Jérôme Melançon: 30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press : Arc Poetry Magazine #101

Regina poet, critic, translator and above/ground press author Jérôme Melançon was good enough to compose the essay "30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press" which was recently published in Arc Poetry Magazine #101! You should pick up a copy at your local/favourite magazine shop, or order a copy directly from them here! Thanks so much!

some author activity: mclennan, Boyle, Johnson, Houbolt + Armantrout,

rob mclennan, Frances Boyle and Chris Johnson, along with Sadiqa de Meijer and Katia Grubisic, join Susan Johnston on CKCU to discuss Arc Poetry Magazine #100; forthcoming author Kyla Houbolt has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" via the dusie blog; and Rae Armantrout is part of a round-table conversation, "On Poetry and Complexity: A Conversation at the Interface of Art and Science" at Rungh, alongside Madhur Anand, Roald Hoffman, Sarah Tolmie and Osheen Harruthoonyan.

some author activity: fitzpatrick, Ballard, Jahn, Armantrout + Smith,

ryan fitzpatrick has a poem online at We Did It!; forthcoming author Micah Ballard is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Ben Jahn has a new poem up at Hobart; Rae Armantrout has a new poem in The New Yorker; and Pete Smith has a poem online at Arc Poetry Magazine.

Karen Massey wins the 2020 Diana Brebner Prize

Clearly, I'm behind on my information, having discovered only today through reading Arc Poetry Magazine #95 (summer 2021) that Ottawa poet and above/ground press author Karen Massey won the annual Diana Brebner Prize last October (I'm completely willing to blame Covid-distractions on all of this) for the "best poem written by a National Capital Region poet, who has not yet published in book form." The prize was judged by BC writer Susan Musgrave. A belated congratulations! Musgrave selected Karen's “Mary Oliver in the Hereafter” for the $500 grand prize; Dessa Bayrock’s “What Do You See” was named the honourable mention for this year’s prize.

Here’s what Susan Musgrave had to say about “Mary Oliver in the Hereafter”:

First of all, I loved the title. And then I loved the first line. And then…anon. I like the Big Philosophical Questions the poem asks but doesn’t answer. That’s what a good poem will do. It doesn’t give you any answers, just unanswerable questions. I also love the way the poem uses abstractions — hope, joy — but renders them concrete. By the time I get to the last line, I feel lighter, the grass smells sweeter.

Karen Massey's poetry has been published online and in anthologies and journals in Canada, the United States and the UK, including Aesthetica, Arc, subTerrain and experiment-o. She has two chapbooks-to-date with above/ground press, Bullet (1999) and STRANGE FITS OF BEAUTY & LIGHT: Erasure Poems from Archibald Lampman’s Sonnets (2014), and she was part of the anthology Decalogue: Ten Ottawa Poets (Chaudiere Books, 2006). And Karen isn't the first above/ground press author to win such, as Marilyn Irwin won the same prize back in 2013, and natalie hanna had an honourable mention in 2019!

And if such prompts, they are currently taking poems for this year's competition! Pay attention!

some author activity: Konchan, Reid, Maloukis, Mody + Hogg,

Virginia Konchan has some new work up at Bennington Review; Monty Reid is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Rose Maloukis is the July winner of the "Arc Award of Awesomeness" from Arc Poetry Magazine; Monica Mody has some new work up at The Fabulist; and Robert Hogg has some new work (that I seem to have missed last year, when it appeared) up at BlazeVOX.

some author activity: Earl, Cochrane, Maloukis + Carpenter,

Amanda Earl is the October winner of the "Arc Award of Awesomeness" from Arc Poetry Magazine; Mark Cochrane has a new poem up at Canadian Literature; Rose Maloukis has a new essay in the "Talking Poetics" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; and J.R. Carpenter posts part of an audio collaboration with Darren Hagen.

natalie hanna receives diana brebner prize honourable mention

above/ground press author natalie hanna, publisher of battleaxe press, was recently announced as the honourable mention to this year's annual Diana Brebner Prize. Congratulations! above/ground press has been fortunate enough to publish three chapbooks by hanna over the years, including “this evidence against you,” produced as STANZAS #21 (October 1999; copies are available, but extremely limited) as well as the more recent dark ecologies (2017) and CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS (2018), both of which are still very much available.

natalie hanna is a queer, feminist, ottawa lawyer, of middle-eastern descent working with low income populations. her writing focuses on feminist, political, and personal themes. She runs battleaxe press (small poetry press) / is the Administrative Director of the late lamented Sawdust Reading Series / served as newsletter editor and board member at Arc Poetry Magazine. She has published nearly a dozen poetry chapbooks to date, and her work, interviews, have appeared online and in print in various publications, including with Literary Landscapes, In/Words Magazine, phafours press, Hussy Press, Bywords, the Dusie Blog, the Chaudiere Books Blog, Canthius, shreeking violet press, and Peter F. Yacht Club, among others.

The Diana Brebner Prize [see my 2012 profile on the award here] is awarded yearly for the best poem writ­ten by a National Cap­i­tal Region poet, who has not yet been pub­lished in book form. The prize hon­ours the late Diana Breb­ner, an award-winning Ottawa-based poet who was devoted to fos­ter­ing lit­er­ary tal­ent among new, local writers.

This year the judge for Arc’s Diana Brebner Prize was Ian Letourneau. As the winner of the $500 prize, he selected Dawn Steiner’s poem “Morning Walk,” as well as choosing Natalie Hanna’s “light conversation” for the honourable mention. Dawn Steiner had work in the above/ground press workshop anthology assignment: zero (2015).

The poets will be honoured and will read their poems at the 2019 Lampman Award Shortlist Reading, on October 3rd, 2019.

“poem” broadside #346 : “Riposte” by Colin Morton

Right here in the middle of the street,

the passenger door slamming shut on his gun hand

as the car sped away.

Right here on the white solid line,

blood pooling around the base of his skull.

Here, years ago, beneath the new interchange,

waiting at the parkway’s one red light.

With a pistol brought in by diplomatic bag,

rushed out of the country hours later.

Right here face down in the November slush.

Here on the strip while leaving a bistro.

In a scuffle at this tavern door.

In a downtown crosswalk with a crossbow.

With a nine-inch blade across the bar.

The city remembers its private scars.

For others there’s a plaque – one on the mall

where an MP took a bullet in the head.

Another at the jail where someone swung for it.

A stone laid for workers killed on the job.

Statues for those in uniform.

Monuments uncounted, all to the dead.

Heroes’ highways, walks of fame, listed houses

reassure that some are kept in mind.

Even poets have their garden and their path,

echoes nearly lost in corridors of the dead.

Right here, right now, we persist, we speak.

While we can, we have our day.

And in a lab beside the rushing river

someone’s plotting to kill you, death.

We’ve seen the impossible happen before.

Riposte, by Colin Morton

produced in part as a handout during the sixth Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan, walking around the Byward Market, December 8, 2018

above/ground press broadside #346

Twice winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, Ottawa poet Colin Morton has published more than ten books, ranging from visual and sound poetry (Printed Matter; Two Decades) to historical narratives (The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems; The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major). His other work includes a novel, an animated film, and many reviews and essays. He has collaborated with poets, artists, and musicians in the poetry performance group First Draft and with film-maker Ed Ackerman in the award-winning animated poetry film Primiti Too Taa. www.colinmorton.net

“poem” broadside #345 : “FALLS” by Claire Farley

What is a year in terms of falling water?

– Muriel Rukeyser

Nothing but lumber

falls dammed & city rezoned

material obstacle

to the flow of cars

For 10,000 years

this sacred pipe

is “river” now

open the viewer to zoom in

40,000 on the grid

I break it down in sections

who opposes & who supports

pavement or asbestos 

buried turbines

on contaminated soil

(preferred hire to stem

the flow Indigenous)

In the 1930s, Rukeyser

wrote hydro & silicosis

    All power is saved, having no end    

                                        

Water celebrates, yielding continually

         sheeted and fast in its overfall

now the green season is 

commerce, condos—

sometimes someone

chooses because

                            falling, the water sheet

    White brilliant function of land’s disease

another by-law

turns land industry

turns Crown municipal

duty to consult

cannot be delegated

to third parties

another resolution

whereas;

FALLS, by Claire Farley

produced in part as a handout during the fifth

Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan, walking around Hintonburg, November 9, 2018

above/ground press broadside #345

Claire Farley is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa and co-founder of Canthius, a feminist literary magazine. Her poetry has been published in several Canadian literary magazines and in 30 under 30: An Anthology of Canadian Millennial Poets. She is the 2016 recipient of the Diana Brebner Prize.

“poem” broadside #344 : “Lifeboat” by Emily Baird

Home is a riverbed. It is the squelch of my toes burrowing into mud like clams, and the suction refusal of that mud to let my feet go. It is the wildflower laughter springing full-bellied from moist earth, and the maps I trace in the wrinkles of my fingertips. For me, river water can feel so smooth that it becomes a second skin and I can’t tell which parts of me are submerged. Once, I sliced my foot open on a rock while swimming and watched my blood cloud the water. When I lifted my foot, the crooked wound leaked clear and the river became a part of me.

Now home is invisible on my horizon. I feel not like I’m wading in the river but like I’m lost at sea. I fear the unknown planets and creatures miles beneath, afraid they’ll brush my suspended toes, afraid to discover them, afraid not to. This saltwater can’t quench my thirst for shore.

But before I learned to swim, I learned to float. It can save your life.

The trick is to lie on your back and let go of every tendon-clenching, muscle-tightened twist in your body. To unravel the knots in your own spine and allow the water to lap at your cheeks, run through your veins. In order to float, you have to let go of your fear of sinking.

From the river, I learned to make a lifeboat of myself. So maybe home isn’t a fixed destination slipping from my grasp like the rope of an anchor.

Maybe home is floating. 

Lifeboat, by Emily Baird
produced in part as a handout during the second
Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan,
walking around Glebe, May 25, 2018
above/ground press broadside #344

Emily Baird recently completed her third year at Carleton University in a Combined Honors English and Human Rights degree. Hailing from the small town of Deep River, Ontario, she has been thrilled with the many opportunities to write and share her poetry since moving to Ottawa. Emily is the winner of this year’s George Johnson Poetry Prize (for her poem “Lifeboat”) and has previously been published in Carleton’s In/Words magazine for her poem “Les Cloches D’Is.”

Julie Mannell reviews Dana Claxton’s The Patient Storm (2016) and Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees (2016) in Arc Poetry Magazine #85

Writer and critic Julie Mannell was good enough to review Dana Claxton’s The Patient Storm (2016) and Renée Sarojini Saklikar’s After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees (2016) as part of an omnibus bpNichol Chapbook Award 2017 shortlist review in Arc Poetry Magazine #85 (why, yes, copies are still available of both of these chapbooks; why do you ask?). Thanks so much! While this is the first review of Claxton’s chapbook, this is actually the third review of Saklikar’s chapbook, after Nikki Sheppy was good enough to discuss it in filling Station magazine, and Scott Bryson was good enough to discuss it over at Broken Pencil. Hooray!

Dana Claxton’s The Patient Storm is an anarchic and playful book of musical dialogue-poetry that is wholly original. It can be read as containing one or a series of rambunctious speakers—through unmetered short paragraphs that are set in the top of the page and are distinguished by a characteristically bouncy tone: “Calm. Still. Quiet and such. Ohhhhhhhh Stormy Storm… when they arrive and when they do… turbulency baby for me and you.” The poems read like Heather Christle had a baby and then let Steve Roggenbuck raise it. The tone is also reminiscent of a kind of new voice that is arising in Canada—one that is quick, punchy, and has a self-aware sense of humour—I would turn to Toronto-based MLA Chernoff as an author who embraces similar linguistic play in their work, as well as several of the authors publishing through Montreal’s Metatron Press.

[…]

After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees by Renée Sarojini Saklikar offers an anatomization of what could maybe be considered a relationship or perhaps a series of interactions as they relate to space. There are at least four central characters whose relationship to each other and the speaker is left ambiguous—as well as several others who play supporting roles. This book is perhaps best described as a poetic experiment in world creation as the poems themselves exist in a hive all their own while continuing the very Canadian tradition of incorporating a voluminous expanse of nature symbolism. Though, it must be mentioned, in the fictionalized Battle of Kingsway, the natural world is almost a character in itself and lines like: “She calls them Finds. Her teeth, bones, unexamined. Afternoons the heat: dust, that acrid curtain, wind whips red” occasion a foreboding tone that mystifies each text and imbues an overall enchanting effect on the chapbook as a whole.

“poem” broadside #343 : “IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” by John Newlove

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,

of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia

of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument

is stroking it incisively, the machine

in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

A shadowy technician says alternately,

Breathe, and, You may stop now.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

by John Newlove

produced in part as a handout during the first

Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan,

walking around Centretown as part of WORLD POETRY DAY,

March 21, 2018

above/ground press broadside #343

Canadian lyric poet John Newlove (1938-2003) has been called a “powerfully influential presence” in the Canadian poetry scene, and is respected for the scrupulous honestly of his bare-bones poetics. And although Newlove lived in BC and Ontario for much of his life, he was always considered a Saskatchewan poet. He lived in Ottawa for seventeen years, longer than he lived anywhere, residing at 105 Rochester Street in Chinatown until his death.

Reprinted from A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove

edited by Robert McTavish; Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2007

Courtesy of Chaudiere Books