some author activity: Abel, Bowering, mclennan, Dean + Young,

Jordan Abel has won the 2024 Banff Mountain Book Competition Prize for Mountain Fiction and Poetry; The George Bowering Collection and Reading Room is scheduled to be installed in Special Collections at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2025; rob mclennan was interviewed by Alan Neal for CBC Radio's All In A Day; and Leesa Dean is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey ; and did you see this interview with American poet Geoffrey Young?

new from above/ground press: A Love Poem While the Children Sleep, by Julia Cohen

A Love Poem While the Children Sleep
Julia Cohen
$5

Even I will move through the night
I will move through the night out
of the way, even
 
to make room
for the thud
of love
 
call it eating the moon’s ass
 
eating the moon’s ass
is something you’d write
& I’m writing it for you
inside the thud
 
*
 
Even if our hands are cold
the same cold temperature, even
 
I will lend you
my belly
to sleep
like we are links
in a drowsy fence
fallen over
in a Wyoming wind
 
*
 
I love to fuck
up books ("A Love Poem While the Children Sleep")

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

cover painting:
Li Shan Chong, lovely soft morning cream bed series #1903.
Acrylic on Canvas.

Julia Cohen is the Director of Writing at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She is the author of three books, most recently, I Was Not Born (Noemi Press) and the forthcoming collection of essays, Freak Lip (Texas Review Press, Fall 2025). Her work appears in the Georgia Review, The Southeast Review, Fugue, and The Bennington Review. She co-curates, with Abby Hagler, a poetry interview series at Tarpaulin Sky Magazine. She lives in Colorado Springs with her family.

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: DOCTOR SHAMAN, by Susan Gevirtz

DOCTOR SHAMAN
Susan Gevirtz
$5

Origin is a practice of revision

Diagnosis a practice of reception, a social event a place of encounter

You are changed by attendance
The event changed by your presence         


The commentators say the relation with the text is NATAN, a palindrome  

It changes while you read it     You are read while you read it

The text needs us
–you don’t just take from it

You give to it  -- It takes from us

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the twenty-sixth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Susan Gevirtz is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Burns (Pamenar 2022), Hotel abc (Nightboat, 2016) and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street, 2010). Her critical books are Coming Events (Collected Writings) (Nightboat, 2013), and Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang, 1996). She was associate editor of HOW(ever), a journal of modernist/innovative directions in women’s poetry and scholarship, and served on the advisory board for its successor, the online journal HOW2. In 2004, with poet and restorer of maritime antiquities, Siarita Kouka, she founded the Paros Symposium, an annual meeting of Greek and Anglophone poets. Gevirtz was Assistant Professor at Sonoma State University, California, for ten years, and subsequently taught in the Visual and Critical Studies and MFA programs at California College of the Arts, as well as in undergrad Writing and Visual Studies. She is currently a writing mentor through Prison Renaissance and Operation Restoration. She is based in San Francisco.

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: 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?

new from above/ground press: The Winter Circus, by Conal Smiley

The Winter Circus
Conal Smiley
$5

It’s normal to
fear your mind

I’m afraid

that people
will discover

a note on the
xylophone

that when
repeatedly hit

will drill itself
into my skull

like construction
out the bedroom

window
early in

the morning

all detours
leading to a single

congested street
stucco falling

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

Conal Smiley was born in London, ON. His childhood was spent combing the aisles of bookstores, video stores and record shops, which is where his passion for the arts began. He is mostly self-taught, and after some creative writing classes at UofT, he decided to pursue poetry. He currently lives in Toronto and works in bookstores.

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: ANTHRONOISE, by Brook Houglum

ANTHRONOISE
Brook Houglum
$5

Ocean-based scenario:

blue growth / in-depth

abundance. Future case:

private—industrial—government

opportunity: marine

minerals / cobalt-rich aquaculture

Global offshore balance /

PROMOTION OCEAN

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

Brook Houglum has previously published poems in magazines such as Tinfish, Event, and Interim. She teaches at Capilano University and lives near Sen̓áḵw, now known as False Creek, Vancouver, on unceded Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ lands. A second title through above/ground press is forthcoming.

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

Ottawa Small Press Book Fair 1995 : interviews with rob mclennan, John Barton, etc

David Scrimshaw recently posted this video segment over at his blog; this is something he produced for Rogers 22's Community Magazine on the second edition of the ottawa small press book fair, which was held on September 16 and 17, 1995 at the Glebe Community Centre. This was the second fair, and the first one fully hosted by myself, as co-founder James Spyker had moved to Toronto not long after the first fair occurred in November 1994. See an interview with young me! And John Barton, talking about Arc Poetry Magazine! And others! with folk such as Victoria Vernell and Joe Blades in the background, as well.

some author activity: carisse, Ebbitt, Sikkema, fitzpatrick + McNair,

russell carisse is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Katie Ebbitt is interviewed by Nadia Prupis over at Hobart, and by Emily Roll over at BOMB; Michael Sikkema has a handful of new poems up at Broken Lens Journal; ryan fitzpatrick has some poems online at The Capilano Review; and Christine McNair offers "A List for Lost Words" over at 49th Shelf.

new from above/ground press: poetry and labour / is concrete, by russell carisse

poetry and labour / is concrete
russell carisse
$5

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

russell carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik/Mi’kmaw territory in New Brunswick. Here they have resettled from Tkaronto to an off-grid trailer in the woods, with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Work recently forthcoming or in, Queen’s Quarterly, The Temz Review, Touch the Donkey, also online: website: russellcarisse.carrd.co Mastodon: @russellcarisse@writing.exchange

This is carisse’s third above/ground press title, after English Garden Bondage (2022) and In The Margins. . . . . .of french translations found and remixed by russell carisse (2024).

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: SIDEWALK NATURALIST, by Sue Landers

SIDEWALK NATURALIST
Sue Landers
$5

Here, at the Avenue H subway stop, an oddity: bronze rocking chairs, engraved to look like wood and wicker, bolted to the floor of the above-ground station, which takes the shape of a small house with a wrapping porch.

The station agent comes outside for a smoke and turns to where I’m sitting on a bronze chair and says, you know, the men who sit here on the porch all day and drink—they pee on those seats.

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

Susan (Sue) Landers is a Brooklyn-based, Philly-bred poet. Her books include What to Carry Into the Future, Franklinstein, Covers, and 248 mgs., a panic picnic. Her poems have appeared in Poem-A-Day, The Brooklyn Rail, The Offing, and elsewhere. Sue served as executive director of Lambda Literary from 2018-2021. More at www.susanlanders.com

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: mclennan, Robertson, Caporaso, Jirgens, van Vliet, Armantrout + Robinson,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Amsterdam Review, and is interviewed by Stan Rogal for periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics; Lisa Robertson is Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet for 2024-25 and is giving the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet lecture on October 24 from 7 to 8:30 pm on the Nanaimo campus; Angela Caporaso is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, where Karl Jirgens also has poems, and Robert van Vliet is also interviewed; Rae Armantrout has a poem up at the Poetry Foundation; and Elizabeth Robinson has new work up at Big Other.

new from above/ground press: THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE, by Nate Logan

THERE’S NOTHING OUT THERE
Nate Logan
$5

BAD PREMISE

The one with the possessed dentures. The one with the cult and its line of exercise bikes. The one with the disease transforming every voice into text-to-speech. The one with the malicious sidewalk. The one with the president who turns to portraiture in retirement. The one with the pocket theremin calling another world. The one with the mummy teaching intro classes at the state college. The one with the singing telegram that takes 86 minutes to read. The one with the Wallace Stevens mask. The one with the laugh track coming from outside the house.

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

cover image: “Fangs” by JJ

Nate Logan is the author of Wrong Horse (Moria Books, 2024) and Inside the Golden Days of Missing You (Magic Helicopter Press, 2019). He’s editor of the literary magazine Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo

This is Logan’s second above/ground press title, after Apricot (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

three above/ground press titles--by Ben Robinson, Zane Koss + rob mclennan--longlisted for the 2024 Nelson Ball Prize!

Very cool to catch today's announcement of the longlist for this year's Nelson Ball Prize! Three above/ground press titles are on this year's longlist: A PANDEMIC INVENTORY, SPRING-SUMMER 2020, BROOKLYN NY by Zane Koss (2023), Between the Lakes by Ben Robinson (2023) and edgeless : letters, by rob mclennan (2023) (all three of which are still in print, by the by). And very cool to see above/ground press author Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi on there as well for their Pamenar title. Congrats to the whole list! Yay!

some author activity: Armantrout, hanna, Boyle, Levy + Pakdel,

Rae Armantrout was recently interviewed by Parker Menzimer, now posted online at the Poetry Society of America website; Rusty Priske highlights an above/ground press title by natalie hanna as part of his ongoing reading list; Frances Boyle has a new poem online at The New Quarterly; John Levy is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time ; and you saw Saba Pakdel is launching her latest above/ground press chapbook in Vancouver on November 15, 2024 as part of the Simon Fraser University Fall Poetry Salon, hosted by above/ground press author Geoffrey Nilson?

new from above/ground press: Fragments of a Mirrored-Voice For a Friend, by Alexander Hammond Benedict

Fragments of a Mirrored-Voice For a Friend
Alexander Hammond Benedict
$5

 Ich habe Tote, und ich ließ sie hin
 und war erstaunt, sie so getrost zu sehn,
 so rasch zuhaus im Totsein, so gerecht,
 so anders als ihr Ruf. Nur du, du kehrst
 zurück; du streifst mich, du gehst um, du willst
 an etwas stoßen, daß es klingt von dir
 und dich verrӓt. O nimm mir nicht, was ich
 langsam erlern. Ich habe recht; du irrst
 wenn du gerührt zu irgendeinem Ding
 ein Heimweh hast. Wir wandeln dieses um;
 aus unserm Sein, sobald wir es erkennen.

 I carry the dead, and I let them go
 and was surprised to see them so confident,
 so soon at home in death, so satisfied,
 so unlike their reputation. Only you, you turn
 back; you brush me, you skirt by, you want
 to bump against something, so that it sounds of yourself
 and betrays you. Oh, don’t take from me what I
 am slowly learning. I am sure; you wander
 when you are moved toward any one thing
 out of homesickness. We transform this;
 from within our being as soon as we recognize it.

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

Raised in the Cuyahoga Valley, alex nested in the Cleveland area and cleans ink off the massive cylinders of offset printers for a living. He runs betweenthehighway press (betweenthehighway.org) and is currently writing a biography on d.a. levy.

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: Praamsma, Dyckman, Novak, Barwin + Beaulieu,

Wanda Praamsma is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Susanne Dyckman has new work up at Posit; JoAnna Novak is interviewed by Tara Anne Dalbow for BOMB; Gary Barwin is interviewed by Open Book; and Derek Beaulieu writes about his time at filling Station for The Typescript.

Lillian Nećakov and Karen Massey are Finalists for The Montreal International Poetry Prize!

In case you hadn't heard, Toronto poet Lillian Nećakov (3¢ Pulp) and Ottawa poet Karen Massey (bullet, Strange fits of beauty & light, SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE), both above/ground press authors, have poems included in the list of fifty-one finalists for this year's Montreal International Poetry Prize! Congratulations!

new from above/ground press: Inconsistent Cemeteries, by Mckenzie Strath

Inconsistent Cemeteries
Mckenzie Strath
$5

Bring Back the Wolves of Cape Breton


I dipped my feet into the Atlantic ocean
during a thunderstorm

It puddled around my toes and seeped into my veins
as I pondered whether the weather would electrocute
me for thinking

About how a moose
can eat an entire Christmas tree
without dying

Though many trees are
deciduous in the East
like Betula papyrifera
or Sorbus americana

moose eat Christmas trees
that are protected

Smashing needles
and cones with gnarled teeth
pulverizing bark with sharp hooves
they create havoc on our ecosystem
just by existing

They squat throughout the Cabot Trail
having no predators
except for brain worms
and sometimes bears

But bears are often humble
and couldn’t care less for a moose
unless it has babies
So let's bring back the wolves

The wolves of Cape Breton
whose paws create earthquakes
crumbling mountains
into small hills

The Wolves
that snarl at antlers
and gouge out spleens
while howling during the solstice

The wolves of Cape Breton
eating moose like royalty
dining on them for feasts

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

Mckenzie Strath is an (almost graduated) undergraduate at Simon Fraser University studying Archaeology, English and Creative Writing.

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

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).

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?