some author activity: Praamsma, Dyckman, Novak, Barwin + Beaulieu,

Wanda Praamsma is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Susanne Dyckman has new work up at Posit; JoAnna Novak is interviewed by Tara Anne Dalbow for BOMB; Gary Barwin is interviewed by Open Book; and Derek Beaulieu writes about his time at filling Station for The Typescript.

Lillian Nećakov and Karen Massey are Finalists for The Montreal International Poetry Prize!

In case you hadn't heard, Toronto poet Lillian Nećakov (3¢ Pulp) and Ottawa poet Karen Massey (bullet, Strange fits of beauty & light, SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE), both above/ground press authors, have poems included in the list of fifty-one finalists for this year's Montreal International Poetry Prize! Congratulations!

new from above/ground press: Inconsistent Cemeteries, by Mckenzie Strath

Inconsistent Cemeteries
Mckenzie Strath
$5

Bring Back the Wolves of Cape Breton


I dipped my feet into the Atlantic ocean
during a thunderstorm

It puddled around my toes and seeped into my veins
as I pondered whether the weather would electrocute
me for thinking

About how a moose
can eat an entire Christmas tree
without dying

Though many trees are
deciduous in the East
like Betula papyrifera
or Sorbus americana

moose eat Christmas trees
that are protected

Smashing needles
and cones with gnarled teeth
pulverizing bark with sharp hooves
they create havoc on our ecosystem
just by existing

They squat throughout the Cabot Trail
having no predators
except for brain worms
and sometimes bears

But bears are often humble
and couldn’t care less for a moose
unless it has babies
So let's bring back the wolves

The wolves of Cape Breton
whose paws create earthquakes
crumbling mountains
into small hills

The Wolves
that snarl at antlers
and gouge out spleens
while howling during the solstice

The wolves of Cape Breton
eating moose like royalty
dining on them for feasts

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mckenzie Strath is an (almost graduated) undergraduate at Simon Fraser University studying Archaeology, English and Creative Writing.

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

Mahaila Smith wins this year's John Newlove Poetry Award

Congratulations to Ottawa poet (and above/ground press author) Mahaila Smith, who last night was announced as the winner of the 21st annual John Newlove Poetry Award (hosted by the ottawa international writers festival; catch the recorded livestream here, in case you missed it), as run through and by Bywords.ca, with this year's judge Toronto poet Jim Johnstone. Very nice! From her author biography: Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag. They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their recent chapbooks include Water-Kin (Metatron Press 2024) and Enter the Hyperreal (above/ground press 2024). Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, is forthcoming with Stelliform Press. As Jim's judge's comments read:

"In this year's John Newlove Award winning poem word building becomes world building, a powerful meditation deftly stitched together with a seamless, serotonin-inducing hand."

The annual John Newlove Poetry award, launched in the fall of 2004, commemorates the honest, poignant and well-written poetry of John Newlove, an Ottawa resident for almost twenty years and poet who died in 2003. Smith won for her poem "Ugly, Red: A Cento," and now has the opportunity for a chapbook of her work to appear through Bywords.ca next year! And did you hear that another above/ground press author, BC-based poet Dale Tracy, was the honourable mention for this year's award for her poem "Run"? Oh, what a year this has been.

above/ground press: 2025 subscriptions now available!

The race to the half-century continues! And with more than THIRTEEN HUNDRED TITLES produced to date over thirty-one-plus years, there’s been a ton of above/ground press activity over the past calendar year, including NEARLY FIFTY TITLES (so far) produced in 2024 alone (including poetry chapbooks by John Levy, Vik Shirley, Ian FitzGerald, Peter Jaeger, ryan fitzpatrick, Scott Inniss, Shane Rhodes, Mahaila Smith, Gil McElroy, Carlos A. Pittella, Pearl Pirie, Chris Banks, Helen Hajnoczky, rob mclennan, Kacper Bartczak (trans. by Mark Tardi), Ken Norris, Saba Pakdel, Hope Anderson, Sacha Archer, Peter Myers, Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Kyla Houbolt, Dale Tracy, Phil Hall + Steven Ross Smith, Melissa Eleftherion, Katie Ebbitt, Amanda Deutch, Kyle Flemmer, Pete Smith, russell carisse, Micah Ballard, Angela Caporaso, Cary Fagan, Blunt Research Group, Gary Barwin and Lydia Unsworth, all of which are still in print), as well as issues of the poetry quarterly Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] and an issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club.

The Factory Reading Series is gearing up for some further events, but have you seen the virtual reading series over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (with new monthly online content, by the way; the pandemic-era extension of above/ground press). Have you seen the posts, as well, through the (ottawa) small press almanac? lots of information on above/ground press and everyone else in town who makes chapbooks/ephemera etcetera! And the next edition (30th anniversary!) of the ottawa small press fair is November 16th!

One can't forget the prose chapbook series that above/ground started during the pandemic-era, with new titles this year by M.A.C. Farrant, Jacob Wren and Clint Burnham, with a further forthcoming by Susan Gevirtz! And did you see the chapbook anthology Dessa Bayrock guest-edited for the press this year, A Crown of Omnivorous Teeth: poems in honour of Chris Johnson and raccoons in general?

Forthcoming items through the press also include individual chapbooks by Nathanael O'Reilly, Orchid Tierney, Andy Weaver, Catriona Strang, Penn Kemp, Sue Landers, Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvag, Alice Burdick, Carter Mckenzie, Maxwell Gontarek, Conal Smiley, Nate Logan, Noah Berlatsky, russell carisse, JoAnna Novak, Julia Cohen, Mckenzie Strath, alex benedict, Ryan Skrabalak, Terri Witek and David Phillips (a couple of which have already been sent to the printer, by the by), as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet.

Oh, and groundswell: the best of the third decade of above/ground press, 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing) appeared last fall, yes? but you probably already knew that.

2025 annual subscriptions (and resubscriptions) are now available: $75 (CAN; American subscribers, $75 US; $100 international) for everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2025, including chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and quarterly poetry journal Touch the Donkey (have you been keeping track of the dozens of interviews posted to the Touch the Donkey site? there are also more than 200 interviews via the Chaudiere Books site with writers currently/formerly Ottawa-based as well, in case such appeals). Honestly: if I’m making this many titles per calendar year, wouldn’t you call that a good deal? So many things!

Anyone who subscribes on or by December 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package (or two or three) of 2024, including those exciting new titles by all of those folk listed above, plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year, as well as Touch the Donkey #43 (scheduled to release on October 15), featuring new work by Lisa Samuels, Tom Jenks, Nate Logan, Henry Gould, Sandra Doller, Kit Roffey, Leesa Dean and Scott Inniss.

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal button at robmclennan.blogspot.com).

some author activity: Armantrout, Boyle, mclennan, FitzGerald, Naughton + Ebbitt,

Rae Armantrout has a poem up at The Academy of American Poets website; Frances Boyle has new work up at iamb; rob mclennan has new work up at Eunoia Review, and provides a list of recommended reading via 49th Shelf; Ian FitzGerald answers the "six questions" interview questions via the Chaudiere Books blog; Katie Naughton is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series; and Katie Ebbitt has new work in the "Tuesday poem" series via dusie,

new from above/ground press: To Assemble an Absence, by John Levy

To Assemble an Absence
John Levy
$5

Raining in Tucson


Rain fills the hollow toys in the front yard of former friends. That was years ago, when they weren't former friends. That rain has been distributed now, by processes that existed long before toys and our lives, distributed far beyond Tucson, beyond Arizona. Maybe some of the rainwater in the plastic dump truck, for instance, has joined the ocean off the coast of Madagascar, near Sambava. I can still see the faded yellow plastic of the dump truck's bed, near the dull red of the cab. That toy is surely in a landfill now. Buried deep, never again something a raindrop hits first.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover photo: John Levy

John Levy lives in Tucson, Arizona with the painter Leslie Buchanan. He has published eight books of poetry and prose, plus 15 chapbooks. His most recent book is 54 poems: selected & new (Shearsman Books, 2023) and his most recent chapbook is Guest Book for People in My Dreams (Proper Tales Press).

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: CASSETTE POEMS, by Vik Shirley

CASSETTE POEMS
factory practice-room cassette-recording responses
Vik Shirley
$5

factory 16: industrial estate

girl in factory 16
never liked that change
or that progression.
so-and-so’s an edgy
[one question]
[one white-noise standard]
oh but there was plenty
to be inhaled and automated
bobby gee as breakdown
bobby gee as high-pitched jangle
revenge ballad for the dead                                                    
for the try-to-escape
the whether-we-would
the now this is pretty
the now this is black-ruin persistence
sprinkled on top
or crumbled rather
kill bill slash kill dad etc
oh no the melodica
can’t get a signal
oh no the riff
still won’t speak to me
after all this
me?
i’m a straight split
and trebly like an escape-
pod fantasy
slash haunting

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Vik Shirley is a poet, writer, editor, educator and critic from Bristol, now living in Edinburgh, UK. Her books include Corpses (Sublunary Editions), Notes from the Underworld (Sublunary Editions), Disrupted Blue and other poems on Polaroid (Hesterglock), Strangers Wave (zimZalla), Poets (The Red Ceilings) and The Continued Closure of the Blue Door (HVTN). Her pamphlet, Some Deer, is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books and her second full-length collection, Nervous Tic, will be published by Sublunary Editions in Spring 2025. Her poems have appeared in such places as The Rialto, Magma, Tears in the Fence, Perverse and Dreaming Awake: New and Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, edited by Peter Johnson and Cassandra Atherton (MadHat Press) Her reviews have appeared in such places as Poetry London and PN Review and her regular column, ‘Commitment to Chush’, ran in Sublunary Editions’ Firmament magazine for three years. A regular performer at the European Poetry Festival, Vik is a Poetry School Tutor (teaching on the Surreal Narrative, Absurdism and the Grotesque in Poetry) and Director of Disrupted Blue Indie Press Publicity. She co-edits Surreal-Absurd at Mercurius and is Digital Editor at Sublunary Editions. She has a PhD in Dark Humour and the Surreal in Poetry from the University of Birmingham. Her chapbook, One by One, an Oulipian collaboration with the poet, Bob Brightt, is out now with Derek Beaulieu’s No Press.

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: Frances Boyle + Lori Anderson Moseman,

Frances Boyle has been on a roll lately, with two poems up at Periwinkle Pelican, another at the honest ulsterman, at Ekphrastic Review, Thimble Literary Magazine, Ode to Dionysus, Horseshoe Journal, and The Lake; and Lori Anderson Moseman is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey;

some author activity: Ballard, Berlatsky, mclennan, Boughn, Clayton + Barwin,

Micah Ballard has a new piece in The Brooklyn Rail, as part of "In Memoriam: A Tribute to Neeli Cherkovski"; Noah Berlatsky has a poem up at Memoir Mixtapes, and is interviewed in the '12 or 20 questions' series; rob mclennan is interviewed by Cara Waterfall for Archipel; Michael Boughn has new work in the Spotlight series; Conyer Clayton has a poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; and Gary Barwin is interviewed by Rina Barone over at Stories from the Pink House.

new from above/ground press: Each Mouthful Dripping… poems from slogans, by Ian FitzGerald

Each Mouthful Dripping…
poems from slogans
Ian FitzGerald
$5

Everything’s better with Blue Bonnet on it
 
Morning breaks - sparkle filter
on a sun-kissed kitchen.  
Everything you need to start your day –
 
Margarine spread so thick you can barely
detect the toasted airiness of Wonder Bread underneath,
tall glass of Tang, Froot Loops with powdered milk  
completes the scene,
sets up the brush-cut teen
for a high calibre day.
 
Shiny-faced Jimmy eats up, smiles at aproned mom.
 
Mom smiles back, channels Donna Reid,
June Cleaver and Aunt Bee – can’t believe how
quickly Jimmy’s growing into
his brother’s old clothes,
his father’s feet.
 
His country calls; Jimmy answers.
Gets helmet, rifle, tags, climbs into a C-130 transport.
Added to the casualty list just three weeks in.
 
Along a glossy, granite wall in Washington D.C.
she walks among thousands of Jimmys.
Everything seems synthetic or broken
or both.
She drops to her knees, slips a knife from her purse  
and tries to scrape off his name.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ian FitzGerald’s professional background in advertising led to teaching at Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Alberta. He has trifled with poetry since teenage and is getting dangerously close to thinking he should take it seriously, maybe.  He is quite keen on poetry and hopes one day that will be requited.

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: Solomon, Kemp-Gee, Novak, Robinson, Smith + Wilkins,

Misha Solomon has a new poem up at Frozen Sea, and is also running some poetry workshops in Montreal this fall; Meghan Kemp-Gee has a new poem up at Trampset; JoAnna Novak and Elizabeth Robinson have new work up at Action, Spectacle; Mahaila Smith has new work up in the new issue of Polar Borealis; and Grant Wilkins is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: SELECTED MEMOIRS, by Peter Jaeger

SELECTED MEMOIRS
Peter Jaeger
$5  

1960-69
My mother put her pregnant belly in front of the mono speaker while listening to Beethoven. The importance of infant and adult tools. First group exhibition, Meadowbrook Elementary School, Lachine, Quebec. How limitless the summer holidays. Photos of trees, taken before we all missed trees. All those balloons everywhere. At Sunday school I was supposed to put a dime in the collection basket, but once I only had a quarter, so when the basket came around for the collection, I put the quarter in and took out 15 cents and when the teacher saw me making change she yelled, "You're stealing from God!" so I got up, left the class, and went outside to the church yard, where I climbed way up high in a maple tree. Sitting on a porch in suburban Montreal, I saw a bright red light fall through the summer sky. For years I believed it was a UFO. That night set up a long chain of events, still felt today. Or did it? We ate meat every day. Playing with radiant dolls on the lawn. At that time, something awful was happening on our black and white TV about Viet Nam. The empty cowboy, his six-shooter, the scary dark. The importance of my father’s laughter for social stability. Spinning around on our egg chair. Although I played at being an astronaut all summer, I slept through Neil Armstrong’s first step on the moon. My mother slathered medicated tar on my eczema. Endlessly watching the yellow and orange label spin around and around on the Capitol records 45 of All You Need is Love. It was so important that I climbed to the top of our front-yard maple on a windy day. Sitting in the sun wrapped in wool with a plastic toy ukulele. The snow formed mountains that we stuck our broken hockey sticks into, making Himalaya ledges to perch on in the cold. My sister Laurie and I sat cross-legged on the floor of our enormous Pontiac on the way to see our grandmother. Taking the narrow, winding path deeper into her woods rather than the strait path to the orchard. We celebrated with early forms of plastic. Caspar the friendly frontier town. I burrowed further into the darkness and silence of a snow bank by the road, wondering if the blades of a snow blower would suddenly appear and cut me into pieces, turning the snow pink with blood.  By the creek, clear light, not yet named.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Peter Jaeger is a Canadian writer based in Bristol, England. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, and criticism, as well as several artist books. Jaeger has written on such diverse topics as John Cage, ecology, Marcel Proust, Zen Buddhism, and contemporary pilgrimage. Recent publications include Postamble for an Invisible Sangha (If P then Q 2021) and 10,000 Hand-Drawn Questions (Pamenar 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: Spectral Arcs, by ryan fitzpatrick

Spectral Arcs
ryan fitzpatrick
$5

DODO
(Raphus cucullatus)

Nothing vanishes, is gone ever. One might believe that there is nothing new under the sun, but something briefly flickers in and out of sight. Eyewitness accounts doctor a cooling account of the world left strewn like magnetic tape spooled out. One might build a shell from a hail of gunfire or hide behind the charred folly of the law. One might fall asleep. Shooting bison from a train window, one collects but a range of ghosts, faint in the way one might think of drainage.

There are trees cut down in worship of the stump. There are bands of iron and bronze that turn dates forward, hanging from the stump of a mast. In a green dawn, one must commune with more than one’s eyes passing over the ghost shape of a tree. In an object dawn, one must retain one’s coat of arms with the faintness of two smouldering stumps to measure the temples of God. One must stare into tamer versions of the sun where soft light denies the mythological.

It is loathsome, when the weight one must shovel reappears as shit. Each channel is a fraud of water. Each season a two-note sound. One must stretch and train each procedure and checklist to conform one’s self. How much energy does one have? How does one gather? Don’t be discouraged by the lack of answers, since one can train the eye to locate everything.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

ryan fitzpatrick is the author of four books of poetry, including the recent Sunny Ways (Invisible, 2023) and Coast Mountain Foot (Talonbooks, 2021). Their first non-fiction book Ace Theory, a book-length essay in fragments about asexuality, will be published by Book*Hug Press in 2025. They are the 2024-25 Writer-in-Residence in the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies.

This is fitzpatrick’s fifth above/ground press title, after STANZAS #25 (“further revisions,” July 2001), Adolesce (2005), dealingwithit.gif (2015) and Dang Me (2020). Report from the fitzgerald Society, Vol 1. No. 1, appeared in 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

three upcoming small press fairs: the TIFA Small Press Market (Toronto), The & Books Market (Mississauga) + the ottawa small press book fair,

above/ground press is participating at not one but three small press fairs this fall! (and that's not including the two we're unable to make this time around). Catch above/ground press at The TIFA Small Press Market, 11am-5pm, Harbourfront Centre, September 21 in Toronto, at The & Books Market, October 5 in Mississauga (where Christine McNair will also be on a panel with her new book, by the by) and, of course, at the thirtieth anniversary edition of the ottawa small press book fair, November 16 in Ottawa. Hooray small press fairs! Unfortunately, we're unable to make the Fisher Small and Fine Press Fair at the University of Toronto on September 7, or the Meet the Presses Indie Lit Market on November 17 in Toronto (Cecil Community Centre at 58 Cecil Street, noon to 4:30pm), but I'm sure those events will still be great without us. Right?

some author activity: Brenner, Adams, Smith, Pirie, McElroy, Pittella, Banks + Rhodes,

Summer Brenner has an essay up at Literary Hub; Carrie Olivia Adams was recently featured on the podcast Plain Reading; Mahaila Smith has a new poem up at the DOG TEETH newsletter; and Pearl Pirie offers her report on the recent above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/event/launch, featuring readings by herself, alongside Gil McElroy, Carlos A. Pittella, Mahaila Smith, Chris Banks and Shane Rhodes!

new from above/ground press: Back Shelve, by Scott Inniss

Back Shelve
Scott Inniss
$5

The evident,
never to rise.

Mother your benign
instruments, not ends.

The queen saw
you will him.

The rest is lost.
I used to

turn America.
Necessity knows.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Scott Inniss grew up on the Haldimand Tract, near the confluence of the Speed and Grand rivers. Since 2008 he has been living on occupied Coast Salish territory, on the south shore of the Burrard Inlet. Recent poems appear in Still Point Journal, Periodicities, Some, and Antilang.

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: mclennan, Webb, Jirgens, Carpenter, Pirie, Tracy + Massey,

a video of rob mclennan reading now exists online as part of the Gap Riot Press summer 2024 launch; there's a conversation between Lindsey Webb and Kelly Hoffer online at BOMB magazine, and Webb also has new poems and book recommendations up at Etcetera; Karl Jirgens has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; J.R. Carpenter has new work in Blackbox Manifold; and Pearl Pirie, Karen Massey and Dale Tracy have poems in the August issue of Bywords.ca

some author activity: Logan, Armantrout, Stanley, Brenner + Naughton,

Nate Logan has work up in the Spotlight series; Rae Armantrout is interviewed by Paul Semel; a video of George Stanley reading at San Francisco State University's Poetry Center from October 24, 2013 is now online via the Poetry Center Digital Archive; Summer Brenner has a poem up at Poets Reading The News; and Katie Naughton is interviewed by Emily Harnden as part of an alumni spotlight via the Colorado State University website.

report: the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/launch/party!

You probably already know, but I hosted an above/ground press thirty-first anniversary reading/launch/party at RedBird last night, featuring readings and chapbook launches by Chris Banks (Kitchener), Mahaila Smith (Ottawa), Gil McElroy (North Bay), Pearl Pirie (rural QC) Carlos A. Pittella (Montreal) and Shane Rhodes (Ottawa). Anniversaries are the best! And don't forget that the press is running a big anniversary sale until the end of this month.

It was good to have another in-person anniversary event! Do you remember my report from last year's anniversary reading? Or the 2019 one? I mean, I think these reports help keep such events in memory. Remember the twenty-fifth anniversary event (when the t-shirts were introduced, for example) or the twenty-third anniversary event (including the Toronto event that same year) or the nineteenth anniversary event? So many events! Wishing I'd actually archived the big tenth anniversary event as well, but that was well before the full advent of blogs, after all (well, five minutes before all of that). I had ten readers, two musical acts (including Emm Gryner) and CBC Radio's Alan Neal hosting, produced by Elaina Martin, who went on to found and produce Ottawa's infamous Westfest. Remember that? I don't even remember all who I had to read for that event. Michael Dennis, certainly, along with (I think) Stephen Brockwell, AJ Dolman, Colin Morton, John Barton and Karen Massey. Who else? All I can find online is this reference to the event via Bywords.

Thanks very much to RedBird, including bartenders Josephine and Taylor, who were kind and attentive hosts, and Christine McNair (above, with Grant Wilkins) who ran both the door and the book table. And, honestly, if you want music lessons or your kids want music lessons, check out RedBird. Our wee Aoife has been doing ukulele lessons there for a while and she absolutely loves it.

It was a great crowd! And good to see further above/ground press authors, including Stuart Ross (did you know his own Proper Tales Press is only four years away from fifty? did you see the website we built when his press turned forty?), Karen Massey, Stephen Brockwell, Grant Wilkins and bpNichol chapbook award-winner Jason Christie! There were a couple of folk unable to attend due to Covid (mild, at least), which was frustrating, but it was great to see Margo LaPierre, Brian Pirie, Susan Atkinson, Manahil Bandukwala, Salem Paige, Allison Armstrong and Helen Robertson! Very nice, also, to see a whole stack of folk in the audience that I didn't actually know. I mean, that's good too, yes?

The first reader was Ottawa poet Mahaila Smith, launching their above/ground press debut (and third chapbook overall), Enter the Hyperreal (2024). There is a sharpness to Smith's work, and anyone who references the work of the late American poet Barbara Guest is very much applying good judgement. Check out Mahaila's recent essay on the chapbook, here.

Latinx poet Carlos A. Pittella came in from Montreal (and was flying somewhere else ridiculously early the following morning), and had such a marvellous, gestural energy to his presence, and to his work. I was first introduced to his work through a recommendation from above/ground press author Misha Solomon, who was introduced to me through a recommendation from above/ground press author Sarah Burgoyne, who was introduced to me through a recommendation from Stuart Ross. Thank you, all! Carlos was launching his first English-language chapbook, footnotes after Lorca (2024), a chapbook with a dark and layered undertone, composed and performed with an absolute joy of playful language. Check out Carlos' recent essay on the chapbook, here.

It is strange to think that Kitchener, Ontario poet and editor Chris Banks and I hadn't actually interacted in-person for twenty years or so, since around the publication of his first full-length collection. The poems of his above/ground press debut, Tiny Grass Is Dreaming (2024), displays such a thoughtful, meditative sharpness (and apparently he's been writing up a storm lately). Check out Chris' recent essay on the chapbook, here.

One of my long-time favourites, as you probably already know, is Gil McElroy, a poet currently living in North Bay, Ontario. I've been publishing his work since the mid-1990s, don't you know. He said that his new chapbook, his tenth above/ground press title, Small Consonants (2024), wasn't meant to be read aloud, so he read from some previous work, including poems referencing the Perseids.

There is such lovely, small detail in the poems of Pearl Pirie's latest above/ground press title, her sixth, Rushing Dusk (2024), a small chapbook featuring cover artwork by my middle daughter, Rose. Check out Pearl's essay on the chapbook, here. And you saw the festschrift we recently produced on her work as well, yes?

Did you hear that Ottawa poet (originally from Alberta) Shane Rhodes and his family are moving to Australia in a couple of weeks? It means that this was most likely his last Ottawa reading before they catch their flight. He read from his above/ground press debut, It's Here All the Beauty I Told You About (2024), a chapbook I am very pleased about, as I've been itching to publish his work since his full-length debut introduced me to his work, some two decades ago. His current work-in-progress (which includes the chapbook), explores Alberta/western mythology, imagery and collage, and the death of his mother,

Thank you to everyone who came out to help celebrate! And what might the next year bring? Thirty-one years, nearly fourteen hundred publications, hundreds of authors and three celebratory anthologies (including the third that appeared last fall through Invisible Publishing), among other schemes, blogs, events and ephemera. As you can see from the sidebar, I've a whole mound of forthcoming titles through the press, currently working on chapbook titles by authors including Vik Shirley, Alice Burdick, ryan fitzpatrick, Peter Jaeger, John Levy, alex benedict, Ryan Skrabalak, Scott Inniss and David Phillips, among others. I did offer last night that anyone who wished to subscribe to the press from this moment right now through to the end of 2025 could for the low price of $100 (for American addresses, $100 US), which I'm willing to offer here as well, an offer good until the end of this month (just send me an email: rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com). I mean, I'm producing some sixty to eighty chapbooks a year, that's a good deal, isn't it? Who knows what might come next?

some author activity: Levy, Webb, Robinson, Banks, Naughton + Smith,

forthcoming author John Levy is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Lindsey Webb is interviewed in the '12 or 20 questions' series; Elizabeth Robinson has new work up at Conjunctions; Chris Banks has a new essay up at The Woodlot; Katie Naughton has new work up at Still Point; and Mahaila Smith is interviewed via Chaudiere Books.

new from above/ground press: It’s Here / All the Beauty / I Told You About, by Shane Rhodes

It’s Here
All the Beauty
I Told You About
Shane Rhodes
$6

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Shane Rhodes is a poet and visual artist living in Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin, Anishinabek territory. He is the author of six books, including Dead White Men (winner of the 2018 Ottawa Book Award), and has performed work nationally and internationally. He can be found online at www.shanerhodes.ca

[Shane Rhodes will be launching It’s Here All the Beauty I Told You About on August 10 as part of the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading, alongside Gil McElroy, Carlos A. Pittella, Chris Banks, Pearl Pirie and Mahaila Smith; tickets available here]

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: Ballard, Smith, Kaminski, Trivedi + Houbolt,

the livestream video for Kevin Opstedal and Micah Ballard's July 21, 2024 reading at Bird & Beckett Books, San Francisco is now online; Mahaila Smith is interviewed over at News & Press from The Future Fire; Megan Kaminski has poems from a new project forthcoming in Plant Perspectives; Amish Trivedi read some poems as part of the Disaster Research Center 60th Anniversary Workshop at the University of Delaware, now up on YouTube; and Kyla Houbolt has two new poems and a write-up newly posted at Moist Poetry Journal.

new from above/ground press: Enter the Hyperreal, by Mahaila Smith

Enter the Hyperreal
Mahaila Smith
$5

Put on your shoes or else you need to leave
after Barbara Guest


Stilted bones for your birthday
are an expected guest
present in the evening decanter
poured between me,
the mist and my sister.
Sparrows are my confidantes.
Butterflies are my enemies.
My sister is alright,
she isn’t a butterfly.
My blood is absent
when strangers ask for it
and then pools around my nose
when I am asleep and pretending
to be shadow being shadow
or the moon being the sea
or the sea making phone calls.
Eve was my best friend
before she met her boyfriend.
Now archaeologists trowel after
her tire residue
and reel cosmological alignments
between discarded burger wrappers.
I sit here, with entomological consultants
and drink nettle tea.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover artwork/design: Leona Smith

Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag. They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their debut chapbook, Claw Machine, was published by Anstruther Press in 2020. Their second chapbook, Water-Kin was published by Metatron Press in 2024. Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, is forthcoming with Stelliform Press. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca.

[Mahaila Smith will be launching Enter the Hyperreal on August 10 as part of the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading, alongside Gil McElroy, Carlos A. Pittella, Chris Banks, Pearl Pirie and Shane Rhodes; tickets available here]

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

the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/launch/party : August 10 2024 : Red Bird Live,

: tickets available here :

some author activity: Grayhurst, Niespodziany, Ross, Beaulieu + Novak,

Irma Kurti interviews Allison Grayhurst for Alessandria Today; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at havehashad; Stuart Ross has posted his annual birthday poem; Richard Capener posted a podcast interview with Derek Beaulieu via his substack; and JoAnna Novak has a poem up at Literary Hub.

Daniel Barbiero reviews Dale Tracy's Gnomics (2024) at Arteidolia

Daniel Barbiero was good enough to provide the first review for Dale Tracy's Gnomics (2024) over at Arteidolia. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here.

“Gnomics” is the name that poet Dale Tracy has given to the twenty-four short poems that make up the content of her new chapbook of that title.

A gnomic utterance is a short, condensed statement of a universal principle or observation, often couched in enigmatic or figurative language that gives it the appearance of profundity. Think, for example, of the aphorisms that earned Heraclitus the nickname “the obscure”: “a hidden harmony is better than an obvious one”; “the nature of things likes to hide”; “changing, it remains the same.” These are pithy statements that purport to speak of universal truths, but do so mysteriously enough that even after twenty-five hundred years there’s no agreement on what Heraclitus really meant.

Tracy’s gnomics don’t share Heraclitus’ willful obscurity, nor do they claim to present universal truths. For Tracy, “a poem is a model for doing rather than an explanation of something” – a way of learning about the world rather than pronouncing on it. Hence her gnomics present her in the process of thinking through the world and doing so in as condensed a manner as possible. They are, in effect, discrete objects in which a thought is totalized in a tightly-bound linguistic enclosure.

Take, for example, “Ars Poetica,” the collection’s opening poem:

You must eat your midnight and roses
or there’ll be no pounder of spices.

This single sentence poem mimics a conditional statement of the “without X there can be no Y” type, recast as a chain of associations. How these associations come into contact with each other is an enigma for the reader to interpret. “Eat” and “spices” may be connected through the implicit but absent intermediary term of “food” (spices make the food we eat palatable); “midnight” and “roses” associate with each other as cliched tropes of sentimental poetry. Are we to “eat” them figuratively, make them and their bland like disappear, in order for real poetry, its more challenging or substantive tropes akin to the spices that give food its pungency and which must be pounded out by the poet, to emerge in their place? Possibly, and a possibility latent in the title. “Ars Poetica” may be totalized syntactically – rendered a complete thought in which each association has its proper place in a sequence of associations – by its logical structure, but its meaning is not. It’s poetry, and not to be exhausted in a single reading. Its meaning resides in the ambiguity of its images rather than in its logical form.

The tension between logical form and poetic content is something Tracy plays with throughout Gnomics. “Logic 3,” one of five poems title “Logic” which play with syllogistic forms for poetic effect, reads:

What can be created can be destroyed.
Knowledge can be created.
Some knowledge nourishes dirt.

The first two sentences give us the premises, which don’t lead to the conclusion we’d expect, which should be “Knowledge can be destroyed.” But this is a poem rather than a syllogism proper, so we have to derive the conclusion analogically rather than logically. Organic matter nourishes the soil as it decomposes (is “destroyed”); transferred by analogy from organic matter to knowledge, the image of decomposition represents the more general idea of destruction which we now can see applies to knowledge, though apparently not to all knowledge.

Modeling the progress of a thought in language – seeing it through from its beginnings in a string of words in search of a meaning to its totalization in a completed unit of signification – is one of the aims of these poems. Tracy has described them as “open[ing] up a line of thought” through which “the thinking emerges from the poem as a process.” As we’ve seen in “Logic 3” that process can consist of drawing conclusions by analogy; we can see another kind of thought process in “Pocket Sky”:

A jagged tree is a key to the sky,
which turns around it slowly.

The thought modeled here mimics the apparent turning motion of the sky: it spirals outward from a central kernel consisting of a single image – a tree whose ramified branches resemble the teeth and notches along the blade of a key, as it protrudes upward in a clearing – and expands into a complex metaphor that reverses our expectations through an incongruity in the way it’s elaborated. A key is something that works by turning within a space, but here it’s the space surrounding the (metaphorical) key that turns; this reversal of the conventional order of things heightens our awareness of the way the metaphor is constructed – we follow the path the thought takes as it rounds a curve we didn’t see coming. If the tree is a key the sky is the cylinder containing it; what’s more, the tree provides a key to our noticing the sky by virtue of its vertical orientation directing our gaze upward. The image of the tree has the added effect of setting up an implicit pun with the title of Tracy’s collection: it “rhymes” with the image of the gnomon, the vertical rod ancient geometers used to measure the length of shadows.

The extended metaphor in “Pocket Sky” works by combining the two more-or-less distant elements of the tree and the key. They combine partly on the basis of a symmetry of physical resemblance and partly on the basis of the similar sound profiles of “tree” and “key”: both are monosyllabic words beginning abruptly with hard consonants and ending with the same long vowel sound. It is a method of forming associations that recalls Surrealist poetics.

We can see this again in the riddle-like “Fallacy”:

A mind like saloon doors:
all spur, no horse ride.

We can imagine a mind being like saloon doors – loosely hinged and swinging open and shut with every random stranger passing through – but the linkage from that opening simile to the implicit image of a horse being prodded with a spur but refusing to move requires an alogical, imaginative leap that on the surface produces a mixed metaphor. But it’s a leap clearly meant to elaborate the simile in a different figurative register since, like the stubborn horse resisting a prod, such a porous mind would most likely be one that doesn’t move itself to think, despite getting a push. Rather than a mixed metaphor, we have a complex and wryly humorous surreal metaphor-by-association. It really isn’t surprising, then, to see Tracy, in an interview last year, describing her way of thinking as having a “surreal bent.” With Gnomics, she makes that thinking the meaning, rather than just the means, of the poetry.

Gnomics is Tracy’s second book with above/ground press, following 2020’s The Mystery of Ornament. The Ottawa-based press, which is curated by publisher rob mclennan, specializes in elegantly presented poetry chapbooks like Gnomics. It has published more than 1325 titles so far and celebrates its thirty-first anniversary this month.