some author activity: Cantrell, McNair, Berlatsky + Witek

Walking the Wrack Line? by videographer-photographer Matt Roberts and poet Terri Witek. Photo by Rick de Yampert

Andrew Cantrell has new work up at Annulet; Christine McNair is interviewed alongside Elee Kraljii Gardiner for Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks podcast; Noah Berlatsky is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and forthcoming author Terri Witek is part of "Cuerpo-territorio: Reverberations of Belonging," an exhibit at Stetson University's Hand Art Center.

new from above/ground press: Year Zero, by Andrew Cantrell

Year Zero
Andrew Cantrell
$5

Open this up and break it


Don’t ask me about our usual impression. That is something that can’t be spoken about.

Please. You know me. Creeping up the trunks of willows. I don’t want to remember.

I don’t want you there.

It was another who dashed into the river waters.

You dropped stones in your pockets to follow.

The reeds and all held your arms and you looked – oh nothing heart-breaking.

I am so sick now. You changed for the worse. Craved any upheaval.

An absolute spasm which – oh the memory is gone.

I am old though and anything else – I can’t do a thing.

Your arms were flung creeping along the bank

like willows bending over towards my face.

I am sore and I am going to give you honey if I can.

I am old though – no good whatsoever.

The red fruit. Your arms. I want to pay. Oh – let them leave me alone.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Andrew Cantrell is a poet, labor activist, first-generation (former) academic, and working-class southerner transplanted to the Midwest. He is the author of the chapbooks Phantom Equator (above/ground press) and Stratigraphy (Finishing Line Press). A Puschart Prize nominee, his work has been published widely, including in Posit, Lana Turner, Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology, and Vestiges (Black Sun Lit). Since 1993, he has served as a rank-and-file organizer, steward, and elected leader in local unions of the American Federation of Teachers and the Communication Workers of America, and has organized hospital, industrial, and educational workers in Pennsylvania, California, and across the Midwest. He currently works in Chicago, where he organizes public employees, secondary and higher education faculty and staff, grad workers, and teaching artists.

This is Cantrell’s second above/ground press title, after Phantom Equator (2018).

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Mangold, Burgoyne, Cantrell + Aigen,

Sarah Mangold is interviewed at talking about strawberries all of the time; Sarah Burgoyne has a poem in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Andrew Cantrell has a new poem in the Tuesday poem series via the dusie blog; and Razielle Aigen has new work up at Terse Journal.

new from above/ground press: Phantom Equator, by Andrew Cantrell

Phantom Equator
Andrew Cantrell
$5

The objects of our attention


Out of the touch or the rush of those whose touching whose contention of [out] of it seems or winks

another or an uncertain mentation there we perceive in any other’s eschewing an event as one sees

one stone at dawn or one the moral force of adumbration just as a lover first embraces those things

in one which anyone was never to share a line of flight this boundless and engaged discussing

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
January 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Andrew Cantrell is the author of the chapbook Stratigraphy (2015) and a 2014 Pushcart Prize nominee. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Posit, Lana Turner, Vestiges, and Rust Belt Chicago: An Anthology. He lives in Chicago where he works as a union organizer.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com