new from above/ground press: Report from the Ross Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

Report from the Ross Society
Vol 1. No. 1
edited by rob mclennan
$7

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Stuart Ross

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Cameron Anstee
Gary Barwin
Stephen Brockwell
Alice Burdick
Amelia Does
Warren Dean Fulton
Lillian Nećakov
Jay Miller
rob mclennan
Benjamin Niespodziany
Tom Prime
Dale Tracy

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
full list of published reports here
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Report on the Society logo by C. McNair, editor’s devil (retired)

Stuart Ross has two chapbooks with above/ground press: ESPESANTES (2018) and NINETY TINY POEMS (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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Boyle, Rukeyser, Logan + Scroggins,

Frances Boyle has a poem in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Susan Rukeyser has a new short story up at Arch Street Press; Nate Logan is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Mark Scroggins writes on Anne Carson and David Hadbawnik for Hyperallergic.

new from above/ground press: Report from the Earl Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

Report from the Earl Society
Vol 1. No. 1
edited by rob mclennan
$7

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Amanda Earl

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Sacha Archer
Gary Barwin
Gregory Betts
Richard Capener
Johanna Drucker
Kyle Flemmer
rob mclennan
Christine McNair
Joakim Norling
Imogen Reid
Sandra Ridley
Petra Schulze-Wollgast
Kate Siklosi
Dani Spinosa
Eileen Tabios
Terri Witek

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
full list of published reports here
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Report on the Society logo by C. McNair, editor’s devil (retired)

Amanda Earl has ten chapbooks with above/ground press, including Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022).

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

new from above/ground press: THE BEFORE, by Amanda Earl

THE BEFORE,
an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia
Amanda Earl
$5

Reading The Tarot of a Dying Planet


the first persecution
of a cliff is the sun
it can be depicted
as a mother
it is not clear
the goddess of shock
will shake up frogs,
lice, gnats, diseased livestock
the plague of wildfires
is roaming imperial

the second card kills
everything in scarlet
turn the card over i
i am afraid

if darkness was
a slap in the ocean
presume a series
of visions of
boils, hail, locusts

i imagine jumping into
the end of time
insert ink stain and
paper cuts the blood
of saints

maybe i seek
redemption from
cosmic disasters
preparation
for a loop

this scarlet
conflagration
is going to come
to this world
in some way

the card has given
you water turned
into blood

the tower makes
the sea sacred
my useless words
at the edge
of panic

cardinals face
the sun
away from
the tarnished doom
of the land

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a Canadian pansexual polyamorous feminist who writes poetry and prose, makes visual poetry, edits, and publishes others from her 19th floor apartment in Ottawa, Ontario.

She’s the author of Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014, now with Invisible Publishing), Coming Together Presents Amanda Earl (Coming Together, 2014) and A World of Yes (Devil House, 2015), and over 30 chapbooks. Her most recent chapbook is Matthew (Knife Fork Book, 2021). For Electric Garden, Earl received the Tree Press Chapbook Award in 2017 and in 2014, she was inducted into the VERSeOttawa Hall of Honour.

Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca, the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset Editions, 2021) and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. Her visual poetry has been exhibited in Brazil, Canada, India, Italy, Russia, Sweden, UK and USA. More information is available at AmandaEarl.com or connect on Twitter @KikiFolle.

This is Amanda Earl’s tenth chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020) and a field guide to fanciful bugs (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

Benjamin Niespodziany’s The Northerners (2021) is reviewed (alongside an interview with the author) by Evan Williams at The Chicago Maroon

Thanks to Evan Williams for providing the first review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s The Northerners (2021), alongside an interview with the author, over at The Chicago Maroon. The review is posted below, but see here for the whole piece, including the interview.

Ben Niespodziany’s The Northerners (above/ground press, 2021) is a collection of 37 short, numbered poems written while watching Alex van Warmerdam’s 1992 film De Noorderlingen on mute.

The Northerners is episodic, like watching a movie in a theater cast in violent strobe-lighting. The divisions between each poem are extreme, and yet, there are always two on a page and, save for the 37th poem, there’s always a degree of visual continuity. Threading the episodic bursts into, if not a narrative, then at least a form of textually-depicted progression, is The Northerners’s cast of characters. Most present are the saint, the boy, the forester, and the butcher. Appearing briefly are the two monks, the neighborhood, the postman, the glutton, the pond, the coat rack, and the forest. While the primary four actors in Niespodziany’s project provide a sense of stability in an otherwise fluid world, the ephemeral background players allow the book a sense of rapid motion through their whirlwind entrance and subsequent exit.

At the core of Niespodziany’s project is the recognition that the illogical exists but is always just beyond our reach. He writes in “[17]”, “The real challenge is not/ lassoing the moon/ but reeling it in once caught.” Each of Niespodziany’s characters encounters this dilemma at some point or another; each of them is able to feel the moon in their grasp but is able to bring it no closer than that. The saint, forester, and butcher have become either so disillusioned by its hardness (“They catch the butcher in bed with/ weaponry and a pint of ink./ Feet of feather, tethered time.”) or so hopelessly optimistic that such an awful thing isn’t true (“The saint/ waits up late/ for a sign./ The moon/ does the same.”) that they have been dissuaded from chasing this magic. Or, perhaps, they are too afraid to do so for fear that it’s just sand.

It is the boy who seems most able to hold at once in his head the fact of worldly limitations and the presence of otherworldly wonder, the boy who seems able to convey both in a single stroke (from “[30]”):    

The boy suspects

a world outside

the neighborhood.

He is a radio

reporting in the forest.

A simple lump in the throat.    

The mode in which Niespodziany has written The Northerners contributes to this sense of just-almost-magic, each poem offering its reader a glimpse of the moon, the illogical, the impossible, or the fantastic, only to leave us on the edge of wonder for the next poem. No poem exemplifies this impulse better than the book’s final numbered piece, “[36]”:

The director

refuses to discuss

the ending. He’s busy

in his pool, writing

something new.    

Niespodziany’s project is novel in method and tantalizing in message. It seems to implore its reader to listen for a radio signal in the forest, to really hear it in its nuance, then to cast a lasso 'round the moon, just to give it a go—maybe it’s ready to be reeled in at last.

some author activity: Reid, Hunter, mclennan, Nećakov + Brown,

Monty Reid has some new work posted online at IceFloe Press, and a poem-response to the #OttawaOccupation over at Train: a poetry journal; Carrie Hunter is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; rob mclennan's poem-response to the #OttawaOccupation is now up at his blog; Lillian Nećakov is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Simon Brown is interviewed via poetry mini interviews.

new from above/ground press: Report from the Brockwell Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

Report from the Brockwell Society
Vol 1. No. 1
edited by rob mclennan
$7

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Stephen Brockwell

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Amanda Earl
John Foy
Laurie Anne Fuhr
rob mclennan
Peter Norman
Ken Norris
Pearl Pirie
Roland Prevost
Stuart Ross

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
full list of published reports here
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Report on the Society logo by C. McNair, editor’s devil (retired)

Stephen Brockwell has six chapbooks with above/ground press, including Marin County Poems (2001), Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment) (2010), Excerpts from Impossible Books: The Crawdad Cantos (2012), Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films (2014) and Immune to the Sacred (2018). His next full-length collection, Immune to the Sacred, appears in 2022.

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

new from above/ground press: ECO BLUES: A tale in 3 parts, by Karl Jirgens

ECO BLUES:
A tale in 3 parts
Karl Jirgens
$5

So, you’re working at the coffee shop at the corner of University and somewhere, and you’re thinking you should’ve stayed in school. There’s an unkempt hairy person trying to make small talk from across the counter, and you know they’re trying weasel you into a date. You’re desperate for an intrusion, and as luck would have it, the androgynous advertisement flyer person bursts in. Black lipstick. Strategically zippered, ripped black clothing, augmented discretely with fine-link silver chains, strategically disheveled black hair half-covering various piercings. They plunk the weekly flyers on the counter. You notice the flyers have a prominent “Green” notice saying, “Printed on 70 lb. uncoated, 100% recycled paper.” To avoid the teetotaler, you grab a flyer and begin reading;

You can change your life! Count Alessandro di Cagliostro has discovered a profound secret. Yes! For three easy-to-manage payments of only 19.99, learn how you can re-write the script of your own life! Transform your humdrum existence into a dizzying buzz of delight! How? Simply apply the rhetorical techniques of great fiction to your daily activities! Count Cagliostro will show you how. Just by reading this, your transformative journey has begun!

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the fifteenth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
February 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Karl Jirgens, is the former English Department Head, and former Chair of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Windsor. He is the author of two short story collections (Coach House, and Mercury Presses), and two scholarly books (ECW Press). He edited two books (one on painter Jack Bush (Coach House), and another on poet Christopher Dewdney (Wilfrid Laurier UP), plus, an issue of Open Letter magazine (with Beatriz Hausner). His scholarly and creative works are published globally. Jirgens edited and published Rampike, an international journal of art, writing, and theory (1979-2016). Rampike is now digitally archived (free) through the portal at U Windsor’s Leddy Library. WEB: https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/rampike/about.html (Non-profit). All copyrights remain with the contributors.

Karl Jirgens’ next short-fiction collection, The Razor’s Edge is due spring of 2022 (Porcupine’s Quill)

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

new from above/ground press: DISSECTIONS, by df parizeau

DISSECTIONS
df parizeau
$5

Penumbra
oculus sinister, occipital & parietal lobes

The resiliency of pubescence is best defined by middle-grade sleepovers with best friends. Amateur cryptanalysts, bathing in the scrambled cerulean glow of pay-per-view channels, trying to decode a human form. Most nights yield little more than the penumbra of a boob. Recounted to schoolfriends, awe is reserved not for what or how much was seen, but for the courage of curiosity.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

df parizeau is a scottish/french settler, editor/writer, and chronic pain sufferer, who still ties their shoes “bunny-ears” style. Their work has been featured online and in print by publications in Canada, Finland, the UK, and the US. They have a firm belief in the 3-0 curveball and that cherry is the best pie. dissections is their first chapbook.

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

new from above/ground press: aversions // nothing special, by Wanda Praamsma

aversions   //   nothing special
Wanda Praamsma
$5

*

bleak
outward
mission-less

me   unknowing

a lack of speech
in-existence
out-existence

you          simply weren’t

aimless    it’s all one after the other
I’ll have this & that
& then we’ll lay there naked
all for pleasure
not for knowing          you

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Wanda Praamsma is a poet and writer based in Kingston, Ontario. Her first book of poetry, a thin line between, was published by Book*hug in 2014, and poems have appeared in periodicities, ottawater, eleven eleven, Lemon Hound, and The Feathertale 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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: RESIDUE, by Lydia Unsworth

RESIDUE
Lydia Unsworth
$5

South Lane (so I’ve been told)

you left the babies
out front on the pavement
for a spell of fresh air
let them sleep
dream of a world
without cars
whole streets of babies
weeping at the strollers rolling by
a wave of depression
passed over you     you said
it’s okay
it’s fine

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image originally published by Manchester : Mancunium Velveteen

Lydia Unsworth’s latest collections are Some Murmur (Beir Bua Press) and Mortar (Osmosis). Her most recent pamphlets are YIELD (KFS) and cement, terraces (Red Ceilings). Work can be found in places like Ambit, Banshee, Bath Magg, Blackbox Manifold, Shearsman, Tentacular, and The Interpreter’s House.

This is Unsworth’s second above/ground press title, after I Have Not Led a Serious Life (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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com