some author activity: Witek, Smith, mclennan, Hyland + Flemmer,

Terri Witek and Jessica Smith (among many, many others) participate in this year's edition of The New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 13-16, 2023 ; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Olney magazine; MC Hyland and Brian Teare participate in a reading and conversation at NYU via The Organism for Poetic Research on April 6; and Kyle Flemmer has a new poem up at The Pi Review

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

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

Canadian orders $6.00 CAD American orders $7.00 CAD International orders $11.00 CAD

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.

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

some author activity: Mellis, O'Reilly, Melançon + Dennis,

forthcoming author Miranda Mellis has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series via the dusie blog; Nathanael O'Reilly has new work up at axon; Jérôme Melançon has work featured in the Spotlight Series; and Amy Dennis is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series

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!

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

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

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.

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