new from above/ground press: TULIP IS AN AXE, by Gary Barwin

TULIP 
IS 
AN AXE
Gary Barwin
$6

in the fable, there was a sad window
and a sad chair
I threw the chair through the window
and climbed out


            §


sheep was a bird
and bird was a leaf
everyone was tulips
even the gun

we were forced to consider
what we didn’t want to consider


            §


there once was a tulip
it was like a bomb but more gentle
boom, it went in the night
boom, it went at dawn

its red was blood if blood
didn’t mean dying

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

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 35 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984. His most recent novel, The Comedian’s Book of the Dead will be published by Book*Hug in 2026. He lives in Hamilton. garybarwin.com

This is Barwins’s ninth above/ground press chapbook, after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001), Seedpod, Microfiche (2013), Dust of the Wren: poems and translations (2019), the collaborative PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Alice Burdick; 2018), gravitynipplemilk anthroposcenesters (with Tom Prime; 2018) and SOME LEAVES (with rob mclennan, 2020), and SAYING “BOY” IN A WILDERNESS OF SONG (2021) and MY STRUGGLE WITH NOUNS (2024). He is also one of the collaborators in Kevin Spenst's Ghosted Under the Christmas Tree (2025).

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

some author activity: mclennan, Iijima, Boyle, Spinosa + Jenks,

rob mclennan and Brenda Iijima have new work in Volume 6 of Work and Days; Frances Boyle has a new poem up at Bywords.ca; Dani Spinosa has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Tom Jenks also has new work in the "Tuesday poem" series; and rob mclennan is interviewed by Katie Ebbitt for Cleveland Review of Books, and by Jamie Tennant over at his clever podcast.

new from above/ground press: Dark Matter, by Rosío Céron; translated/etranslated by Sonja Greckol

Dark Matter 
—Sonja Greckol translation

Materia Oscura 
—Rosío Céron 

Dark Matter – Diverted
—Sonja Greckol etranstranslation
$6

1. 

East wind and sistrum. Shrill song of the nuthatch. Aching brow announces the evanescent gesture to the world. Trills and somersaults. One who looks at the fire of the first star, its dense depth. One who looks. Turns or attends. The secret vein of the wind –tremor of air its sign– dances before the eyes.

_________________________

  
Levante y sistro. Agudo canto del herrerillo. Adoloridas sienes anuncian al mundo el gesto evanescente. Trinos y volteretas. El que mira el fuego de la primera estrella, su espesura de fondo. El que mira. Giro o concurrencia. La vena secreta del viento –su señal de temblor de aire– danza frente a los ojos.

_________________________
  
The blue tit’s soaring mundo gestures temple trill cartwheel ring fail density or destiny sequencing secret rotation levante signal trembling air dance in eyes veining their first star

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

cover image by Sharon Harris

Rocío Cerón (Mexico City), poet and artist, investigates forms of construction of memory, its hesitations, the suspensions of meanings (to create other meanings) and displacement as territories clash to create transmedia pieces. She has released the sound poetry albums MIIUNI (2022), Sonic Bubbles (2020) and published the poetry books Simultáneo sucesivo (Eolas Ediciones, 2022), Divisible Corpóreo (Tresnubes ediciones-UANL, 2022), Spectio (Tresnubes ediciones-UANL 2019), Materia oscura (Parentalia Ediciones, 2018), Borealis (Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2016), Nudo vortex (Edición Proyecto Literal México, 2015), Diorama  4 editions: (UANL - Tabasco 189 México, 2012), (Diaz Grey Editores, NY Spanish/English 2103), (Amargord Ediciones, Madrid 2013), (Phoneme Media, Español e Inglés, 2014), Basalto (Editorial Casa Vacía, 2022) among others. Diorama was translated by Anna Rosenwong and won the 2025 Best Translated Book Award from the University of Rochester (United States). She has also been awarded with the 2000 Gilberto Owen National Literature Prize (Mexico) and the 2005 See America Travel Award (United States). Her poems have been translated into English and various European languages. Pieces of hers have been exhibited at international venues in Paris, London, Mexico, Berlin, and Stockholm. Cerón performs and lectures extensively internationally and her poems have been translated into multiple languages. 

Sonja Greckol (Tkaronto/Toronto Canada) has published No Hay Linea En EL Tiempo/No Line In Time translated by Eduardo Padilla (manofalsa editores, 2025), Monitoring Station (University of Alberta Press – Robert Kroetsch Series, 2023), No Line In Time (Tightrope, 2018), Skein of Days (Pedlar Press, 2014), and Gravity Matters (Inanna Press, 2008). Her long poem 'No Line In Time' won the 2017 Briar Patch Poetry Contest and No Line In Time was listed for the League of Canadian Poets Raymond P Souster Award in 2019. Monitoring Station was listed for the Book Publishers Association of Alberta Robert Kroetsch Prize (2024). Asymptote (Jan 2025) published an excerpt of her translation of Rocío Cerón’s Trances and La Presa (Spring 2017) published her e-transtranslation ‘Dark Matter - Diverted’ of Rocío Cerón’s ‘Materia Oscura’. Greckol edits poetry for Women and Environments International. 

'Dark Matter' was prepared in Erín Moure's translation workshop (2023-2025) with Lee Gould, Roman Ivashkiv, and Jaclyn Piudik who translated Spanish, Ukrainian and French poetry into English. 

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

some author activity: Banks, Shirley, Unrau, Betts, Barwin + Carpenter,

Chris Banks offers his "best Canadian poetry books of 2025" list, via The Woodlot; Vik Shirley has a new poem up at Burning House Press; Melanie Dennis Unrau is included in the Canadian Poets Series via Peripety and/or Tronies; Gary Barwin, Gregory Betts and Lillian Allen are interviewed on their Muttertongue collaborative projects by Hollay Ghadery for the New Books Network podcast; and J.R. Carpenter has two poems online at The Manchester Review.

new from above/ground press: Heat Lamp, by Pearl Pirie

Heat Lamp
Pearl Pirie
$6

(cinematic)

i          candle
b         ladle 

c         overturned soup
*         gunshot 





D         half moon        
4          sailboat 
≈          uncaring ocean

H         ladder 
v  v      vampire swimming 
o          life saver thrown 

∞         years left for crew learning 

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

Pearl Pirie is an Ottawa-area, Quebec writer. She has been lucky enough to have had four poetry collections published, most recently footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). A past-president of KaDo, an Ottawa-area haiku and tanka group, she is the coordinator of the Betty Drevniok Award for haiku and has been the publisher of phafours press since 2007. Find her at Patreon and at www,pearlpirie.com This book sprung from the forehead of Gary Barwin's anus porcupine eyebrow.

This is Pirie’s seventh chapbook with above/ground press, after the oath in the boathouse (2008), vertigoheel for the dilly (2014), today’s woods (2014), sex in sevens (2016), Eldon, letters (2019) and Rushing Dusk (2024). Report from the Pirie Society, Vol. 1 No. 1, appeared in 2023.

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

some author activity: fitzpatrick, Kemp, mclennan, Beaulieu, Saklikar, Collis + Manery,

the Calgary Guardian offers "a day in the life" of poet ryan fitzpatrick; Penn Kemp has new work up at Public Reverie; rob mclennan is interviewed at On Creative Writing, and also has some new work up at Public Reverie; Derek Beaulieu once again offers his annual list of Most Engaging Books; and the audio of Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s Vancouver chapbook launch, hosted by Stephen Collis with readings by Stephen Collis, Annie Lafleur (read by Stephen Collis), Rob Manery, Renee Rodin, Marguerite Pigeon, and Renée Sarojini Saklikar at People’s Co-op Bookstore on Dec. 6, 2025, is now online via Rob Manery.

new from above/ground press: Sadie, by Jill Stengel

Sadie
Jill Stengel
$6

Sadie. She said let me tell you. Another time she did.

Sadie said let me tell you about that time. It was a time it was. A time indeed.

The skirts were a different length that time, and the shoes. You should have seen the shoes.

A ghost in the story. A ghost.

The man he was different. There is always a man who is different. Whether he is different.

Another time she said. And tea.

Sigh. She moved her hand across her forehead. Sigh. To her cheek. She rested her head upon her hand. Stared unblinking. A long time.

Sometimes Sadie said it was hard to tell. Sometimes Sadie said. Sometimes.

In the evening Sadie received flowers.

In the evening Sadie sat at a table. Sat in a chair. Sat in another room.

Sadie would stroll. An elbow cupped. Sometimes.

A profile in relief. The sun and no clouding. Tree leaves and branches. Night and a star. Stars.

Sadie she said Sadie.

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

This is poet and publisher Jill Stengel’s 14th book, 13 of which are chapbooks. Jill is an ardent admirer of the chapbook form. Her a+bend press has released more than 40 chapbook titles, along with a handful of issues of a journal, as well as a small number of full-length books. Jill’s press has published work by some of her country’s foremost experimental women poets, and she continues to promote voices of experimental writers through collaborations, consulting, and editing. Jill is happiest when playing with words. She lives in Davis, California.

This is Jill Stengel’s second title through above/ground press, after tether (2013).

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

new from above/ground press: Ghosted Under the Christmas Tree, by Kevin Spenst, with Onjana Yawnghwe, Joshua Pitre, Gary Barwin and Derek DeLand

Ghosted Under the Christmas Tree
Kevin Spenst, with Onjana Yawnghwe, Joshua Pitre, Gary Barwin and Derek DeLand
$6

This Machine Kills Fascists 
— co-written with Onjana Yawnghwe 
 
From sunlight in fall to birdsong in spring, 
the spokes of the seasons turn us to tarry. 
The cars are burning electrical corners 
as fumbling fingers button and unbutton.

The spokes of the seasons turn us to tarry
a tad longer in flustersongs we lob at the road.
As fumbling fingers button and unbutton
the edges of a white shirt, and also grief.
 
A tad longer in flustersongs we lob at the road
built as it was on the backs of lost species
waving the edges of a white shirt. And also grief
still and growing, in the process of repair –

gilt as we are on the backs of lost species,
we dig creeks back to cradle some survival.
Still, growing, and in the process of repair,
this machine makes animals of our sins.

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

Kevin Spenst has made many chapbooks and four full-length books of poetry. He’s an organizer for the Dead Poets Reading Series, writes for subTerrain magazine, occasionally co-hosts Wax Poetic on Vancouver Co-op Radio, and teaches poetry at SFU’s The Writer’s Studio in Vancouver on unceded Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territory.

Onjana Yawnghwe writes, draws and makes little books. 

Joshua Pitre teaches ESL classes in Montreal, and is the co-author of Recto, Verso, Chez the Devil’s Printers (with Kevin Spenst, Collusion Books, 2022). 

Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist and the author of 35 books including Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction 2024-1984. Recent work includes Bird Fiction, an interactive poetry multimedia work (with Sarah Imrisek) and Muttertongue, a poetry book and recording with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts. He lives in Hamilton and at garybarwin.com

Derek DeLand is an award-winning design architect, published writer, sportsman, artist and musician. His creative work is interdisciplinary and dynamic, and often locates the hidden energies connecting things.

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

Alina Stefanescu : Above/groundings.

American poet, critic and subscriber Alina Stefanescu was kind enough to highlight the press over at her blog, pointing out a whole swath of 2025 titles that caught her attention: Against Perfectionism & Other Poems by John Cone, Spamtoum by Noah Berlatsky, whittle gristle by Lori Anderson Moseman, Bibliomancy by Leah Souffrant, Studies by Micah Anthony Cavaleri, Chimneys by Tom Jenks, My Life as a Notebook by Jason Heroux, The Sun Will Bleach It Away by Rebecca Comay and Cary Fagan, Angel Dust by Micah Ballard, The Oh Oh by Beatriz Hausner, The Man: Micro Poems by Benjamin Niespodziany, The World Is Beautiful by Lillian Necakov, Never Saw It Coming by Steph Gray, pedagogies for the planthroposcene by Orchid Tierney, Lydia Unsworth’s GAG and even a poem by Austin Miles from Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #44 [see their TtD interview here]. Thanks so much! You can see her original post here.

new from above/ground press: miraculous dead things, by Salem Paige

miraculous dead things
salem paige
$6

i ask you to take a bite out of me

and you comply, after all i
am still flesh only flesh
open for the world to
            cannibalize, if they
want to (most won’t - this
meat is tough on weaker
jaws ( too firm – your
hands find the freshest 
wounds, tongue inside
each, a rhythm in false
defiance burning the air
of this backseat
            final resting place

our gaping mouths, caverns –
yours on mine and mine
spread between my legs
            and growing, this moment
            humid memory to revisit
            from my many             graves.

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

Salem Paige (they/them) is a poet and multidisciplinary artist based on traditional Coast Salish territory (so-called Vancouver, British Columbia). Salem holds an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Ottawa with a Major in Communications. Their works revolve around the exploration of identity and discomfort through narrative universes where Nature and technology intertwine, and can be found in their collection of poetry, The Third Self (2023, Sunday Mornings at the River Press) and their chapbooks evolution artificialis (2025, Anstruther Press) and to grow roots (2023, bottlecap press), as well as in corporeal literary magazine, Beyond Words magazine, STREETCAKE magazine, Ariel Chart Literary Journal, BiPan magazine, and many others. They have previously been twice nominated for Best of the Net, shortlisted for the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize and the Bridport Poetry Prize, and longlisted for the ROOM Poetry Prize. More on Salem can be found at salempaige.com or @corpseofapoet on the Internet.   

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

the recording of the recent (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan on above/ground press is now online,

in case you missed it, the recent (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan
on above/ground press
in which they (also) each read from recent work
is now online: thanks to all who participated!

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP, forthcoming in Spring 2026 with Nightwood Editions. She lives in East Vancouver.

Saklikar is the author of three titles through above/ground press: After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees— (2016; second printing, 2019), from The Book of Bramah (2019) and Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series (2025).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

He founded above/ground press way back in July 1993, having produced nearly 1,500 items-to-date, the bulk of which have been single author poetry chapbooks. His publishing mantra continues to be: "relentless."

This is not the first above/ground press event online, as I'm sure you know, with last year's online launches (one and two), or even that AWP offsite reading we hosted in 2023, or the virtual issue of The Peter F Yacht Club. Really, you should be checking out the whole YouTube channel, most of which is made up of the periodicities "virtual reading series," as well as a handful of other things. 

some author activity: Gevirtz, Adams, mclennan, Gordon, Polyck-O'Neill, Schmaltz + Siklosi,

Susan Gevirtz is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Adrienne Adams has a poem up in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; rob mclennan has new work up at Gone Lawn; Nada Gordon's recent Segue Series reading with Kit Robinson is now up on YouTube; and Julia Polyck-O'Neill has a new poem up at NewPoetry, as does Eric Schmaltz, and Kate Siklosi!

new from above/ground press: Certain Forces, by N.W. Lea

Certain Forces
N.W. Lea
$6

Field Triptych


1. 

Shadows lever grass.
The soil is in trouble with ease.
My feet peregrinate
in the suddenly foreign 
autumn blocks.


2.

Frost. Every light is an event,
every event pins light.
We are always convulsing.
There is nothing profound
about the in-groups, 
the corded coteries.


3.

Especially,
when she tilts her head,
slushy with wonder.
Her excellent mind
not tyrannized.
Her skin twinned
with the silent, 
real earth.

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

cover image by N.W. Lea; portrait of the author by Zofia Lea

Born in Whitehorse, Yukon, N.W. Lea grew up on the West Island of Montreal and in and around Ottawa, including Lanark County and the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Tricounty. He currently lives with his wife and two children in Whitehorse. He has been quietly publishing his Surrrealist/Romantic brand of compact, mystical, sad sack poetry for close to two decades. Please find his trade books at invisiblepublishing.com and his chapbooks at abovegroundpress.blogspot.com. When he is not writing, he is parenting, brooding or riding mountain bikes.

This is Lea’s seventh above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014), Nervous System (2018), Five Mothers (2019), Less Dream (2021) and Natural Man (2022).

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

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
Saturday, December 27, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm

with readings from yacht club regulars and irregulars alike, including: Jennifer Baker, Frances Boyle, Conyer Clayton, David Currie, Michelle Desbarats, AJ Dolman, Amanda Earl, Claire Farley, Cara Goodwin, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre, IAN MARTIN, rob mclennan, Christine McNair, James Moran, Lee Parpart, Colin Quin, Mahaila Smith, Grant Wilkins and Chuqiao Yang (and possibly others,

see my report on the event two years ago here (last year's event hadn't a report, unfortunately;

new from above/ground press: [OKAY], by Buck Downs

[OKAY]
Buck Downs
$6

[okay] 


this is 
    the last time
I’m doing this
        again

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

Buck Downs divides his time between Washington, D.C., and Ellisville, Miss. His latest full-length is Exit Style, available at buckdowns.com

This is Buck Downs's fifth above/ground chapbook, after Shiftless [Harvester] (2016), The Hack of Heaven (2017), Another Tricky Day (2020) and BURNTORANGE (2025).

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

Katerina Vaughan Fretwell reviews Penn Kemp's Lives of Dead Poets (2025) via The League of Canadian Poets

Katerina Vaughan Fretwell provides a review of Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) via The League of Canadian Poets. Thanks so much! This is actually the fourth review of Kemp's title, after Jennifer Wenn's review over at The Miramichi Reader, Karl Jirgens at The Typescript and Gordon Phinn at The Seaboard Review. Thanks much! You can see Fretwell's original review here.

In the golden age of Toronto’s explosive poetry scene in the early 70s, Penn Kemp met many vital poets who have since passed away. Her longstanding connections to these revered poets inspired her to write the chapbook Lives of the Dead Poets. As host of A Space Reading Series (this reviewer exhibited on the Members Wall), publishing with venerable Coach House and living on Toronto Island, Penn made soon-to-be-lifelong friends: Daphne Marlatt, Phyllis Webb, P.K. Page (P.K. Irwin as artist), Robert Creeley, Allan Ginsberg, and letter-friend Diane di Prima.

Kemp’s elegies respond to the styles of the poets whom she memorializes in verse: “A lament for those who have left/ the present, the planet and possibility/ behind, left us bewildered by/ no more/ words” (“Lives of Dead Poets”). For Gwendolyn MacEwan, Penn praises: “Your fingers/ semaphore a complex code/ we cannot read.// A ring of hands/ ready to catch or pull you up” (“Not Waving But Drowning”). This reviewer also mourned a cancelled reading by MacEwan up north.

In “Gone Fishing”, Kemp elegizes Robert Creeley in the manner of the famous Kempian wordplay: “Reel back the real, back/ to the little wicker// basket carrying trout,/ Creeley.”

For Ontario poet Ellen Jaffe, Penn includes a poignant event: “Ellen   dying in hospice     listens in on/ Zoom     as Voices Israel read    her poems.// How wonderful   to be read to at last.” (“Homage for Ellen S. Jaffe, Poet”).

Kemp honours bp nichol, one of the Four Horsemen, with a high compliment: “our// Rumi, born in all/ their holy,/ poetic fecundity” (“For bp nichol”), the words lovingly dancing across the page. Phyllis Webb, champion of the anti-ghazal, leaves us in a sense of Kempian whimsy: “How can we forget you?   You left/ a whiff of unicorn   in your wake.” (“The Poet in Charge”). Also magical, John Ashbery, the Rowan Bard, is commemorated thus: “‘Rowan is the tree of power, causing/ life and magic to flower. (“Alphabet for Ashbery”).

A lively anecdote revivifies P.K. Page: “P.K. Page was dressed   to the nines … // At the stove’s first growl,   she leapt up and alighted/ for the evening … closest to the door.// An oil stove had exploded on her ….// But she made that perch [couch arm] hers, crossing elegant legs,/ gallantly …” (“The Girl from Sao Paulo”).

For an elegiac taste of the other poets that Penn wistfully sets in stone, read this marvellous paean to influential Canadian [except Creeley and Ashbery] poets, with a nod to William Wordsworth’s “Ode to Intimations of Immortality”: “Only their poetry can still convey/ intimations of immortality ….// Only their poems can transcribe/ mysterium tremendum …// For me.   For you.” (“One by One, They Depart, the Great Ones”).

For Kemp’s essay sourcing her inspiration, see 
https://periodicityjournal.blogspot.com/2025/03/penn-kemp-one-by-one-they-depart-great.html.

new from above/ground press: Lakes of Titan, by David Gaffney

Lakes of Titan
David Gaffney
$6

Colony

Row upon row of small people in pods lay perfectly still as if they were asleep. They were small, about the size of ventriloquist dolls, but I was assured that they would grow to become full-sized members of staff. They all looked a little like Melvyn Bragg, even the female ones, with thick ruffled hair and an expression on their faces that suggested they had thought of something droll and would tell you later. Soon the entire company would be run by the creatures they were growing here. Small fans stirred the air about the staff member’s faces to help them get used to adversity, which they may meet in the real world. Lights were low, yet now and again, bursts of colour and fragments of film flashed across the walls and ceiling. Music and podcasts played to ensure that the subjects were equipped with good humour and imagination so they wouldn’t sound robotic like some of the earlier versions. I was told this was top secret. What was even more top secret was which previous members of staff had been computer-powered hybrids of machine and flesh, who had since been decommissioned while we waited for this new batch. Maybe this was something we already knew, but weren’t aware that we knew, like the way the Chuckle Brothers entered our consciousness long before they appeared on our screens. Mahler’s fifth was playing quietly out of the speakers and it reminded me that Mahler’s wife once worked as a lab assistant over-seeing a colony of praying mantis.

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

cover artwork by Gary Fisher

David Gaffney is the author of the novels Never Never (2008), All The Places I’ve Ever Lived (2017) and Out Of The Dark (2021), and the flash fiction and short story collections Sawn-Off Tales (2006), Aromabingo (2007), The Half-Life of Songs (2010) and More Sawn-Off Tales (2013). He has published two graphic novels with Dan Berry – The Three Rooms In Valerie’s Head (2018) and Rivers (2021) – and is working on a third. His short story collection Concrete Fields (Salt Publishing 2023) was long listed for the Edgehill Short Story Prize and his latest collection, Whale, was published by Osmosis in 2024. He is Senior Manager for literature at Arts Council England.

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

some author activity: Smith, Browne, Carr, Ebbitt, Armantrout, Barwin + McEwan,

Mahaila Smith has new work up at Strange Horizons; the recent "Writing as Alchemy" event, featuring readings by Laynie Browne, Julie Carr and Chloe Garcia Roberts, is now on YouTube via the HDS Center for the Study of World Religions; Katie Ebbitt has new work in the Spotlight series; Rae Armantrout has new work in Plume; and both Gary Barwin and Drew McEwen have new work up at The Ex-Puritan.

new from above/ground press: Grotto, by Frances Cannon

Grotto
Frances Cannon
$6

Sympoetics
After Donna Haraway and the Faerie Queen

Trouble in the knots of fertility.
Human fictions, entangled and ongoing,
dying in the muddy compost.
Human beings in interspecies intimacies,
string figures connect seed bags of stories,
overgrown with archetypes and myths. 
I will affirm the fluidity of bodily boundaries, 
together with figures physical and nonphysical.
I want to take the mud, fertile slime, animals, 
plants, fungi, and form new organisms. 
The art of living as a multigender, androgynous symbiont;
seductive forms, a persistent unworking of power.

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

Frances Cannon is a writer, editor, educator, and artist based in Edinburgh, Scotland and Burlington, Vermont. She is the Reviews Editor for Poetry Wales, an editorial reader for The Kenyon Review, and an affiliated scholar at Kenyon College, where she recently completed the Mellon Science and Nature Writing Fellowship. She has an MFA in creative writing from Iowa and a BA from the University of Vermont. She is the author and illustrator of several books: Walter Benjamin Reimagined (MIT Press, 2019), The Highs and Lows of Shapeshift Ma and Big-Little Frank (Gold Wake Press, 2017), Tropicalia (Vagabond Press, 2016), Fling Diction (Green Writers Press, 2024), Willow and the Storm (Green Writers Press, 2025), and Queer Flora, Fauna, Funga (forthcoming with Valiz Press in 2026). 

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

De Villo Sloan reviews Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung's collaborative eyesore (2025) at Asemic Front 2

De Villo Sloan was good enough to provide a first review of Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung's collaborative eyesore (2025) over at Asemic Front 2. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As they write:

AF2 Review - "eyesore" by Johannes S.H. Bjerg & Charlotte Jung (above/ground press, Canada)

Stockholm-based poet and playwright Charlotte Jung and Danish writer and artist Johannes S.H. Bjerg have collaborated to produce what might easily prove to be this year’s best collection of visual poetry: Jung’s minimalist concrete poetry and Bjerg’s calligraphic, asemic neoglyphs. 

rob mclennan – above/ground press editor – again displays his talent for locating and publishing the best postavant art and lit in his burgeoning chapbook series.  eyesore is eminently collectible, and the thoughtful reader will want to revisit the book many times to explore its possibilities for interpretation.

Johannes S.H. Bjerg is known in the visual poetry community primarily for his calligraphy-based asemic texts. He eschews the faux abstract expressionist approach taken by many of his contemporaries in favor of a stark, black and white textuality that complements Charlotte Jung’s poetry perfectly. Bjerg's vision of asemics is similar to the vision of Jim Leftwich and Tim Gaze (1993).

Bjerg’s compositions in eyesore are imbued with complexity not fitting a strict minimalist definition. His cursive streams weave in, above, and below the boundaries of our shared language.

Yet each piece is a single entity, drawing from the concept of the neoglyph (a term coined by John R. McConnochie). In the context of eyesore, each of Bjerg’s pieces can be read as a single asemic poem in a dialog with Jung’s work. His asemic pieces, for me, are similar to the approach taken by John M. Bennett and Henry Michaux.

In my review of Charlotte Jung’s Collected (Timglaset 2023), I praised her concrete poetry, which I see sharing many traits with the work of Aram Saroyan. She works within the constraints of concrete poetry rooted in Modernity.

Jung also has a unique ability to present fluidity and subtle expression in a way that surpasses the work of previous generations. eyesore is another valuable addition to the growing body of Jung’s work.

rob mclennan has made an important contribution to vispo with the publication of this chapbook. The audience is presented with a unique opportunity to explore “new poetries” in the form of asemic writing and minimalist poetry in a lyric sequence. In eyesore, we see a glimpse of poetry’s future.

some author activity: Davis, Norris, Ladouceur, Doller, Maloukis, Trivedi + Boyle,

Jordan Davis has some new poems up at A Poet in Mexico; part five of Ken Norris' Confessions is now online; Ben Ladouceur has a poem up at NewPoetry; Sandra Doller writes on Fanny Howe's "The Witness" for Poetry Daily; Rose Maloukis has a poem in print and online at The New Quarterly; Amish Trivedi has a piece on C.D. Wright as part of a curated "cluster" on her work at Post45; and Frances Boyle has new work up at Public Reverie.

Jeremy Luke Hill chapbook launch in Elora + Holiday Book Tasting,

Jeremy Luke Hill launches his above/ground press chapbook, a burrow, a nest, a lea stone (2025) at the Elora Public Library alongside Tom Vaine (The Ballad of Omega Brown) and Jerry Prager (Skidding with the Quarrymen) on Saturday, November 29, 2025, from 2pm to 4:30pm. Further information here, and even catch the short piece he wrote on the collection here.

You can also catch him as part of the upcoming Gordon Hill Press and The Porcupines' Quill Holiday Book Tasting at The Hive (33 Cork Street West, Guelph) alongside Jerry Prager on Monday, December 15, 2025 at 7pm. Further information here.

new from above/ground press: BAD TEMPOR, by Jimmy T Cahill

BAD TEMPOR
Jimmy T Cahill
$6

III: erratic time-keeping,

a few hard blows 
destroy the timing
Almost immediately

This should result in
complete freedom

At this point
bend upward
in a spirit
where the end is to be,

This brief
release
sometimes jumps
to the highest point

at that moment
the seconds
rises and falls,

an escape

the escape

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

These poems were erased, plundered, and remixed using the text Handbook of Watch and Clock Repairs by H.G. Harris, 1961. (Revised edition 1972)

Jimmy T Cahill is a nonbinary writer of poetry and science fiction/fantasy. They have over eight chapbooks available from presses across North America. Their work has most recently been featured by Opaat Press (2024) and The Ampersand Review (2025).  More about them can be found at jimmytcahill.com.

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

Gordon Phinn reviews Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Reader

Gordon Phinn provides a first review of Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (2025) and a new review of Penn Kemp’s Lives of Dead Poets (2025) at The Seaboard Review. Thanks so much! This is actually the third review of Kemp's title, after Jennifer Wenn's review over at The Miramichi Reader and Karl Jirgens reviewed such over at The Typescript. You can see Phinn's original review here.

Premieres Posies by Eudore Evanturel, translated by Jamie Sharpe (Above/Ground Press, 1879/2015)

Chapbooks: As outlined in Eli MacLaren’s Little Resilience: The Ryerson Poetry Chapbooks (McGill-Queens 2021), these diminutive pamphlets have been a low profile but integral element of CanLit for decades. Between 1925 and 1962 Ryerson Press produced over 200. Since the 70/80’s the genre has, with the advent of copy machines, blossomed. Heck, I’ve done about a dozen myself. In its now expansive corral, new work is led out of the barn by poets and prose stylists trying out experiments in form and expression that might not otherwise see the light of day. Once not always so easy to acquire, the digital age, with all its websites, podcasts, and Substacks, has simplified the task. One can observe a wide selection as they canter around the exercise yard, finding their new legs and admirers. One seemingly inexhaustible source is Rob Mclennan’s Above/Ground press, and if I’m not mistaken, his stable has at least 600 residents. Mind you, I’m a past master at being mistaken.

Allow me to remedy whatever lack you may feel by introducing a couple of new contenders, each with a unique and valuable contribution to make. Jamie Sharpe, a Comox BC writer with five books to his credit, has uncovered a long neglected 19th century Quebecois poet, Eudore Evanturel, whose only book, Premieres Poesies from 1879, was not well received by the critics of the day and the disappointment led him to retire and relocate to Lowell, Massachusetts.

In his preface Sharpe reveals that on encountering Evanturel’s work he felt confronted with “a misplaced heirloom, a finely etched reliquary of longing, wit and restraint” and that his approach was “not archival but sympathetic”, and his use of “succinct English cadence” was to “allow the poems to exist without the velvet rope and museum glass.” In this he has succeeded admirably, allowing the shelved sentiments to breathe freely. Many of the verses are tantalizingly brief, some approaching the remote elevation of the haiku:

Village at Noon

Whitewashed walls lean
Under noon’s sunlight.  A lone bicycle
Collapsed by the door.  Somewhere:
Laughter, a  saucepan clatter.
The village slow and bright.
A midday lull in a world
Kept small.
To My Reader

Hold these words close, like a flower
Pressed, preserved, between pages.
Let it oblige your fingers to turn into
Glints of quiet contemplations waiting
For your own heart to finish them.
One hopes for more translations and research on this buried treasure.

Lives Of Dead Poets by Penn Kemp (Above/Ground Press 2025)

Penn Kemp has been regarded as something of an iconoclast and trailblazer for fifty odd years, the composer of thirty plus books of poetry and prose, seven plays and several daring, and dare I say seductive, experiments in sound poetry. If you suspect that there are boundaries that yet require breaking then Penn has already been there, joyously deconstructing. In this chapbook, she fondly recalls the lives and work of contemporaries who have shifted their focus to that universe next door. Let me say: she knocks and gains entry.

Gwen MacEwen, Robert Creeley, Robert Hogg, bp nicol, Jack Spicer, Phyllis Webb, John Ashbery, James Reaney, Colleen Thibaudeau, P.K. Page, Robert Kroetsch, Teva Harrison, Joe Blades & Ellen S. Jaffe: all are evoked, praised, loved and grieved. Her heart is in the right place and her aim is true.

One by One, They Depart, the Great Ones

The sound of voices
I wish I could hear, voices
now dissolved to ether, to

the vagaries of memory, lost in
translation.  What’s that?

How could such
presence disintegrate?

How could so much 
wisdom evaporate with
the body’s decay?

A chasm awaits 
Across the great 
division.

As the poets fall into their tradition,
our beloved dead are more intimate
now than they ever could be in the flesh.

Only their poetry can still convey
intimations of immortality, subtle slips
we grasp as truth, not knowing for sure

what is real, what is fantasy and false,
what lies somewhere in between as true.

Only their poems can transcribe
mysterium tremendum – where they’ve gone.
Their words embodied on the page,

For me.                                               For you.

new from above/ground press: SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST, by Amanda Earl

SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST
Amanda Earl
$6

In the cab en route to a place referred to as 
home, I tried to remember what being alive was 
like. I told myself to answer when my husband 
ended a noun verb object structure with an 
uprised tone. To me it sounded like zero zero 
zero up up? I think my response was one 
syllable two syllable two head nods.

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

Amanda Earl (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

This is Amanda Earl’s eleventh chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022). She edited the above/ground press collection the suitcase poem (2025), as well as the first issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2018). In 2022, above/ground press produced Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1, No. 1.

[Amanda Earl launches this title in Ottawa on Friday, alongside Stuart Ross and Liam Burke, as part of the pre-ottawa small press fair reading at Anina's Cafe]

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

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan : December 7, 2025

a (zoom) conversation between Renée Sarojini Saklikar and rob mclennan
on above/ground press
in which they (also) each read from recent work
Sunday Dec 7, 2025 / 7pm EST on zoom

a zoom link will be offered just prior to the event via the facebook event page; or email rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com to register;

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP, forthcoming in Spring 2026 with Nightwood Editions. She lives in East Vancouver.

Saklikar is the author of three titles through above/ground press: After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees— (2016; second printing, 2019), from The Book of Bramah (2019) and Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series (2025).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

He founded above/ground press way back in July 1993, having produced nearly 1,500 items-to-date, the bulk of which have been single author poetry chapbooks. His publishing mantra continues to be: "relentless."

some author activity: Praamsma, Campanello, Turnbull, Vitkauskas, Smith + Rosenthal,

Wanda Praamsma has new work up at Pamenar Press online, as does Kimberly Campanello and Chris Turnbull; Lina Ramona Vitkauskas has had some new poems up at The Fortnightly Review; Dale Smith is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; and Sarah Rosenthal is interviewed via Touch the Donkey.