some author activity: Martin, Burdick, Earl, Notley + Witek,

Camille Martin has posted "My Evangeline (an illustrated personal essay)" over at her Rogue Embryo blog; Alice Burdick is featured on Catherine Owen's Ms. Lyric's Poetry Outlaws podcast; and Amanda Earl writes about above/ground press, Alice Notley and forthcoming author Terri Witek as part of her AngelHousePress Caring Imagination Crowd Funding Campaign.

rob mclennan interviewed via Amanda Earl's Small Machine Talks podcast

Welcome to the Small Machine Talks Episode 30 in which we interview rob mclennan about the above/ground press 25th anniversary.

https://soundcloud.com/user-301339427/the-small-machine-talks-interview-with-rob-mclennan

For further interviews with rob mclennan, check out the links at his author page; for further audio/video of rob mclennan check out the links here.

some author activity: Brockwell, Flemmer, Archer + Notley,

Stephen Brockwell has a new poem up at Stuart Ross' The Week Shall Inherit the Verse; Kyle Flemmer is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Sacha Archer has a new essay in the AngelHousePress essay series; and Alice Notley has some new work up at spacecraftproject.

Gil McElroy : Sum: Word Maps : AngelHousePress Essay Series

Gil McElroy has a new essay in AngelHousePress' online Essay Series (with a direct link to his essay here).

In “Sum: Word Maps,” Gil McElroy offers a systematic and creative form of (dis)organization of text into visual poems in analogy with living organisms in order to free text from meaning, metaphor and connotation.

some author activity: Trivedi, Kaminski, Abel, Earl + Nichol,

Amish Trivedi has published the chapbook-length sequence "21 Permutations" on his website; Megan Kaminski is interviewed over at Noemi Press; Jordan Abel is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Amanda Earl's essay, "Breaking the Narrative to Open Up the Poem," is now online at AngelHousePress; and the bpNichol online archive is alive again, with a mound of material newly available!

some author activity: hastain, Poe, Earl, Prevost + Maguire,

On Amanda Earl's Angelhousepress, above/ground press author j/j hastain and Lark Fox discuss ceremony in a very lyrical and poetic interview, and hastain also has work in the fifth issue of Earl's experiment-o; everyone, it seems, is talking about Deborah Poe; a visual poem by Amanda Earl is featured in a review at the Paris Review Daily blog; and don't forget about the Prevost/Maguire launch this coming Saturday!

Ryan Pratt's Recent Reads: Ottawa's Poets & Presses

Ottawa writer and blogger Ryan Pratt posted a nice note on his blog yesterday, in response to a package of chapbooks I handed him at a recent talk Pearl Pirie and I did for the OIW. Thanks, Ryan! He's also recently become one of the (ir)regular contributors to the ongoing ottawa poetry newsletter blog, so hopefully we might see a bunch more write-ups by him in the future. See the original post here.

Any writer who has spent time in Ottawa can attest to its reputation for literary excellence. For my part, shopping at the biannual Small Press Book Fair and attending readings around town have resulted in the cozy “local section” of my home library. Among the manifold stapled spines that jut out in all colours and sizes, I’ve collected publications from Bywords (their Quarterly Journals plus two chapbooks from John Newlove Poetry Award winners), Apt. 9 Press, AngelHouse Press and above/ground press.

The two titles I’d purchased from above/ground, a press created and operated by rob mclennan, were totally unique to one another: Green Wind, by Ken Norris, details the foreign and domestic sides of a trip abroad with straightforward yet poetic prose, whereas mclennan’s own 16 Yonge presents a long-form poem that analyzes Toronto’s concrete edge at the docks.

On account of someone’s generosity and kindness, I’ve wandered into a deluge of above/ground press chapbooks to further clutter my reading nook. There’s Stephen Brockwell’s Excerpts from Impossible Books, The Crawdad Cantos, a compilation that should be of particular interest given that Stephen will be hosting a writing workshop in Ottawa July 7th, and several of rob mclennan’s recent titles to choose from. I’m taking them in one at a time but it doesn’t help when Goldfish: studies in fine thread, a kaleidoscopic look at happenstances that reveal a relationship beyond the fish tank, rewards constant revisiting.

Besides above/ground, I’ve been introduced to a smattering of other authors and presses: Monty Reid’s Contributor’s Notes (Gaspereau Press), some unarmed chapbooks (journal #64: Unwanted Unarmed includes a crowd of wonderful writers), and poems working in conjunction with the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa (featuring Sandra Ridley and Pearl Pirie, among others).

Needless to say, I haven’t had the opportunity to dive into most of these works with the attention they deserve, but what I’ve read so far, even in passing, warrants mention. Support these chapbook presses by seeking out their treasures online or by checking out your local Small Press Book Fair (I know Ottawa’s Spring Edition will be happening June 30th – details here).