today is the thirty-second anniversary of above/ground press,

happy 32nd anniversary to above/ground press! with nearly (so close) fourteen hundred publications to date! i've been making an absolute ton of material lately (with plenty more to come, as i'm sure you know); and don't forget our big anniversary event on THURSDAY, AUGUST 7, 2025 at RedBird, with readings and chapbook launches by: Jason Christie (Ottawa), Monty Reid (Ottawa), Beatriz Hausner (Toronto), Ellen Chang-Richardson (Ottawa), Lina Ramona Vitkauskas (Toronto) + Mandy Sandhu (Toronto)! tickets are available! last year's event was great [see my report on such here]; and are you following all the extra things posting over at the new(ish) above/ground press substack? sign up (free) for updates!

new from above/ground press: Never Saw it Coming, by Steph Gray

Never Saw it Coming
prose poems
Steph Gray
$6

How they rotate their vowels, 

 is how they drew it out, is how they sounded it out, it’s what was left unsaid, it’s what was left unread, it was without silent e, it was a faux that became undone (and showed what, for what it’s worth), it was the undone that outdid itself (to where?), the long and short became compressed, it was how they broke the vowels, it was how they re-upped the diphthongs, it was how the hymn distorted itself, it was how the gravel roaded, it was how the sheet rocked, it was how the way was high, it was how the frontage roaded, it was how your misplaced em-pa-thied, there’s nothing anywhere close to prime time, who designated time as prime, how did the prime become timed, when you grabbed your stopped watch, when you neglected to fix it for years, when the time stopped in your desk drawer, when your desk drawer forgot the time, when told to keep track of time that did not want tracking, to be told you were running on LA time, to be told you were running out of NY time, to be told no one knew what Chicago time was, to be asked why you do that all the time, who’s time was all?, it was, wasn’t it, open all the time, they own their own niche, they own their own nocturnal, oh sure, dude, for real, what was the reason, bruh—no matter what, being slightly off beat ‘cause you’re listening for the beat, not feeling it to anticipate it, we think the answer is…there’s no answer, i wasn’t really sure what was going on, to render yourself blank, editing every syllable, that’s so real, i sure don’t have the answer, it’s something you’ve seen before, haunted by that you know, there’s nothing you can do, it’s just that…it’s just the way it is, one day of normal, missing peripheral vision, a slow moving train wreck, carving out your own meaning, pretending that you’re here

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover disposable camera celluloid photograph by author.

Poet-filmmaker Steph Gray is the author of eight poetry collections, including the above/ground press titles below, the book Shorthand and Electric Language Stars (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2015), and chapbook A Country Road Going Back in Your Direction (Argos Books, 2015). Work has appeared in Brooklyn Rail, A Perfect Vacuum, The Recluse, Boog City, among others. Gray's experimental super 8 films and videos have screened internationally, including retrospectives at Anthology Film Archives (NYC), San Francisco Cinematheque and Mono No Aware (NYC). In Canada, Gray's work has shown in a retrospective with the 8 Fest (2022, Toronto) and film festivals including Antimatter (Vancouver) and the Inside Out LGBTQ+ Film Fest, among others.

This is Gray's third above/ground press title, after Go Under The Surface (2018) and Words Are What You Get / You Do It For Real: poems and prose poems (2019).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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

“poem” broadside #355 : TWO POEMS: “she left under a cloud” by Christine McNair

 

she left under a cloud
cirrus – cirrocumulus – altocumulus
altostratus – nimbostratus – cumulus
virga - cumulus fractus - cumulus congestus
noctilucent - cumulonimbus – mammatus –
nacreous – cirrostratus nebulosus – arcus  –  panus
                undulatus asperita 

roughweather

 

 

TWO POEMS:
“she left under a cloud” by Christine McNair
for travels around Ireland, July 2025
above/ground press broadside #353

 

Christine McNair's most recent book is her hybrid poetic memoir Toxemia (Book*hug, 2024). Her two previous books of poetry were Conflict (2012) and Charm (2017). She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

some author activity: Mellis, Gevirtz, Niespodziany, Dardis, Barwin + Straumsvåg,

Miranda Mellis writes on Karl Ove Knausgaard over at Hilobrow; Susan Gevirtz has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series; Benjamin Niespodziany has new work up at Afterimages; Colin Dardis has four poems up at Rochford Street Review; Hollay Ghadery podcast interviews Gary Barwin; and Dag T. Straumsvåg is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023) gets a mention at LitHub!

Happy Canada Day! Yukon poet Dawn Macdonald was good enough to mention Groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023) as part of the round-up "10 Canadian poetry books to expand your mind" over at LitHub! Thanks so much! You can see the original post here. And have you been seeing the reviews she's been doing via her substack? Legendary! As Macdonald writes:

Chapbooks are a vital layer of the poetry ecosystem, where fresh ideas percolate and germinate. The legendary above/ground press has produced hundreds over the past 30-some years, operating out of a basement in Ottawa.