new from above/ground press: DEAR NOSTALGIA, by Nathanael O'Reilly

DEAR NOSTALGIA
Nathanael O’Reilly
$5

Chronotope

I live nine thousand, one hundred and four
miles, or fourteen thousand, six hundred
and fifty-one kilometres away
from my birthplace – I also live
in the present, forty-seven years
and seven months from the moment
of my birth in a country town
crouched above the Southern Ocean,
three thousand miles north of Antarctica.
Twenty-two years and twelve days after
I entered the world with blue eyes
and white hair, received the nickname
Murph the Surf from the nurses, twenty-two
years and twelve days after the local
radio station announced my birth
and played Bowie’s Space Oddity
in my honour, I left my homeland,
lifted off and crossed the sea alone
with one black suitcase full of books
and CDs, another full of clothes.
I carried my possessions with two hands
like my ancestors boarding ships
in Ireland, England, Wales and Portugal,
launched into a distant hemisphere.
I hurtled across time and space, landed
in a new station far above my past.

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

Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet; he teaches creative writing at The University of Texas at Arlington. His nine collections include Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Beir Bua Press, 2023), Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), BLUE (above/ground press, 2020) and Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017). His poetry appears in over one hundred journals and anthologies published in fourteen countries, including Another Chicago Magazine, Anthropocene, Cordite, The Elevation Review, Identity Theory, The Madrigal, New World Writing Quarterly, Trasna, Westerly and Wisconsin Review. He is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

This is O’Reilly’s second above/ground press chapbook, after BLUE (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

some author activity: Fuhr, Niespodziany + mclennan,

Laurie Anne Fuhr is interviewed in the "Six Questions" series via the Chaudiere Books blog; Benjamin Niespodziany has new work up at Peach mag, and at Litro, and is interviewed over at Gone Lawn; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Train: a poetry journal, and is interviewed by Lori Hettler in the 40 bu 10 questions interview series.

new from above/ground press: Perfumer's Organ, by Lindsey Webb

Perfumer’s Organ
Lindsey Webb
$5

       If it’s important to you, you can keep it on. So I wear it like a popular wife at the supermarket.
       It is seventy years ago and I am gracefully taking the phone off the hook, and my fingers go all the way around the handle before meeting in the middle, listful.
Eating endocrines off the ground.
       What do they call that scent—petrichor? Laser copier? Hang your clothes out to dry in the wind and when you bring them in, cover your face and breathe deeply. That’s ozone.
       Elephant trunk bottle, decanted onto a towel and dabbed on the throat; hot evening.

       Ammonites moving out there in the dark.

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

cover image: Maddison Colvin, “white peonies” (2019) used with permission of the artist

Lindsey Webb is the author of a chapbook, House (Ghost Proposal, 2020). Her writings have appeared in Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and Lana Turner, among others. She was named a 2021 National Poetry Series finalist and received a fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she is a Steffensen Cannon fellow in the PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

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: Something or Other, by Jason Heroux

Something or Other
Jason Heroux
$5

SOMETHING

The process of assuming control of someone’s territory and applying one’s own systems of law, government and religion is called something. In 1492 Christopher Columbus discovered something in 1969 Neal Armstrong stepped on something in 1915 Albert Einstein published his theory of something.

In Judges 14:14 Samson says, “Out of the eater came something to eat.”

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

Cover artwork: Samuel Strathman

Jason Heroux was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of four books of poetry: Memoirs of an Alias (2004); Emergency Hallelujah (2008); Natural Capital (2012) and Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines (2016). His forthcoming books include a short fiction collection Survivors of the Hive (Radiant Press) and a poetry chapbook New and Selected Days (Origami Poems Project).

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: Niespodziany, Pakdel, Boyle, Campanello + mclennan,

Benjamin Niespodziany has four short poems up at The Poetry Project; Saba Pakdel has work in the new issue of Loft; Frances Boyle has new work in issue twenty-one of The Temz Review; Kimberly Campanello has a poem up at Granta; and rob mclennan has had another piece from his essay-in-progress on collaborating with Denver poet Julie Carr up on his clever substack.

new from above/ground press: TAKE IT DOWN, by Barbara Henning

TAKE IT DOWN
Barbara Henning
$5

In the dark, I pray
to my grandmother
to Allen and my mother
please protect
our son
from the aftershock
that will reverberate
in his psyche
and in every corner
of the apartment

an electric cord in a noose
in the middle of the night
 
And please help her move on, too
Let go of him, please Rie, and move on—

These rooms where he grew up
Where his father died, holding
his hand and whispering
“I’m fine.”  Let go of him, please—

*

In the morning, I sit on the bench
surrounding the scrawny tree
outside his apartment building
Linnée texts me
driving home to Bayport
with her brother in her care
We missed the storm, she writes
It never came here

*

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

Cover artwork: Miranda Maher

Barbara Henning is the author of five novels and eight collections of poetry, most recently a hybrid biography of her mother’s life, Ferne, a Detroit Story (Spuyten Duyvil 2022); a novel, Just Like That (SD 2018); and a poetry collection, Digigram (United Artist Books, 2020). In the 90s, Henning was the editor and publisher of Long News: In the Short Century; she is also the editor of Looking Up Harryette Mullen, The Selected Prose of Bobbie Louise Hawkins, as well as editor and author of Prompt Book: Experiments for Writing Poetry and Fiction. She has taught for Naropa University and Long Island University where she is Professor Emerita. Born in Detroit, she presently lives in Brooklyn and teaches for writers.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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

A (Vancouver) Reading in Memory of Bob Hogg : February 12, 2023

new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #31; "The Factory Reading Series 30th anniversary" issue

The Peter F Yacht Club #31
"The Factory Reading Series 30th anniversary" issue / edited by rob mclennan
$5

produced in part for tonight's Factory Reading Series Covid-era poet memorial at the Carleton Tavern,
with new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars and irregulars, including: Cameron Anstee, Dessa Bayrock, Frances Boyle, Jason Christie, Conyer Clayton, Michael Dennis, AJ Dolman, nina jane drystek, Amanda Earl, Brian Fawcett, natalie hanna, Chris Johnson, rob mclennan, Pearl Pirie, Monty Reid, Stuart Ross, D.S. Stymeist + Grant Wilkins

See links to: my report on our most recent reading/regatta / The Peter F Yacht Club #30 : the virtual issue / The Peter F Yacht Club #29; stay-at-home issue / The Peter F Yacht Club #28: the VERSeFest 2020 (10th anniversary!) special / [ c a n c e l l a t i o n / p o s t p o n e m e n t  i s s u e ]

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
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

new from above/ground press: ONTARIO HYDRO, by Derek Beaulieu

ONTARIO HYDRO
Derek Beaulieu
$5

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

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence, is forthcoming from Sweden’s Timglaset Books, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to literature, and is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award.’ Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, is Banff’s Poet Laureate, and the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

This is Derek Beaulieu’s tenth above/ground press chapbook, after an issue of the long poem magazine STANZAS (“calcite gours 1-19,” issue no. 38), the interview chapbook ECONOMIES OF SCALE: rob mclennan interviews derek beaulieu on NO PRESS / derek beaulieu interviews rob mclennan on above/ground press (2012) and single-author chapbooks “A? any questions? (1998), [Dear Fred] (2004), HOW TO EDIT, Chapter A. (ALBERTA SERIES #8; 2008), transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress (2014), a a novel: 1-20 (2017), tattered sails (after un coup de des) (2018) and CABARET (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

some author activity: Swensen, Ross, O'Reilly + mclennan,

Cole Swensen has some new work up at Harvard Review Online; Stuart Ross offers his annual New Year's poem over at his blog, and is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Nathanael O'Reilly is included in the Spotlight series; rob mclennan has a new poem up at his blog, and offers his 'best of' list of 2022 Canadian poetry books.

The Factory Reading Series: a Covid-era memorial,

at The Carleton Tavern (upstairs)
233 Armstrong Avenue (at Parkdale Market)
Friday, January 13, 2023
doors 7pm, reading 7:30pm
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan,

Comprised as a group memorial for poets lost during the Covid-era, there will be readings and recollections by Cameron Anstee, Rhonda Douglas, James Moran, natalie hanna, rob mclennan, AJ Dolman, Chris Johnson, Chris Turnbull, Stephen Brockwell, Bardia Sinaee, Anita Lahey, Monty Reid and others on numerous poets we've been unable to properly memorialize over this period of pandemic isolation, including: Robert Hogg, Phyllis Webb, Douglas Barbour, Michael Dennis, Steven Heighton, Clare Latremouille, Joe Blades, Richard Sanger, Peter Van Toorn, David Donnell, RM (Richard) Vaughan, Brian Fawcett etc (if there's a Covid-era poet-loss you wish to memorialize at the event, please let me know at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com

This event will also mark not only the thirtieth anniversary of The Factory Reading Series (the first event held on Lisgar Street at the late lamented Stone Angel Institute in January 1993) but will see the publication of an accompanying issue of The Peter F Yacht Club.
See last year's virtual issue here
and information on the prior year's stay-at-home issue here

The Return of The Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta: a report,

Another regatta! It was glorious to have a gathering for our holiday what-sis once more, even with a small crowd (less than twenty people, actually). Can you believe this is the first one held in-person since 2019 [see my report on such here]? The Peter F. Yacht Club, which began in the late 1990s somewhere as an informal gathering/conversation of writers, produced its first issue in August 2003, with our first holiday gathering (most likely) in 2005. And of course, see my 2018 report here, my 2017 report here, my 2016 report here, my 2015 report here, and my 2013 report here. Oh, and did you hear a new issue is forthcoming?

We had a small gathering of readers, including Frances Boyle, Jason Christie, myself, Stuart Ross, D.S. Stymeist, Chris Turnbull and Grant Wilkins! AJ Dolman, James Moran (who has a new collection of short stories, apparently) and Margo LaPierre were scheduled, but life circumstances kept each of them from attending, although I did manage to convince (with little prompting) nina jane drystek to read, which was fun. Given the holiday chaos, between the occasional child-cough and the pre-Christmas storm that came through, Christine and our young ladies were away with family (a bumped visit), with a variety of other PFYC regulars also sending their regrets.

Frances Boyle

I've always enjoyed the idea of a holiday party between Christmas and New Year's, given how (obviously) half the readers might be busy with other activities, but those who are able are desperate to get out of the house (there aren't usually readings between, what, the first week of December and the second week of January?). The crowd at this particular event was small (given Covid, weather and other stresses), but mighty: including folk such as Steve Zytveld, Cathy McDonald-Zytveld, Christine Sung (who brought homemade cookies!) and (for the first time in attendance!) Sara Jamieson.

Jason Christie

D.S. Stymeist

Grant Wilkins

Obviously it was so good to hear from everyone! After so long, also. Some of the highlights included Stuart Ross reading a short poem for the late Michael Dennis [see my obituary for him here], Chris Turnbull reading two poems by the late Robert Hogg [see my obituary for him here], Grant Wilkins' remarkable sound poetry performance, and even Stuart and nina jane performing an improvised sound poem collaboration on the spot! Oh, had I only taken some further photos.