some author activity: Donato, Robinson, Ross, mclennan, Inniss + Boyle,

Joseph Donato has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; Ben Robinson answers the '12 or 20 questions' interview; Stuart Ross has new poems in the new issue of Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, as does rob mclennan, who also has a piece up at Still Point; Scott Inniss had some work up at Still Point a while back, also; and Frances Boyle has a poem online at The New Quarterly,

new from above/ground press: And Absurd Cycle, by Drew McEwan

And Absurd Cycle
Drew McEwan
$5

We behaviors rituals

overwhelming serious victims
behaviors
the lengths prevent pleasure
drugs people chemistry

less and OCD

Form in common devastating lives
washing the difficulty
impatient performance hour’s Obsessions
mental Latin

in distress is something pleasant

understood extremely body extremely everyday
physically use transmission
patient rituals make People
and repeat overwhelmed and absurd cycle

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

Drew McEwan is the author of the poetry collections Repeater, If Pressed, and Tours, Variously (forthcoming, 2025). She has also published numerous literary chapbooks including Conditional, Can't tell if this book is depressing or if I'm just sad, Theory of Rooms, and Recoveringly. She works as an educator and researcher at the University at Buffalo.

This is her second title with above/ground press, after theory of rooms (2016).

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 Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 15: Sherwood, Reid, Hamilton, Baglow + Rodrigues,

 span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading
celebrating THIRTY YEARS of the ottawa small press book fair

featuring readings by:

Claire Sherwood (Montreal)
Monty Reid (Ottawa)
Seymour Hamilton (Chelsea QC)
John Baglow (Ottawa)
+
Tazi Rodrigues (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 15, 2024
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

Claire Sherwood [pictured] is a Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller. Her short fiction has appeared in Minority Reports: New English Writing in Quebec (Vehicule Press), and her poetry in Kola Magazine (The Black Writers’ Guild), Zettel Magazine (Underbridge Press), carte blanche magazine (QWF online), Helios (Ediciones de la Salamandra Negra), My Island My City (sitting duck press), What Lasts (2 Susans Poetry Circle). Her new chapbook Eat Your Words was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan but has made his home in Ottawa for the past 25 years. He has published a dozen books of poetry, most recently Garden (Chaudiere, 2014) and Meditatio Placentae (Brick, 2016). He has also published award-winning non-fiction and more than 20 chapbooks with publishers in Canada and abroad. His work has won National Magazine Awards, the Lampman Award, the Stephansson Award (3 times) and has been short-listed 3 times for the GGs. Magazine publications include The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CV2, The Puritan, Train, Dusie, Manoah and many others. His latest chapbook Vertebrata was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Seymour Hamilton lives in Chelsea, Quebec with his wife Katherine. He is much happier writing stories than he ever was before he retired from ordinary work-work, which in his case involved a lot of marking, editing, and writing in the academic world and the civil service.  He has written eight books of fiction, six of them a post-apocalypse science fiction trilogy that got out of hand and spun off three sequels, with a seventh coming soon.  He also wrote a novel about 1960s back-to-the-land hippies in Nova Scotia, and a collection of inter-related stories called The Laughing Princess, which feature dragons of great power and authority.

John Baglow is a former union executive officer (PSAC), and presently writes and lives in Ottawa. Baglow has published three books of poetry, Emergency Measures (Sono Nis Press, 1976), Journey Under Glass (Penumbra Press, 2004), and more recently, Murmuration: Marianne’s Book (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). He has also written a critical study of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, The Poetry of Self (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987). His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, nationally and internationally.

Tazi Rodrigues (she/her) is a writer and aquatic biologist. A second/third-generation-settler from Treaty 1 territory, she lives in Ottawa on the unceded land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. She placed second in the 2023 Kloppenburg Hybrid Grain Contest for her essay on learning Portuguese and listening to fish, and won the 2024 Diana Brebner Prize for her poem on looking for bees. Other writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, CV2, and Canthius. She is currently writing about ecological sound, caring for the worms and foster cats who live with her, and counting bugs at her neighbourhood pollinator garden.

some author activity: Rexilius, Mody, Earl, mclennan, Logan + Dewinetz,

Andrea Rexilius is interviewed, alongside Heather Garbo, for Westword; Monica Mody is discussed in an article by Yashaswini Krishna, "Poetry's role and the financial struggles of poets today," at NewsTrail; Amanda Earl has a visual poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; rob mclennan has an excerpt of the work-in-progress, "the green notebook," up at Annulet, and is interviewed by Ivy Grimes for Writing Thoughts; Nate Logan has a new poem up at LEAVINGS and then another new poem up at LEAVINGS and also a poem at The Tiny; and did you know that Jason Dewinetz received a "Distinguished Alumni Award" from the University of Victoria a few years back?