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).