

“poem” broadside #353 : “notes for a job interview,” by Kate Hargreaves

 

 

small successes are often fluke
and greeting cards demand only so much text
if you can’t chop onions finely enough

and limit reproduction to Xerox and cover tunes
settle for describing the texture of a bitten lip

rough, damp, and threatening to split

 

 

 

notes for a job interview
by Kate Hargreaves

August 2021

above/ground press broadside #353

Kate Hargreaves (she/her) is a writer and book designer in Windsor, Ontario. Her poetry collection Leak was published by Book*hug in 2014, and her second book of poetry, tend, will be released in 2022. She is also the author of Jammer Star, a hi-lo novel for young readers (Orca, 2019), and Talking Derby, a book of prose vignettes (Black Moss, 2013). She usually spends her free time playing roller derby, but she's been busy recovering from a very broken leg. Find her work online at CorusKate.com.

Thursday, August 26, 2021

new from above/ground press: Listening Through the Body: An Exercise in Sustained Coordination, by Valerie Witte

Listening Through the Body: An Exercise in Sustained Coordination
Valerie Witte
$5


Ko
 
Simone Forti’s Huddle (1961): A group of people stand facing each other, huddled. Together a cluster of limbs, torsos, heads, “a sculpture made of bodies.” Take turns climbing—one at a time up this “single structural entity,” feet, hands, knees finding surfaces—thighs, shoulders—to support their weight as they maneuver up and over, spontaneously, opportunistically. Move across, down the other side, before “rejoining the mass.” No planned sequence of who will climb. Yet knowing when someone has decided to be next. Operating in silence, intuiting when one is preparing to ascend, each member adjusting position, balance accordingly.


Author’s Note

This essay is from the collection One Thing Follows Another: Engaging the Art of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer, a collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal. In this project, we explore the work of dancer-choreographers Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti—both at various inflection points throughout their careers and in this particular moment. Through a combination of chance operations and intentional artistic choices that push us to unexpected places, and via innovative forms and techniques—including collage, erasure, and our own inventions—we deconstruct the essay form to examine what we as poets, each with our own highly charged relationships to dance, can contribute to the conversation about these pivotal figures in postmodern art. 


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


image credit: Valerie Witte

Valerie Witte is the author of a game of correspondence (Black Radish, 2015) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (Operating System, 2019), co-written with Sarah Rosenthal. Chapbooks include The history of mining (g.e. collective/Poetry Flash, 2013) and It’s been a long time since I’ve dreamt of someone (Dancing Girl Press, 2018). Her work has appeared in literary journals such as VOLT, Diagram, Dusie, Alice Blue, Interim, and elsewhere. More at valeriewitte.com

A further above/ground press title 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

Thursday, August 19, 2021

new from above/ground press: From Each Forthcoming, by Robert Hogg

From Each Forthcoming
Robert Hogg
$5

Another Way

Difficult to say how
     but the dancers

move themselves
     gesture
     
     not necessarily
to me

     nor to the music
tinkling to itself

     a flurry of notes
bare feet

     hands in a windmill
by design

     one direction
only

     the music
another way

RLH: Vanc: 1964; Rev: Mtn: 2021-03-04

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

Robert Hogg
was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets, co-edited MOTION - a prose newsletter, and graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. In 1964 he hitchhiked east to Toronto, then visited Buffalo NY where Charles Olson was teaching. After spending a few months in NYC, Bob entered the graduate program at the State University of NY at Buffalo, completed a PhD on Olson under Robert Creeley, and took a job teaching American and Canadian Poetry at Carleton University in Ottawa for the next 38 years. His books include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez, 1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light, Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW,1993; and as editor, An English Canadian Poetics,  The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009. He recently published four chapbooks: from LAMENTATIONS, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016; two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, ON; Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press (Ottawa 2019); A Quiet Affair – Vancouver ’63 (Trainwreck, May 2021). In April 2019 Hogg edited a Canadian Poetry issue of The Café Review in Portland, ME. His poems have appeared in over seventy periodicals, most recently: Pamenar Online; Empty Mirror; The Café Review; Dispatches; Arc; Some; BlazeVox Online Journal, The Typescript, Caesura, Ottawater 16, Sulfur Surrealist Jungle, Touch the Donkey and recent issues of Periodicities, Bandoneon, and Taint Taint Taint. In early July 2021 a Spoken Web podcast was presented by the UBC Kelowna Amp Lab featuring Robert Hogg’s life and career; it can be heard here. Books currently in the works for publication include: Lamentations; The Cariboo Poems; Postcards, from America; Amber Alert; Not to Call It Chaos – The Vancouver Poems; Oh Yeah—More Poems. In progress are The Offending Temple, and Ill Parodies – O, a selection of satires on various Shibboleths and current affairs. Now retired, Hogg continues to write at his organic farm in Mountain thirty-five miles south of Ottawa.

This is Hogg's third above/ground press chapbook, after from Lamentations (2012) and from Lamentations (second edition) (2016).

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

Monday, August 16, 2021

new from above/ground press: the girl arrived, by Ken Sparling


the girl arrived
Ken Sparling
$5



published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the eleventh title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
August 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

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

Thursday, August 12, 2021

new from above/ground press: Television Poems, by Jessi MacEachern


Television Poems
Jessi MacEachern
$5

Uncorked
Bob’s Burgers
S4E17, “Eggs for Days”

The question we should be asking is:
Do you see the egg? Look up
“racoon, babies, wall.” Drive out

the mother with audio harassment.
From crawl space to family restaurant,

the voices groan. Three small faces look
up into the mother. The anger grows with

the stench. Nose hairs twitch like gnats.
A childless man emerges and runs

to the ocean. In steel bowls, we
divide our spoils. In the single-

occupant gender neutral bathroom,
we hide our feelings. Three small

faces open up wide; the result is profound
silence. Schnapps pours freely, pink sludge

in the bloated guts of our guardians.
The hangover cuts into the holiday

like a crime scene. Nostalgia
seeps into us; we recognize

the three wicker baskets, feel
the synthetic fibres against our palms.

Soon a headless bunny will stand in
the yellow straw, a sweet sacrifice.

“Sensational Gardens” combats rot,
the signature scent of a New Jersey

celebrity falls flat into decay.

Three small faces merge

with stars, a manly offering.

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

Jessi MacEachern
lives in Montréal, QC, where she teaches English literature. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in CAROUSEL, Touch the Donkey, Poetry Is Dead, Vallum, MuseMedusa, Canthius, PRISM, and CV2. Her debut poetry collection is A Number of Stunning Attacks (Invisible Publishing, 2021).

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

Monday, August 9, 2021

new from above/ground press: small colossus, by Nathan Alexander Moore


small colossus
Nathan Alexander Moore
$5


To be twice as sick,

To die doubly, doubled over,

To die with someone else,

To die twice.

To die your death & to die theirs.

 

She is your mother &

You have inherited

Her famine. Her heart-hunger.

Her love-starved.

 

She was unprepared to

Grow a life outside her body.

So you must weather her

Soft & subtle neglects.

There are hungry silences sitting between you two.

Banshees perched

On each shoulder.

Wailing all grave-mouthed,

But neither of you bothers to listen. ("Comorbidity")

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


cover art: Idris Young

Nathan Alexander Moore (she/they) is a Black genderfluid transfemme writer, scholar, and dreamer. She is interested in critical and creative methods to explore the nuances of Blackness, queerness, and temporality. Currently, they are a PhD candidate at the University of Texas at Austin in the department of African and African Diaspora Studies. Their work has previously been published or is forthcoming from Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando from Damaged Goods Press, P-QUEUE, ode to Queer and Peauxdunque Review. She also loves cooking, naps, comics, and laughing.

To learn more about them at:
www.nathanalexandermoore.com
or on Twitter: @writing_moor

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