new from above/ground press: The Green Rose, by Phil Hall and Steven Ross Smith

The Green Rose
in collaboration
Steven Ross Smith
Phil Hall
$6

Morning performance poem
rattles & whistles & gaaaks

great-tailed grackle verse
howler monkeys & Frank Sinatra

the bird that isn’t there
has a name

the swinging howler chorus
is missing here this week

to be frank
a lesson in the line

collapsing form as foam
leaves a crockery bit

of green rose
then takes it back out

then in as noise
all day no one

watching or listening
the horizon erased by rain

never makes landfall
what lifts is dirty & pushes

what collapses
is clear & pulls free

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

Phil Hall has a new book out this spring: Vallejo’s Marrow (Beautiful Outlaw, 2024). Other recent books are: The Ash Bell (Beautiful Outlaw, 2022); Toward a Blacker Ardour (Beautiful Outlaw, 2021); and Niagara & Government (Pedlar, 2020).

Steven Ross Smith loves music, practices yoga, and is fascinated by moss. Disparate threads weave through his seven-book poetic series fluttertongue. A new book is Glimmer: Short Fictions (Radiant Press, 2022). He writes in Victoria, BC.

This is Phil Hall’s fifth above/ground press chapbook (not including the secret chapbook), after Verulam (2009) and A Wolf Lake Chorus (2021), and the collaborations Shikibu Shuffle (with Andrew Burke; 2012) and Alternative Girders (with Stuart Kinmond; 2018). The festschrift Report from the [Phil] Hall Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 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