some author activity: Archer, mclennan, Caporaso, Pirie, Niespodziany, Straumsvåg + Ross,

Sacha Archer has posted a new concrete (poetry/fiction) audiobook to bandcamp; rob mclennan's fourteenth annual 'best of' Canadian poetry titles has landed via dusie, and has a new section of "the green notebook" posted at The Typescript; Angela Caporaso's above/ground press title has landed on the Asemic Front 2 Top Ten Vispo Faves of 2024 list; Pearl Pirie offers her "Self-audit and Best of" list of 2024; Benjamin Niespodziany has three new poems up at The Pi Review; Dag T. Straumsvåg has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and a video of Stuart Ross reading at Carthage College as part of their Visiting Writers Series, Kenosha WI, October 8, 2024 is now online.

some author activity: Reid, Mohammadi, Weaver + Kemp,

Monty Reid has new work up at The Pi Review; Khashayar Mohammadi is interviewed over at The Mahalat Review; Andy Weaver has a small essay up at The Woodlot; and Harold Rhenisch and forthcoming author Penn Kemp have a collaborative poem and new interviews online at Canadian Literature.

new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #34 : 2024 Holiday Special,

The Peter F Yacht Club #34
2024 Holiday Special
lovingly hand-crafted, folded, stapled, edited and carried around in bags of envelopes by rob mclennan,
$6

With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars and irregulars, including Frances Boyle, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Jason Christie, David Currie, Michelle Desbarats, AJ Dolman, nina jane drystek, Amanda Earl, Laura Farina, ryan fitzpatrick, Cara Goodwin, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre, IAN MARTIN, Karen Massey, rob mclennan, James K. Moran, Pearl Pirie, Colin Quin, Monty Reid, Joan Rivard, Stuart Ross and Grant Wilkins!

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 27, 2024 ; as the final above/ground press item of 2024!
[launching tonight at our annual holiday reading/regatta! you should come out!]
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

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: Houbolt, MacEachern, Inniss, mclennan, Jirgens + Beaulieu,

Kyla Houbolt has a new poem up at The Pi Review, as does Jessi MacEachern; Scott Inniss is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; rob mclennan is interviewed by Jamie Tennant over at his podcast; and Karl Jirgens offers an homage to Aritha van Herk, Fred Wah and Derek Beaulieu as part of acknowledging thirty years of filling Station magazine via The Typescript.

happy holiday everythings!

from your friends at above/ground press,

some author activity: Dolman, Reid, Beaulieu, Barwin + McNair,

AJ Dolman is now listed up at the Poetry in Canada website; Monty Reid has new work up at The Typescript; Derek Beaulieu offers his 2024 Year in Review; Gary Barwin is interviewed over at Jamie Tennant's podcast; and Christine McNair was part of a roundtable conversation along with Paige Maylott and Maurice Vellekoop at The & Festival at Sheridan College, as conducted by Hollay Ghadery, the text of which is now online.

new from above/ground press: A Further Introduction to Bingo, by Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg

A Further Introduction to Bingo
Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg
$5

25

Meanwhile, the mathematician crosses the town square, walks down North Street, turns right, and enters the Britannia Hotel. Fifteen minutes later he reappears on the street. At 1 pm, on a bench outside the cathedral, he eats a sandwich. He spends all afternoon in the harbour, watching the fishing boats come in. Ten, at dusk, he walks home. Once inside, he heads straight for the kitchen table, and starts jotting down numbers in a notebook. At 11 pm he gets up, undresses, turns of the lights, and starts playing his xylophone in the dark.

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

Cover and interior design by Angella Kassube

Jason Heroux lives in Kingston. His recent publications include a chapbook Blizzard of None (Puddles of Sky Press) and the collection of prose poems Like a Trophy from the Sun (Guernica Editions). He was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022.

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of ten books of poetry, including Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025). He runs the small press A + D with his girlfriend, the artist and graphic designer Angella Kassube. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

This is Jason Heroux’s second title with above/ground press, after Something or Other (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

new from above/ground press: The Book of Fire, by Carter McKenzie

The Book of Fire
Carter McKenzie
$5

Elspeth Philipp

I told them I’d met the devil
at oatseedtime. His promise
I would want for nothing.
The bright green stems.
The future harvest.
The good bread.
Springtime. How could
love become this, vivid
enough, my telling
what they want from me.
What I want.
The telling come
undone, playing pipes
he was, I said, dressed
in green, a little black man
playing pipes, I said
forbidden sleep
forbidden sleep
I tell and tell

they torment me.

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

Carter McKenzie (she/her) is the author of a chapbook of poetry Naming Departure (Traprock Books, 2004), and two full-length books of poetry, Out of Refusal (Airlie Press, 2010) and Stem of Us (Flowstone Press, 2018). She is currently working on a full-length book manuscript of poetry called Evidence of the Burning Times. She lives in the foothills of western Oregon’s Cascade Mountains in the Middle Fork Willamette watershed near Lost Creek, in a valley that is the traditional homeland of the Molalla Mountain Band. Carter is an active member of the local chapter of SURJ/ Showing Up for Racial Justice.

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 Peter F. Yacht Club annual regatta/christmas party/reading!

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan,
The Peter F. Yacht Club annual regatta/christmas party/reading

at Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way, Ottawa
Friday, December 27, 2024
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm

with readings from yacht club regulars and irregulars alike, including Michelle Desbarats, AJ Dolman, nina jane drystek, Laura Farina, Cara Goodwin, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre, IAN MARTIN, rob mclennan, James Moran, Lee Parpart, Wanda Praamsma, Colin Quin, Joan Rivard + Grant Wilkins (and possibly others,

WITH A NEW ISSUE OF THE PETER F YACHT CLUB TO LAUNCH AS WELL

see my report on last year's event here

new from above/ground press: A Mean, Mean Thirst, by Dani Spinosa

A Mean, Mean Thirst
poems for my friends and their books
Dani Spinosa
$5

like--
  most of us
    never even
      o-
         penned it
      quietude letting us
    rest finally
   sleep as if being awake was
    trivial as the closed captions reading
     unalive in some
      video
    we’ve both seen
  x times on
youtube or else me explaining
   zaddy
     after one or several
        beers && ok
     ciders for stephen && vodka sodas for
   dani && kate &&
      each of us wandering wondering what it’s been
         for, these
      gifts we carry
         here again and again
            in case in
                           jest in
                                    kin

(from "sequence dress," for andy weaver)

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

digital illustrations by the author

Dani Spinosa is a poet of digital and print media. She is sometimes a professor, sometimes a web developer, and all the time a co-founding editor of the feminist micropress Gap Riot. She has published several chapbooks of poetry, several more peer-reviewed journal articles on poetry, one long scholarly book, and one pink poetry book. She lives in beautiful Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

This is Spinosa’s third chapbook with above/ground press, after Glosas for Tired Eyes Volume 2 (2018) and Civilization (2020).

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: Davis, Pakdel, mclennan, Beaulieu + Meyerson,

Jordan Davis has a poem up at The Pi Review, as does Saba Pakdel; rob mclennan has a poem up at Common House Magazine; Tony Trehy mentions a title by Derek Beaulieu as his book of the year, just as Beaulieu offers his "most engaging books of 2024" list; and Ben Meyerson is interviewed by Fan Wu over at Torben Robertson's Common Measure substack.

Billy Mills reviews John Levy's To Assemble an Absence (2024)

Irish poet Billy Mills was good enough to provide the first review for John Levy's To Assemble an Absence (2024) as part of a group review over at his Elliptical Movements. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As Mills writes:

John Levy’s To Assemble an Absence is just the kind of pamphlet I love to get; simple but attractive saddle-stitched, with a dozen poems spread over 17 pages of text representing a report from the front-line of Levy’s work. The absence of the title is, in the first instance, the poet’s late mother:

Mother, I keep trying.

In the title I say “an,” not
“Your.” You

titled me.

This concern with the precise word used, even, or especially, at the level of articles and pronouns, is typical of Levy’s method; he is a poet of small nuance for whom words, and their absences, matter.

Note to Dag T. Straumsvåg (May 5th, 2024)

There are plenty of words
that you will not find

in this note to you.

Let’s imagine pairs of them
on see-saws

around the world, in playgrounds

There are poems that mark both parents’ support for Levy’s early poetry, the lack (or absence) of a sister, and other intimate aspects of family life,  but Levy’s lens widens out to include a broader view of lost childhood:

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.

From which I infer that absence is also part of the process; the past can never be recovered, but it can, in some sort, be recalled in words if, like Levy, you have that gift.

some author activity: MacEachern, Levy, Solomon, Smith, Dolman, Clayton + Baker,

Jessi MacEachern has new work up at the Spotlight series; John Levy has a new poem up at The Pi Review, as does Misha Solomon; Mahaila Smith answers some interview questions for Angry Gable Press; and AJ Dolman, Conyer Clayton + Jennifer Baker were interviewed yesterday on Friday Special Blend for their reading later today at the Kemptville Branch of the North Grenville Public Library.