Misha Solomon and Stephanie Bolster chapbook launch in Montreal! July 9, 2026

Montreal poets Misha Solomon (Misha Solomon’s BIODÔME: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster) and Stephanie Bolster (BIODÔME: Twentieth Anniversary Edition) launch their most recent above/ground press chapbooks, accompanied by Alex Nierenhausen and hosted by and in conversation with Sarah Burgoyne, at Librairie Pulp Books & Cafe, July 9, 2026 at 7pm! Oh, you should very much go to this if you are able. See also the recent interview with Solomon on the chapbook here, or the more-recent zoom-conversation on above/ground press that Cole Swensen conducted with Misha Solomon, Jennifer Baker and rob mclennan.

Touch the Donkey at a Zine Fair in Sherbrooke QC + at Jarvis Square Books, Chicago

If you are around Sherbrooke, Quebec this Saturday, check out the ZinK (zine + ink) zine fair, where there will be a small mound of copies of the two latest issues of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] for free! While supplies last, certainly. Should you be looking to pick up other things at the fair? Oh, yes, certainly. If you pick up a free copy or two or three of Donkey, would I welcome a donation, possibly? Oh, very much so, although it isn’t required. And if you live in or near Chicago, there’s also a small handful of copies for free distribution at Jarvis Square Books! A purchase isn’t required for a copy (again, while supplies last), but you should completely be looking through their fine selection to see what else their store might offer. It is a very fine store! And of course, if you wish to see above/ground press in person, we’re still working on curating our summer anniversary event in Ottawa, but already have plans to appear at the Fisher Small + Fine Press Fair on September 19 (at the Fisher Rare Book Room at the University of Toronto) and this fall’s ottawa small press book fair (our thirty-second anniversary!) at Tom Brown Arena on November 14th. So much exciting small press!

new from above/ground press: TRAVELLER, by Ken Norris

TRAVELLER
Ken Norris
$6

Hello, and welcome
to obscurity.

I’m just the man
who sweeps the halls.

Mornings are dusted
by sunlight, and the nights

go crazy. I cannot
stop or start. I see

your world in flames.
Mine moves with ghosts

and shadows. If 
your whole life

is in your phone,
what are the chances?

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an MA at Concordia University and a PhD in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

This is Ken Norris’ fourteenth above/ground press chapbook, after Windward – St. Lucia Poems (1995), The Commentaries (1999), Songs For Isabella (2000), Green Wind (2010), Looking Into It (2011), Hong Kong Blues (2019), Hawaiian Sunrise (2021), Stray Dog Café (2021), The Traveling Wilburys Collection (2021), False Narratives (2022), Echoes (2023), Broken River (2024) and What’s Left (2025). See his 2025 above/ground press substack interview here.

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: Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office, by Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot

Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office
Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross
$6

Toasted church knowledge
is a snapdragon donkey gift,
if you think about it.
You can find knowledge like that
flowin’ round the flowers.
In this poem, flowers
stand in for something else.
Flowers are code names
for wishes of different kinds.
For wishes of lava ears,
and for wishes of rabbits 
having outbursts of thumping
Sex Music. Sex Music
refers to sex music
itself, not to the whole other thing,
but to the event of sex music itself, 
and to the event of sex music 
flowin’, thumpin’ and flowin’ 
into itself.
All this must be as
familiar to you as a pancake person
who comes to your house
purportedly for brunch
but truly to blow dust 
off the drum of living, 
and then to drag your complete luggage set
all the way to the pacific
airport, so it can soar
across the earthworks puddle.


AUTHORS’ NOTE ON THE TEXT

December 6, 2022. Stuart Ross has driven from Cobourg, Ontario, to visit Jason Camlot in Montreal. They have a lot to catch up on, so they go to the university library to select a book. In the PS 3000s they find the books of John Ashbery, whose work is usefully rich in diction and vocabulary, and appropriately incomprehensible. They decide to go with As We Know. In Jason’s departmental office they sit and alternate between reading to each other from As We Know and writing while listening to the other read. They have each used listening as a method of writing poetry for years, but until now they had never before collaborated on listening poetry into existence together. 

Listening poetry is a creative audile technique, a method that works to transform a particular way of listening to something—usually an already published literary text (but it can be anything, really)—into poems. The poems, in this case, were composed in two notebooks with Shooky, the popular KPop character from BT21, on the covers. (In the BT21 universe, Shooky is a mischievous little cookie who loves to pull pranks on his friends.) One of the Shooky books was large and one was small. For each session of listening poetry, Jason and Stuart would read to each other and write poems in one notebook, then do the same in the other notebook. The size of the book informed the size and nature of the poems that were listened into existence. They borrowed as much or as little as they chose from the source texts.

This chapbook presents the poems written during the first of seven listening poetry sessions that Stuart and Jason held between December 5, 2022, and December 18, 2024. It is “Shooky Session 1: John Ashbery, As We Know, 5 December 2022, Jason’s Office” from the larger manuscript THE SHOOKY SESSIONS (A Litany).

This chapbook is set in Goudy Old Style because CRT Electra was too expensive.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jason Camlot is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Animal Library (DC Books, 2000), What The World Said (Mansfield, 2013), and, most recently, Vlarf (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021). His critical works include Phonopoetics: The Making of Early Literary Recordings (Stanford, 2019) and the co-edited collections, Collection Thinking (Routledge, 2024), Unpacking the Personal Library (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023), CanLit Across Media (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019), and a recent jumbo special issue of English Studies in Canada on “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” Jason is director of the SpokenWeb research network that focuses on the history of literary sound recordings and the digital preservation and presentation of collections of literary audio. He is Professor of English at Concordia University and President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE).

Stuart Ross has published 23 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir/personal essays, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky (Coach House Books, 2024), the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers (ECW Press, 2022), and the story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub (Anvil Press, 2022). He has won the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, the 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, and the 2010 Relit Award for Short Fiction. Stuart teaches poetry at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and has been writer at residence at Queen’s University and University of Ottawa. He runs the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction under Guernica Editions and the Feed Dog Books imprint for surrealist poetry under Anvil Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

This is Ross’ fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after ESPESANTES (2018), NINETY TINY POEMS (2019), BIRD SNOW ON HARD TRACKS (2023) and AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories (2025). above/ground press also produced the festschrift Report from the Ross Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 in 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

some author activity: mclennan, MacEachern, Burgoyne, Macdonald + the ottawa small press book fair,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Shadows and Sax; catch Jessi MacEachern and Sarah Burgoyne in conversation via Canthius; Dawn Macdonald has a new essay up at The Wood-Lot; and today is the ottawa small press book fair!

new from above/ground press: Planting Seeds : Fletcher Garden Poems, ed. David O’Meara

Planting Seeds : Fletcher Garden Poems
edited by David O’Meara
$6

featuring new poems by:

Laurie Koensgen
Ellen Chang-Richardson 
Anita Lahey
Conyer Clayton 
Sneha Madhavan-Reese
David Stymeist
David O’Meara
Blaine Marchand

Introduction
David O’Meara,
Poet Laureate (anglophone) of the City of Ottawa (2024-2027)

Living in an urban area, it is often easy to forget the rich natural habitat that surrounds us. Thankfully, in the Ottawa region, there are numerous opportunities for “appreciation, preservation, and conservation of Canada’s natural heritage,” a listed objective of the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club. In late April, eight local poets took a ramble with Sandy Garland, a volunteer and educator at the Fletcher Wildlife Garden / Bill Holland Trail, and a passionate advocate for conservation, to appreciate and respond to the flora and fauna of this unique and valuable site within the city. The poets returned, walked, sat, imagined, researched, and wrote. The result is this chapbook, which shapes an informal guide to a leisurely walk on the provided paths. I encourage you to take it to the Bill Holland Trail, or any local trail, and read, look, and listen. Wear a hat and long pants. Bring a water bottle. And visit the Ottawa Field Naturalists’ Club website, a valuable resource, for more information on how to create wildlife-friendly habitat and gardens on urban and rural properties: https://ofnc.ca/programs/fletcher-wildlife-garden

Thank you first of all to Sandy Garland, volunteer-extraordinaire, who generously donated her time, energy, enthusiasm, and endless knowledge to the poets and audience during our tour of the trails and garden. Thanks to the support of rob mclennan for work on this chapbook, Allison Armstrong for media and publicity, Frances Boyle and Nik Ives-Allison. Thanks to Edward Farnworth and Stuart Tomlinson at Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. Thanks to Leigh Thorpe and Jane’s Walk. Many thanks to the City of Ottawa for support through the Ottawa Poet Laureate program, and to all the participating poets for their thoughtfulness and creativity.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
produced for the event PLANTING SEEDS: NATURE POETRY ON THE TRAIL, June 27, 2026, Fletcher Wildlife Garden, Prince of Wales Drive, Ottawa

author biographies:

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet, hybrid genre writer, judicial assistant, editor, community organizer, and author of Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024). 

Conyer Clayton is a queer writer, editor, and bookseller from Louisville, Kentucky living in Ottawa. Their third full-length collection of poetry, the lake-shaped excuse, is forthcoming in October 2026 with Buckrider Books, Wolsak and Wynn. 

Laurie Koensgen’s poetry has appeared internationally in more than 100 journals, anthologies and online magazines. Her fourth chapbook, this clingstone love, is with Pinhole Poetry Press. 

Anita Lahey loves wandering Ottawa’s pockets of urban wild. Her latest poetry collection is While Supplies Last. Her memoir, The Last Goldfish: A True Tale of Friendship, was an Ottawa Book Award finalist.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of two poetry collections, Observing the Moon and Elementary Particles. Originally from Michigan, she has lived in Ottawa since 2009.

Blaine Marchand has been active in the literary scene in Ottawa for over 50 years. A chapbook, Anthems for Dead Youth, will be published this November by Big Pond Rumours. He has published seven books and two chapbooks of poetry.

David O'Meara is the author of five collections of poetry and a novel, Chandelier. He is currently the English-language Poet Laureate for the City of Ottawa.

DS Stymeist’s most recent collection, Cluster Flux (Frontenac Press) was short-listed for the Archibald Lampman Poetry Award. Alongside living with chronic disease (Crohn’s), he currently teaches creative writing at Carleton University.

This is David O'Meara’s third edited title through above/ground press, all part of his tenure as Ottawa’s English-language Poet Laureate, following Verse on the Banks / Poèmes sur le rivage (2025) and Words and Image / Entre mots et images (2026), both of which were co-edited by Ottawa's French-language Poet Laureate, Véronique Sylvain, with translations by Myriam Legault-Beauregard.

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: This Guy Gets It, by David Currie & IAN MARTIN

This Guy Gets It
David Currie & IAN MARTIN
$6

Stand Up Poem

Sometimes I walk into rooms and there aren’t enough chairs. So, I end up standing because I don’t ever feel comfortable sitting on the floor, but when you’re standing and most people are sitting it’s pretty hard to find people on your level to talk to.

It’s awkward talking to someone sitting down when you’re standing because you don’t know if you should kneel or bend at the waist. If you bend at the waist, you’re right in their business, but if you kneel, your knees crack, and then the person looks down on you.

If you’re talking to someone sitting on a bar stool, then you’re both on the same level, but at the same time, it feels like you both have somewhere better to be and don’t know what to do with your feet.

You don’t want to walk into a room with too many chairs, because you’ll look conspicuous. If someone you don’t want to talk to walks in (and they will) they will come right over because you’re the only person in a mostly empty room.

Sometimes walking into rooms and there aren’t enough chairs is way better than sometimes walking into a room with too many chairs. 

Forget I said anything.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

[David Currie and IAN MARTIN launch this title in Ottawa on Friday, June 19 as part of the ottawa small press book fair pre-fair reading at Anina's Cafe]

David Currie is not IAN MARTIN.  He is a different writer with whom IAN MARTIN is collaborating. David's work has appeared in various places – he wishes he could be more specific, but he forgot to write them down, and has been collected into six chapbooks. He is the author of no-book-books, so what are we even doing here?

IAN MARTIN is large and barely in charge. Their work has appeared recently in periodicities, BAD DOG Mag, Discordia Review, and Sumac Literary Magazine. IAN has published six chapbooks, most recently EVERYONE IS MY ENEMY (2022). When not writing, IAN makes small video games and complains. Visit www.ianmartin.rocks at your own risk.

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: avoice be heard, by Jérôme Melançon

avoice be heard
Jérôme Melançon
$6

bp leaves 
no doubt

no doubt
sounds more alive than paper

in through between bo
dy parts bodies bo
th sets of eyes voices

locational 
definational

def
ying any ki
nd of mixing it so
unds like it so
unds like so
unds so
unding

nothing pure or empty
time is no
t mine here i am ca
ugh
t in his
have to wai
t for him his wai
ling his wa
ndering re
petit
ive in
cant   (at)
ing

self distorting

wait as he stretches sounds

*

These sections of the poem “speechletting” are a response to bpNichol’s recorded sound poems. It disassembles, reflects upon, and reincorporates elements of Nichol’s poems, at least as I heard them. Many are available on the bpNichol Digital Archive (bpnichol.ca). The image that appears on the cover is a still of a video that can be found online titled “My concern...” My thanks to Gregory Betts and the team at the bpNichol Digital Archive for giving us that endlessly generous arrangement of alphabets. And to rob mclennan for the continuing support. And to my family for sitting through me listening to these sound poems and working out new ones at the kitchen table.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His fourth collection, Prairial·es, is now out with Prise de parole. Let us not forget his three chapbooks with above/ground press: Bridges Under the Water (2023), Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022), and Coup (2020), his occasional translations, and his book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has also edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that sometimes have to do with some of this. He is on various social media under variations of @lethejerome, notably at bsky.social.

This is his fourth chapbook with above/ground press.

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: Tierney, Beaulieu, Saklikar + Robertson,

Orchid Tierney has new work in Posit; Derek Beaulieu is included in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies, and is interviewed over at The Commentary, as is Renée Sarojini Saklikar; and Lisa Robertson is interviewed at David Naimon's Between the Covers.

new from above/ground press: THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN: prose poems, by Dag T. Straumsvåg

THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN: prose poems
Dag T. Straumsvåg
$6

THE THUMB GRIP

You want to get your life in order and grab it by the neck, but it’s difficult: a mixture of laziness and poor skills you must mould into something useful. It doesn’t work in the company of others, it doesn’t work alone. You must reconstruct your entire life. Even your soul. Maybe you’d better try the thumb grip orienteerers use, marking your current position by constantly thumbing the map. That way, you’ll always have one hand free to swat away insects and the other runners in the woods. Each checkpoint you reach will be a disappointment. You adjust your thumb, and continue running toward the next checkpoint. In the distance you can glimpse the finishing line. Maybe you’ll be the first to cross.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover design by Beth Elliott

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator  of eleven books of poetry, including But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), Tom Hennen: Finn eit stille regn (Find a Quiet Rain, translations, A + D Trondheim | Minneapolis, 2024), A Further Introduction to Bingo w/Jason Heroux (above/ground press, 2024) and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025). He co-founded and ran the micro press A + D Trondheim | Minneapolis with Angella Kassube, who died in December 2025 and whom this book is for. The press will continue, with creative director and designer Beth Elliott, Angella's long-time friend, doing the cover art and design. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada and the United States.

This is Straumsvåg’s second title with above/ground press, after the collaborative A Further Introduction to Bingo (with Jason Heroux, 2024).

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 Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 19: Bebenek, carisse, Currie, MARTIN + Saklikar,

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

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Jessica Bebenek (Montreal)
russell carisse (NB)
David Currie (Ottawa)
IAN MARTIN (Ottawa)
+
Renée Sarojini Saklikar (Vancouver)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 19, 2026
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 Glebe Community Centre]

Jessica Bebenek is a queer interdisciplinary poet, bookmaker, and educator living between Tiohtià:ke (Montreal) and an off-grid shack on unceded Anishinaabe territory. Her most recent chapbook, You Don’t Get Out Much (2024), is a memoir of chronic illness & her first ‘real’ book, No One Knows Us There (Book*hug Press, 2025), was a finalist for two Quebec Writer’s Federation Awards and was named a CBC Books Best Book of the Year. @notyrmuse www.jessicabebenek.art

russell carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik/Mi’kmaw territory in New Brunswick. Here they live in an off-grid trailer in the woods with their partner and animals, growing food and practicing other forms of underconsumption. Author of five chapbooks, their work appears in the anthology On Occasion: Poems for the People, and ARC Poetry, Queen’s Quarterly, The Temz Review, Touch the Donkey, Website: russellcarisse.carrd.co Mastodon: @russellcarisse@writing.exchange Bluesky: @russellcarisse.bsky.social 

David Currie is not IAN MARTIN. He is a different writer with whom IAN MARTIN is collaborating. David’s work has appeared in various places - he wishes he could be more specific, but he forgot to write them down, and has been collected into six chapbooks. Heat a neutral oil to a boil before turning it to medium-low. Add Sichuan peppercorns, star anise, cloves, cardamom, bay leaves, and a nub of ginger. Simmer for an hour, but make sure not to burn. strain the oil into a mason jar with about a cup to a cup and a half of chili pepper powder (the more varieties the better). Oil can be used immediately and kept for about 6 months. He currently resides in Ottawa. Currie and MARTIN are launching a collaborative above/ground press chapbook at this event, so be warned.

IAN MARTIN [pictured] is large and barely in charge. Their work has appeared recently in BAD DOG Mag, Discordia Review, and Sumac Literary Magazine. IAN has published six chapbooks, most recently EVERYONE IS MY ENEMY (2022). When not writing, IAN makes small video games and complains. Visit WWW.IANMARTIN.ROCKS at your own risk.

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of six 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. Renee Sarojini is grateful to work, create, and live in East Vancouver on the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.

new from above/ground press: Pillars of Sand, by Mrityunjay Mohan

Pillars of Sand
Mrityunjay Mohan
$6

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mrityunjay Mohan’s work has been published or is forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Denver Quarterly, Poetry Northwest, The Indianapolis Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and Fourteen Hills. He’s a Tin House scholar, Lambda Literary fellow, and a Brooklyn Poets fellow. He was a recipient of the Nella Larsen Memorial Scholarship for the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. He’s an editor for ANMLY magazine, and a reader for Split/Lip Press, Harvard Review, and The Masters Review.

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: Davis, Flemmer, Armantrout, Bartczak + Tardi,

Jordan Davis has ten poems posted at The Fortnightly Review; Kyle Flemmer is interviewed via The Miramichi Reader; Rae Armantrout writes on Fanny Howe for The Fortnightly Review, and has four new poems up at Granta, and a further poem via the website for the Poetry Foundation; and Kacper Bartczak has a new poem up at Poetry Northwest, as translated into English by Mark Tardi.

some author activity: Burdick, Nećakov, Schmaltz + Henning,

Alice Burdick has a new essay up at The New Quarterly; Lillian Nećakov is interviewed alongside Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag for the podcast Meat for Teacast; Eric Schmaltz is interviewed by Myra Bloom at ASAP Review; and Barbara Henning has new work up at Long News.

new from above/ground press: NO VIBRATO HARD TRANSCENDENCE, by Jon Cone

NO VIBRATO HARD TRANSCENDENCE
Jon Cone
$6

AFTER MY TYPEWRTIER GOT STOLE
 
To be young
to have nothing nothing! 
to be drunk and in love 
kissing on a street corner
where light is derelict
laughing with the municipal workers 
waiting for the first bus 
as if for a new invention

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jon Cone is a Canadian writer who lives in Iowa City. He grew up in Richmond Hill, Ontario. He saw the Three Stooges perform live at the Canadian National Exhibition. He watched George Chuvalo fight Muhammad Ali on a black-and-white tv.  He saw the Toronto Maple Leafs play at Maple Leaf Gardens. He went to Seneca College in Toronto for one year before attending the University of Western Ontario in London. 

This is Cone’s third title through above/ground press, after Against Perfectionism & other poems (2025) and the collaborative AN ACCELERATION & A CALM / A SHEAF BY THE LATE P. M. SAMSON / COMMENTARY BY BARNARD SWALLOW (with K.Lipschutz, 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

Billy Mills reviews Jon Cone's Against Perfectionism & Other Poems and John Levy's Vast Spaces

Irish poet Billy Mills was good enough to provide first reviews of Jon Cone's Against Perfectionism & Other Poems (2025) and John Levy's Vast Spaces (2026) as part of an omnibus review (alongside Chris Turnbull's If/Then and Henry Gould's Mirror Lake) via Elliptical Movements. Thanks so much! Mills was even nice enough to review Levy's prior above/ground press title, which we also appreciate very much. You can see the full review here, or this excerpt, below:

Jon Cone is a Canadian poet living in Iowa and, if the work in Against Perfectionism & Other Poems is anything to go by, influenced by the New York School, a thought that came to me as I encountered poem titles like ‘The Stationary Engineer at Rest Ponders the World as an Inscrutable Theology of Material Influence’ and ‘The Exile Alive to the Etching of an Hour’, so I was pleased to encounter ‘A Poem for Frank O’Hara’ almost halfway in. To my surprise, it is the shortest poem in the pamphlet:

A Poem for Frank O’Hara

For I shall drink a warm Coke at noon
and trace lovingly
the cracked egg of the world.

Short as it is, this poem captures the humour and the sense of luminous triviality that suffuses much of the work gathered here. And that humour can be self-deprecating, as in ‘A Poem for Mother and Dather (after Tomaž Šalamun)’:

He’s ugly! His face is ugly! His body is ugly!
Ugly! Ugly! Ugly! Jonathan Cone is an awful poet
because he is an awful person and
when he goes for a sprightly march about
the compound of a summer’s dawn
mongrels will stand on hind legs to salute him
and feral cats will trail at acute angles behind.

This absurdist strain melds perfectly with what I called the luminous triviality at the heart of so much of the work here:

A Caffeinated Dream of Spring

The waitress brought us these beautiful white mugs.
They each had a single blue stripe just below the lip.
I mean the simplicity of that singular blue trail upon
that immaculate occasion of white. Then the waitress
poured lucidly from the coffee pot filling our mugs.
And the sound the coffee made was easy and so gentle.
Like the world was home and unsteady on our behalf.

This is one of the things poetry does; it takes the ordinary things and makes them extraordinary, if only the poet is willing to take a chance on seeming mundane. Cone takes that leap with gusto. The pamphlet’s title poem consists in the main of a recipe for a simple meal, salad and dessert. The poem then ends:

I don’t know if this would win any culinary awards. OK I admit
               I know it would not. But I don’t care. It tastes good to me,
& that is ultimately what matters because the world
might come crashing down any second now,
we don’t have time to be perfectionists in all we attempt or do.

Which strikes me as the perfect way to go about poetry in these insane times. Forget about the prizegivers, avoid the overly polished, make something that tastes good. And in these poems, Cone follows his own advice to perfect imperfection.

John Levy’s Vast Spaces is his second pamphlet from the prolific and always interesting Above/Ground Press. Like Cone, Levy has a fine eye for the everyday, but he is primarily a poet of community, and many of his poems are in the form of notes addressed to named friends and/or fellow poets, while others carry dedications. Here’s an example

Sky

for John Phillips

The turkey buzzard that circled above me twice this morning had
beautiful white on the underside of its black wings and a vividly red
beak and if it had been me up there I know I would have loved gliding
like that, not having to move my wings and not caring about the old
man below me looking up as if in the church without a roof that I’d
never enter.

Here, as so often in Levy’s work, close observation of the world opens out to a kind of social sense of what it is to live in that world, a set of interactions between the thing seen, the observing poet, the dedicatee and the reader that is redolent with a quiet sense of illumination. This is conversation raised to the level of art.

Some of the interactions are with strangers, others involve pets, and there’s a thread that runs through several of the poems concerning Levy’s learning to play the piano in his 70s, as in this note to another poet:

Note to Robyn Scheienz (August 9, 2025)

Bunny, our excitable little rescue terrier, barks
and barks, apparently furious at me
for stopping playing over and over
“Claire de Lune,” practicing

the sustain pedal, making mistakes and
correcting them, all of which maybe
he not only silently tolerated but
which intrigued him as much

as when he sits on one side of our French door
watching a lizard or, if he’s even luckier, a rabbit
or small bird, and yesterday that long black snake
like a living middle C elongated by a sustain pedal.

The almost casually conversational surface here serves to conceal the technical craft at work, the repetitions (barks and barks / over and over) enacting the practice, the forward propulsion created by line and stanza endings, the threads of assonance and alliteration that bind those same lines and stanzas together (read it aloud if you don’t believe me). All of which gently serves to convey the ‘meaning’, that to be human is to create, to make mistakes and learn from them, and create better, and that what we make well is as much a part of the world as a bird, rabbit or snake is.

This soft-spoken humanity is what Levy is about, in both senses of the word. His poetry is difficult to write about because the poems are so definitively what they are, complete and in no real need of comment. Read him.

new from above/ground press: I found looking, by Emily Shafer

I found looking
Emily Shafer
$6

I found                                   looking outside
  found you there
  listening
  listing
  my nute

 

I found four swallows instead of three 

   found a blank party is all worth an email slice

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover artwork: Aoife McLennan

Emily Shafer is a poet and photographer. She is an incoming MFA candidate in Image Text at Cornell University, holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from Brooklyn College, and teaches first-year writing at CUNY. She is the author of it’s too early for poetry from Proper Tales Press and publications in poets.org, The Brooklyn Review, periodicities, and more. Born and raised in Rochester, N.Y., she lives and works in New York City. @emilyshaferwrites / www.emilyshaferwrites.com

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