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?