Tuesday, June 6, 2023

new from above/ground press: “Almost Alive,” by Julia Drescher

“Almost Alive”
Julia Drescher
$5

If beginning exists it might be a rhythm

Lists, questions, organisms

“Beyond the surfaces of support”

This vulgar flower, that trashy nerve

Venting valvic & pinched

“Attracting men who become defensive”

Every monday late august a different century

In the dim light of morning a leaden prosody goes walking

It gathers its skirts & squats

With descriptive organs

A flowering muscle’s slow mountain

A discomposure in the shoulder

The jaw falls open

With an unfamiliar sense

It is acorn-shaped, it is brushing gradients

Slow curves & passing language

Time breeds surface & rhythm works

Weather like a gift gone wrong

Walking & wiping its face on the lawn

Where the body collapses, more or less

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Julia Drescher
has one full-length collection from Delete Press (OPEN EPIC, 2017) & chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Further Other Book Works, & ypolita. This is her third title from above/ground press, after BLATTA & Metastatic Flower (2020). She lives in Colorado.

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

Wednesday, May 31, 2023

new from above/ground press: ECHOES, by Ken Norris

ECHOES
Ken Norris
$5

MEMPHIS BLUES


O call it what it is.

Call out anything
that occurs to you.

The air’s gone out of everything,
and life flattens.

So you try for a
C7add9.

I just can’t keep jazz chords
out of the blues.

Not any longer.

And I’m winding it down
to the point where
it almost breaks.

But it doesn’t,
cos it can’t.

So you go round
and around in the endless
cycles of life,

trying to jump the wheel
you can’t get off of.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ken Norris
was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

This is Ken Norris’ eleventh above/ground press chapbook, after Windward – St. Lucia Poems (1995), The Commentaries (1999), Songs For Isabella (2000), Green Wind (2010), Looking Into It (2011), Hong Kong Blues (2019), Hawaiian Sunrise (2021), Stray Dog Café (2021), The Traveling Wilburys Collection (2021) and False Narratives (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

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

new from above/ground press: Toothache, by Joseph Donato

Toothache
Joseph Donato
$5

I’m Scared of the Tooth Fairy
 
 
Dentist in the orchard
trades pennies for apples,
plucks the branches bare
 
Liquorice gums and
milk teeth,
burnt matches
on latex fingers
 
Caramel leaks
through gaps in my smile,
pillowcase stained
gold
 
My treasure chest empties
but its ghost weight lingers,
candies and apple seeds
in my mouth
 
I want my cavities back.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Joseph Donato’s Toothache yanks sense by the root. In this collection of taut, imagistic poems, Donato laces things tight, wiggling short character studies out of drippy cavities. Toothache pours the surrealism of Richard Brautigan or Stuart Ross through their own caramel. Toothache leaves your cheeks stuffed.  
    — ryan fitzpatrick, publisher of Model Press
    
as someone with teeth, i can say that toothache hurts just as it should.
    — Isla McLaughlin, author of girl, online

Toothache is a hit, a masterpiece. The author should be praised and adored and given money.
    — Joseph Donato, author of Toothache
Joseph Donato is super cool and popular. He is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Block Party, a Toronto-based magazine and press. Apart from writing, Joseph enjoys illustrating, buying CDs, and Tic Tacs. Toothache is his debut chapbook publication. 

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

Tuesday, May 23, 2023

ANNOUNCING: the above/ground press 30th anniversary fundraiser

Across the thirty years-to-date of my poetry chapbook publisher above/ground press (b. July 9, 1993) I’ve worked hard to engage with numerous threads of literary activity, from multiple elements of poetic form (prose poems, long poems, visual poems, lyric forms, etcetera) to different geographies and communities, and a whole slew of individual writers across North American and beyond in their ongoing works. Centred in the Ottawa literary community, above/ground press publishes single-author poetry chapbooks as well as a handful of ongoing journals (Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], GUEST [a journal of guest editors] and The Peter F. Yacht Club), and has published chapbook debuts alongside works by award-winning authors and produced works in translation and collaborative efforts, running the gamut between wildly experimental works and more traditional forms. Last year, above/ground press started producing a series of festschrifts, celebrating the works of individual poets from across North America, attempting to find a spark of positive throughout the weight of the Covid-era.

The very nature of chapbook publishing is both ephemeral and immediate, and able to take a particular kind of risk that almost refuses anything commercial. Unfortunately, of course, publishing is an expensive enterprise, and subscriptions alone provide far less than half of publishing costs. I’ve long resisted increasing my subscription rates, precisely due to not wishing to outprice anyone who wishes to engage with the work.

While the pandemic years managed with roughly the same amount of annual above/ground press subscribers overall, the press saw severely reduced individual sales, as well as wiping out in-person readings and small press fair possibilities (from the ottawa small press book fair to Toronto’s Meet the Presses), so there hasn’t been the same ability to replenish the financial coffers to feed back into production. My personal Public Lending Rights and Access Copyright monies have also fed directly into the press, but it still hasn’t been enough to not worry about how one might keep the lights on. Given the enormous backlist the press holds, much of which is still in print (although half of the titles I’m listing include some of the final copies), I thought this might be an opportunity to offer a series of curated packages of titles, many of which highlight a variety of threads the press has deliberately attended.

Fully aware that chapbook publishing, especially poetry chapbook publishing, is inherently a not-for-profit enterprise, I’d like to keep moving forward, otherwise I might have to seriously reassess how best to keep publishing, if at all.

The opening salvo of available perks have been posted, and I’m aiming to announce further perks over the following weeks, including more bundles (a second Brooklyn Poets bundle, for example), as well as bundles featuring the work of Amanda Earl, Derek Beaulieu and Ken Norris. There will probably be others, naturally.

The goals for this fundraiser are to keep going. See the link to the campaign here.

Monday, May 8, 2023

Poetry at the Avant-Garde (Ottawa, June 1st): Jessi MacEachern, Stuart Ross, & William Vallières

Join us at the Avant-Garde Bar to see Stuart Ross (Cobourg), Jessi MacEachern (Montréal), and William Vallières (Montréal) read from their new poetry chapbooks from above/ground press.
Hosted by Bardia Sinaee.


Thursday, June 1, 2023 : Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa
Event starts at 7:30pm.
Admission is free.
Chapbooks will be available for sale.
See the Eventbrite link here


About the readers:

Jessi MacEachern
is a poet who lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal where she teaches English literature. She is the author of A Number of Stunning Attacks. Her chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is her second chapbook with above/ground press.

Stuart Ross, winner of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, is the author of over twenty full-length books of poetry, fiction, and essays. Bird Snow on Hard Tracks is his third above/ground press chapbook. Stuart’s work has been translated into French, Norwegian, Slovene, Russian, Spanish, and Estonian. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Event, Grain, and Plenitude. His first book of poetry, Versus (2019), is out with Véhicule Press. His chapbook, Poor Rutebeuf (2023), a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, is out now with above/ground press.

Event banner artwork by Barbara Caruso.

Friday, April 28, 2023

new from above/ground press: What started / this mess, by Samuel Ace

What started / this mess
Samuel Ace
$5
March 22

What dawn   
what midday   
what dusk
what mid-
length coat   
what midnight   
what midship
sails out
what gone
as the sun
hits 40 degrees   
between knee
and hip   
the midline
of my life   
what mid-senility
would bring
the next word   
what mid-talk
would actually stop   
what mid-breath
would I breathe again    
what simple garden
of peas
what mid-stride
looks back
over the cliff    
falling up then
standing at
the peak   
before the dark
bends toward
the morning light   
what current
takes us
over the tracks   
what desert calls
to what rust
unvisited since
midlife   
what’s left behind   
what stinking light   
what gathering half-
filled with things   
a yellow couch   
half-eaten jars
of honey   
half-read books   
half-smelled bees
in the magnolia trees   
the half-full reservoir
left to fill again    
what remains
in the rain   
half hopeful   
half a creosote bush   
half pray daylight
comes half-life
into dust       

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Samuel Ace
is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author of several books, most recently Our Weather Our Sea and a chapbook of the same name; Meet Me There, Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash., and Stealth with poet Maureen Seaton. Other chapbooks include Madame Curie’s Notebook, The Road to the Multiverse, A minor history / of secret knowledge (all with Maureen Seaton). Ace is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a repeat finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Poetry, We Want it All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetry; Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, and many other journals and anthologies.

A book-length poetic essay, I Want to Start by Saying, is forthcoming from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center.

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

Wednesday, April 26, 2023

new from above/ground press: BIRD SNOW ON HARD TRACKS, by Stuart Ross


BIRD SNOW ON HARD TRACKS
Stuart Ross
$5


A yellow ice bird will soon turn
the red night mist into feathered mice

Grey days chatter and chirp among the falling rocks
A flurry of silence buttons the gently flowing air

The naked tree among cold January crickets
brings a yellow yellow yellow horizon

to the dead railway bridge beneath
a trace of blackened caterpillars

Author’s Note: This poem was assembled using all the words from Nelson Ball’s quietly magnificent collection Bird Tracks On Hard Snow, including dedications and titles. I took liberties in capitalizing and lowercasing words. And in using spaces mid-line in place of a period; Nelson did that only in a few early poems. Dashes are the only punctuation I brought from that book to this poem. Nelson got to see the first half (more or less) of this poem before his death in August 2019. He seemed amused in his quiet way by this remix. —SR

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


cover drawing: Barbara Caruso

Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and small press guerrilla living in Cobourg, Ontario. The recipient of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2010 Relit Prize for Short Fiction, among others, Stuart is the author of over twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, most recently The Book of Grief and Hamburgers (ECW Press, 2022) and 70 Kippers: The Dagmar Poems (with Michael Dennis; Proper Tales Press, 2020). I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub, his third fiction collection, appeared from Anvil Press in fall 2022. Stuart has taught workshops in schools across the country and was Writer-in-Residence at Queen’s University and the University of Ottawa. His work has been translated into French, Norwegian, Slovene, Russian, Spanish, and Estonian. He occasionally blogs at bloggamooga.blogspot.ca.

This is Ross’ third chapbook with above/ground press, after ESPESANTES (2018) and NINETY TINY POEMS (2019).

Report from the Ross Society (ed. rob mclennan), an assemblage of writing in response to the work of Stuart Ross (above/ground press) appeared 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

Thursday, April 20, 2023

new from above/ground press: Apogee/Perigee, by Leesa Dean

Apogee/Perigee
Leesa Dean
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


design by Nathan Vyklicky

Leesa Dean is a graduate of the University of Guleph’s Creative Writing MFA program and an instructor at Selkirk College. Her first book, Waiting for the Cyclone, was a finalist for the 2017 Trillium and Relit Awards. Her novella-in-verse, The Filling Station, was recently published by Gaspereau Press and is based on the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop. She lives in Krestova, BC (unceded Sinixt territory), with her artist husband Matty Kakes and their daughter Scarlett Heart.

This is Dean’s second above/ground press chapbook, after The Desert of Itabira (2020)

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, April 17, 2023

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


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


an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Nikki Reimer

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Jonathan Ball
andrea bennett
Jason Christie
Ryan J. Cox
Jen Currin
Dina Del Bucchia
ryan fitzpatrick
Kyle Flemmer
Elee Kraljii Gardiner
Emma Healey
Nicole Markotić
Carmen Faye Mathes
rob mclennan
Adam Seelig
Kevin Spenst
Jeremy Stewart
Jonathan Valelly
Daniel Zomparelli
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
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)

Nikki Reimer (she/her/they/them) is a self-proclaimed “carbon-based life form of Ukrainian and Russian Mennonite descent who lives on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. She may or may not be undead. She writes poetry, essays and criticism, yells on the internet, and makes digital art.” They are the author of three books of poetry and multiple essays on grief. GRIEFWAVE, a multimedia, web-based, extended elegy, was published in February 2022. Her next collection, out this fall, is No Town Called We (Talon Books, 2023).

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 robmclennan.blogspot.com

Friday, March 24, 2023

new from above/ground press: When a Folk, When a Sprawl, by Jessi MacEachern

When a Folk, When a Sprawl
Jessi MacEachern
$5


The ready-rot of consciousness. Keeps my nose cold

Three of us rode.


Whose rough-guise. Whose road-gyre

The smoke made it so


The wuzz-or-whir. The monologue will not revive

My memory of her.


Three of us drove. The night’s machinations


For twenty-eight long days. It was only May

The stench visible. In the glass


Would the lilacs be in bloom
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jessi MacEachern
is the author of the poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, as well as the chapbooks Television Poems (above/ground), You Do Not Like Animal Sounds (Ghost City), and Ravishing the Sex into the Hold (Model). Her new poetry collection Cut Side Down is forthcoming with Invisible in 2025. She is the 2022–24 reviewer of Poetics for Oxford University Press's The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Bishop’s University.

This is MacEachern’s second above/ground press title, after Television Poems (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

Thursday, March 23, 2023

new from above/ground press: G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #26 : guest-edited by Adam Katz

NOW AVAILABLE: G U E S T #26
edited by Adam Katz
published as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
see here for Adam Katz’ introduction 

the new issue features new work by:

alex benedict
Marc E. Christmas
Adam Katz
Ron Silliman

Canadian/American/International rates (including shipping

author biographies:

alex benedict runs betweenthehighway press. alex is a Jōdo Shū Buddhist from Ohio’s Cuyahoga Valley, currently tutoring at The University of North Carolina’s Writing Center.

Marc E. Christmas currently lives in Columbia, MD and is a high school teacher for Howard County Public School System, and the Director for holistic healing at the Niyah Center. His recent poetry is a written to inspire those healing from personal tragedy and/or depression. He is a recognized thought leader in transformative leadership development, business development, energy healing, and critical life skills training. He’s also a Certified Reiki Master Teacher and a Certified Life Coach.

Adam Katz is a poet-scholar, fiction writer, English instructor, and editor living on Gitxsan territory in northwest BC.

Ron Silliman lives currently about 20 miles outside of Philadelphia. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania and his most recent book is an expanded edition of the collaboration Legend, written with Bruce Andrews, Charles Bernstein, the late Ray Di Palma and Steve McCaffery. His last reading tours pre-Covid were of Oklahoma and Spain, more alike than one might imagine.

Wednesday, March 22, 2023

new from above/ground press: NOISE, by Jordan Davis

NOISE
Jordan Davis
$5

SHOOTING FOR THE LAST DAYS IN MAY
(2ND TAKE)

Selfsame trawling the wholecloth expense
barging for the too-long roiling quick
documentary’s earned orchestral maundy
song or something somehow this furnished
azure attitude destroyed untotally
by miracle of overhearing chamomile
to soothe the interest and witch
a tan upon my friends so gifted
at having friends, o lug me
into your cherry-dawdled spanking
as a wish wants to be a person but is a wish.
It wants to be female DNA
having lived long enough
as geometric proofs of the identity
of my fear of thought
which produces litter (aye!
Undo your hearing aid) out
of love again, a speedy amaryllis.


AFTERWORD


Reading Noise, I kept wanting to ask something facile like “Is this what it would be like if Frank O’Hara raised kids?,” but that might only be because I know its author has: they don’t have unmistakable walk-on roles in many of these poems, though I might not be looking hard enough. What I mean is, roughly: what becomes of the (mostly) urban flaneur when the project of self-creation comes under pressure from what an earlier bohemia might have viewed as the mundane imposition of commitments to care? Even that makes it sounds like I think O’Hara didn’t care about his family of choice, which is another reason the thought is facile. I don’t know that Jordan Davis thinks of his poems in these terms at all: asking, after all, isn’t the done thing. But I have my suspicions: one commends procreation to the beloved. But even that poem, persuasive and apparently plainspoken, is called “Periphrase,” and it’s no accident that “steganography,” which I had to look up, appears elsewhere. Whether a given poem foregrounds a readily legible mise en scene (“The Coke Machine at the Time Share”) or the play of image, aphorism, and knockabout sonics (“The mime and the gnome trade memes”), something here – or someone, and not necessarily the poet – needs and deserves protection. Either way, this noise is mostly signal.    --Franklin Bruno
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jordan Davis’s
second collection, Shell Game, was published by Edge Books in 2018; his third book, Yeah, No, will be published by MadHat in 2023. Recent work appears in The Brooklyn Rail, The Canary, and American Poetry Review. He lives in Brooklyn and works in the financial services industry.

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

Saturday, March 18, 2023

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Amy Dennis + Natalie Eilbert, March 25, 2023!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the thirteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents:
 

The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:

Amy Dennis (Northern ON)
+
Natalie Eilbert (Green Bay WI)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Saturday, March 25, 2023
1-2pm at Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar St. Ottawa (simultaneously streamed online free!
$15 tickets / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 18-26, 2023

In addition to publications in England and France, Amy Dennis' poetry has appeared in more than twenty Canadian literary publications, including CV2, Event, Queen's Quarterly, and Prairie Fire. Her poetry has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards and a Random House Creative Writing Award. She placed second in the UK’s National Bedford Open Poetry Competition. While completing her Ph.D in literature, she published THE COMPLEMENT AND ANTAGONIST OF BLACK (OR, THE DEFINITION OF ALL VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS) with above/ground press. In 2022, Mansfield Press published The Sleep Orchard, Dennis' collection of ekphrastic poems in response to the life and art of Arshile Gorky. Currently, she works as a learning facilitator and professor.
https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/performer/amydennis

Natalie Eilbert [pictured] is the author of three poetry collections, Overland (Copper Canyon Press, forthcoming 5/16/2023), Indictus (Noemi Press 2018), Swan Feast (Bloof Books 2015). A recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts in poetry, a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and winner of the George Bogin Memorial Award from Poetry Society of America, Eilbert lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she is a statewide mental health reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/performer/neilbert

both performers also have new work in the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club, produced specifically for this year’s festival!

Friday, March 17, 2023

new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #32 : 2023 VERSeFest Special,

The Peter F Yacht Club #32
2023 VERSeFest Special
lovingly hand-crafted, folded, stapled, edited and carried around in bags of envelopes by rob mclennan,
$6

With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars, irregulars and VERSeFest 2023 participants
, including Dessa Bayrock, Frances Boyle, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Molly Cross-Blanchard, Amy Dennis, AJ Dolman, nina jane drystek, Amanda Earl, Natalie Eilbert, Laurie Anne Fuhr, Natalie Lim, rob mclennan, Justin Million, Pearl Pirie, Devon Rae, D.S. Stymeist + Grant Wilkins,

See links to: my report on our most recent reading/regatta / The Peter F Yacht Club #31 : "The Factory Reading Series 30th anniversary" issue / The Peter F Yacht Club #30 : the virtual issue ;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[a small stack of copies will be distributed free as part of the thirteenth annual VERSeFest, March 18-26, 2023]


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

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

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


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


an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Jessica Smith

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Cynthia Arrieu-King
Derek Beaulieu
Maria Damon
Michelle Detorie
Steven Fama
rob mclennan
Sheila E. Murphy
Danielle Pafunda
Linda Russo
Jonathan Skinner
Alina Stefanescu
Aaron Tucker
Chris Turnbull
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
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)

Jessica Smith has published four chapbooks with above/ground press: Shifting Landscapes (2006), MNEMOTECHNICS (2013), The Lover is Absent (2017) and Lion’s Den, a chiasmus (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 robmclennan.blogspot.com

Monday, March 13, 2023

new from above/ground press: LEARNING HOW TO TALK, by Nick Chhoeun

LEARNING HOW TO TALK
Nick Chhoeun
$5

SURVIVAL

They filled unmarked graves
with fresh bodies and bullet casings,

unable to comprehend
work
, sleep, cry, eat.

How did hunger outweigh danger
as Dad threw rocks at beehives
in the smoke of a crossfire?

Within how many nightmares did Mom find sanctuary in
as she slowly forgot
details of her mother’s face?

They stumbled onto different planes.

They couldn’t translate
Pittsburgh from New Hampshire.

I wondered when they relearned
safety, groceries, income, choice.

Their first house, a statue.
I didn’t worry about security.

I was not allowed to be picky,
or to properly identify nothing.

I learned guests were
forbidden from hotels.

I didn’t care about
a big family until

They said,
You should have
six uncles,

one grandfather,
more.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Nick Chhoeun
earned his MFA in Creative Writing from American University. His work explores themes of identity, culture, and love through an Asian American millennial perspective. As a teacher, he shares his passion for writing with his students at Central Connecticut State University and the University of Hartford. He is a Davis Fellow. Aside from his works in writing, you can find him rocking out with his band Not Freshmen.

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