some author activity: O'Reilly, Siklosi, Spinosa, Chernoff, Best + the ottawa small press book fair,

Nathanael O'Reilly has a new poem up at Identity Theory; Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa are conducting a Late Winter Writers Residency Online through Banff Centre (apply now!); MLA Chernoff has a poem in the poetry pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has an article up at Chatelaine; and don't forget the ottawa small press book fair returns in two weeks, yes?

some author activity: Clayton, mclennan, Sikkema, Siklosi + Best,

safely delivered above/ground press chapbooks!

Conyer Clayton is interviewed over at The Puritan; rob mclennan has a new poem up at pioneertown.; Michael Sikkema is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Kate Siklosi has new work + a statement in the Spotlight series; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has an essay in the "Talking Poetics" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

above/ground press in Toronto : a report,

[Braydon Beaulieu, reading] above/ground press recently celebrated twenty-three years via an event in Toronto [don't forget the Ottawa event for same next week!] with readings and launches by above/ground press authors Braydon Beaulieu, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Sean Braune, Stephen Brockwell, Sharon Harris, Hugh Thomas and Aaron Tucker at The Steady Bar and Cafe. Thanks so much to all who participated!

[the crowd] The crowd was good, with a variety of Toronto writers (and non-writers, most of whom I didn't know) attending, including Ken Sparling, Dale Smith, Natalie Zina Walschots, Kateri Lanthier, Richard Greene, Stan Rogal, Hazel Millar, Shannon Bramer, Jay MillAr, Teresa Yang, m erskine, as well as poet Doyali Islam, who generously donated her time and energy to work both door and book table. The venue, of course, worked perfectly, with thanks to them, as well as to Aaron Tucker, who secured it for me.

[Stephen Brockwell] Stephen, of course, was good enough to speak briefly to the volume and enthusiasm of the press over the years, especially given how close the press is to eight hundred publications (a dozen or so, I'd say, and still counting). Sometimes I'm even baffled by the amount of material I've produced through the press, although to me, the first decade is somehow the most impressive (that's when the struggle was far more than it has been since).

[Sean Braune] I was thinking back across the years, and this might have actually been the third above/ground press event I've organized in Toronto, and not the second. My records show an event from November, 1997 with myself,  Natalee Caple and Stephen Cain (both of whom were reading from recently-released above/ground press titles) along with Ottawa poet Jim Larwill, and my recollections suggest another event around the same period, with Una McDonnell and Stan Rogal (both of whom were reading from recently-released above/ground press titles; see his listed here) and Ottawa poet b stephen harding. Both of those events were held at the Imperial Library Pub on Dundas Street.

[Hugh Thomas] It almost makes me think I should be attempting anniversary events and/or general above/ground press readings in Toronto a bit more often. Although at least two in the crowd didn't understand, at first, that above/ground is an Ottawa-based publisher, and wondered why I'd pointed out the rarity of the Toronto above/ground press reading. Heck, at this point, I probably have enough authors around that I could easily do more than a couple of cities, whether Montreal, Vancouver or even an American city or two. The one time I did an above/ground press feature in New York, as part of the Boog City series in January 2004 (for the sake of the tenth anniversary anthology), we had to fly everyone in (Brockwell, myself and Clare Latremouille).

[Hazel, Shannon and Ashley-Elizabeth at the end of the evening] The high points were plenty and the performances great; the highlights would also include the fact that I hadn't actually heard Braune or Beaulieu (now that he's relocated from Calgary to Toronto) read before (both of whom are also reading at the Ottawa event), the stellar reading that Hugh Thomas gave, or even the fact that Shannon Bramer appeared (I've barely seen her in years; remember that chapbook I produced of hers, moons back?).

[myself with Dale Smith and Stephen Brockwell, pre-reading] A lovely bonus to the day was the fact that I was able to meet up for a pre-reading drink with Dale Smith at the Duke of York, a wee pub just close to our hotel. Stephen Brockwell met up with us later, once he'd arrived via rail.

the above/ground press 23rd anniversary (Toronto) reading! August 25, 2016

above/ground press presents readings and other such by an array of poets:

Braydon Beaulieu (Toronto)
Ashley-Elizabeth Best (Kingston)
Sean Braune (Toronto)
Stephen Brockwell (Ottawa)
Sharon Harris (Toronto)
+ Aaron Tucker (Toronto)
with the possibility of an unnamed (for now) special guest reader,

lovingly hosted by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan
7:30pm, Thursday, August 25, 2016
The Steady Cafe & Bar
1051 Bloor St W.
www.TheSteadyCafe.com

$5 at the door; includes a copy of a recent above/ground press title

Braydon Beaulieu is a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary where he studies creative writing, poetics, science fiction, and games. He lives in Toronto.

He is the author of the above/ground press chapbook ERASURE: A Short Story (2016).

Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg and now lives and writes in Kingston. Her work has appeared in CV2, Berfrois, Grist, dusie, Ambit Magazine and The Literary Review of Canada. Her debut poetry collection Slow States of Collapse was shortlisted for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was published with ECW Press in April of 2016.

She is the author of the above/ground press chapbook Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On (2015).

Sean Braune’s theoretical work has been published in Postmodern Culture, Journal of Modern Literature, Canadian Literature, symplokē, and elsewhere. His poetry has appeared in ditch, The Puritan, Rampike, and Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere.

His first chapbook, produced by above/ground press, is the vitamins of an alphabet (2016).

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet and small business schlub. His poems are forthoming in Arc and Inwords. He is preparing workshops on poetry and philosophy for the Ottawa Public Library. His chapbook Where Did You See It Last? appeared in June with Ottawa's Textualis Press, and he has a new poetry title out this fall—All of Us Reticent, Here, Together—with Mansfield Press.

He is the author of four chapbooks from above/ground press: Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films (2014), Excerpts from Impossible Books: The Crawdad Cantos (2012), Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment) (2010) and Marin County Poems (2001). He had work reprinted in the anniversary anthology Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013).

Sharon Harris is a Toronto artist/writer whose poems have been anthologized in The Broadview Introduction to Literature, The Last Vispo, and Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She is the author of chapbooks from bookthug, In Case of Emergency Press, and above/ground, and her first full-length collection, Avatar, was published by The Mercury Press. She has written articles for Geist, The Globe & Mail, and Open Book Toronto;  is a past contributor to Torontoist and Word Magazine; and her work has been published in The National Post, dANDelion, The Capilano Review, Drunken Boat, The Volta, broken pencil, and Vallum. I Love You Toronto, her exhibition of photographs, appeared in newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television across Canada.

She is the author of the above/ground press chapbook LIKE (2014) and “More Fun With ‘Pataphysics” STANZAS #43 (2006). She had work reprinted in the anniversary anthology Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013).

Aaron Tucker’s first full collection of poetry, punchlines, was published by Mansfield Press in Spring 2015. Additionally, he is one of the co-creators of the ChessBard (chesspoetry.com), an app that that translates chess games into poems. His collection of essays Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema was published by Palgrave-Macmillan in July of 2014. By day, he is a professor in the English department at Ryerson University where he is currently teaching essay writing and digital literacy to first year students; by night, he is working on learning chess in between watching his beloved Raptors lose games. You can reach him atucker[at]ryerson[dot]ca.

He is the author of the above/ground press chapbooks punchlines (2013) and apartments, section three (2010). He had work reprinted in the anniversary anthology Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013).

some author activity: Newlove, Clarke, Earl + Best,

Both John Newlove (by Shazia Hafiz Ramji) and George Elliott Clarke (by Jeffrey Mackie) have new write-ups on their work as part of the Brick Books Celebration of Canadian Poetry; Amanda Earl is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Ashley-Elizabeth Best is interviewed over at The Town Crier.

The Factory Reading Series: Best, Kerrison + Brockwell, July 22, 2016

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
The Factory Reading Series:

Ashley-Elizabeth Best (Kingston)
Stephen Brockwell (Ottawa)
+ Jane Kerrison (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, July 22, 2016;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Ashley-Elizabeth Best [pictured] is from Cobourg and now lives and writes in Kingston. Her work has appeared, in CV2, Berfrois, Grist, dusie, Ambit Magazine and The Literary Review of Canada, as well as in the chapbook Now You Have Many Legs to Stand On (above/ground press, 2015). Her debut poetry collection Slow States of Collapse was shortlisted for the 2015 Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry and was published with ECW Press in April of 2016.

Stephen Brockwell is an Ottawa poet and small business schlub. His poems are forthoming in Arc and Inwords. He is preparing workshops on poetry and philosophy for the Ottawa Public Library. His chapbook Where Did You See It Last? appeared in June with Ottawa's Textualis Press, and he has a new poetry title out this fall—All of Us Reticent, Here, Together—with Mansfield Press.

Jane Kerrison is an Ottawa based writer whose work has appeared in Literary Laundry, carte blanche, Doll Hospital Journal, and Bywords, among other publications. She will soon launch a poetry centered Etsy store called Small Poetics, where she combines found poetry, tea and water colour paper into art.

Bardia Sinaee reviews Ashley-Ezliabeth Best's Now You Have Many Legs to Stand On (2015) in Arc Poetry Magazine #80

Toronto poet Bardia Sinaee was good enough to review Ashley-Ezliabeth Best's Now You Have Many Legs to Stand On (2015) as part of a group chapbook review in the summer 2016 issue of Arc Poetry Magazine. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of Best's chap, after Robert Anderson's review at Fjords Review. And of course, Best's wee chapbook is still very much available!

The review reads, in part:

Amid these various postures and gestures, Ottawa’s twenty-three-year-old above/ground press is refreshingly agnostic. The chapbooks’ design and typesetting are decidedly plain (think clipart and Word formatting), the binding consists of a single staple through the spine, and this material banality effectively foregrounds the unique characteristics of the writing. The poems in Now You Have Many Legs to Stand On, a recent above/ground release by Kingston-based poet Ashley-Elizabeth Best, stand out for their unsentimental takes on sex, emotional codependency, addiction and the body. Though her speakers don’t eschew affectation or misdirection, Best doesn’t use irony as a crutch. She can be arrestingly frank, as when she says, “I’m so tired of my whole life revolving / around my body,” but also reserved, wise and weary like in the Solie-esque travel poem “Stones and Their Stories”:

The long sweep of faces, eyes
grazing the dark of the bus.
Fashioning myself without sleep,
eyeing dynamite striations
in roadside rock, one feeling
nesting in another.

Unifying the various registers in which these poems speak are a few consistent (at times overly pervasive) motifs. Just about every poem describes the human body using aspects of the landscape or vice versa, so we get “the whitened roadways of scars,” “the bus full / of bodies felled in awkward rest,” “the charred chest of a tree,” “the fjord of my thighs” and “the harbour of my belly.” Whereas in “Stones and Their Stories,” the projection of one’s mindscape onto dynamite striations, or admissions like “I like to know things by placing / them in my mouth, sappy pine / bark, balled paper,” are understated and sensually interesting, the body-landscape motif is elsewhere more of a distraction. The chapbook’s title poem is riddled with too many of-constructions: “the slushy rhythm of the lake” is heard “in the shambling belly of conflicted currents,” a.k.a. “the brawling / waters of the lake,” out of which one pulls oneself onto “a muscled first of precambrian shield” which is also “the lake’s throat”; then there’s “the blood of light” and “grief chewing into the cartilage of the seasons.” The compounding and at times conflicting metaphors ultimately tax the reader so much that the poem’s expressions of fear, want and grief come off as superficial or, at the very least, unexplored.

Anstee, Hogg, Folsom, Morton, Praamsma, Best etc at Kingston, Ontario's Artfest, July 1-3, 2016

above/ground press authors Cameron Anstee, Robert Hogg, Eric Folsom, Colin Morton, Wanda Praamsma and Ashley-Elizabeth Best, among a mound of others, perform as part of "Poets at Artfest II" at Kingston, Ontario's Artfest, from July 1 to 3, 2016. For more information, check out the Facebook event page, here.

some author activity: Cooley, Best, Pirie, Roberston + Stewart,

Dennis Cooley is interviewed by Turnstone Press, and has a new poem (audio and text) online at Winnipeg Free Press; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has a new essay in the "On Writing" series at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Pearl Pirie has a new poem posted at h&; and Lisa Robertson reads with Christine Stewart on May 24th in Vancouver!

2016 Battle of the Bards: Best, Maguire, Pinder and Weaver

above/ground press authors Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Pinder and Andy Weaver participate in the 2016 Battle of the Bards alongside Lara Bozabalian, Chris Chambers, Warren Clements, Michael Fraser, Marty Gervais, Susan Glickman, Maureen Hynes, James Lindsay, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Ruth Roach Pierson, Vanessa Shields, Mary Lou Soutar-Hynes, Blair Trewartha, Daniel Scott Tysdal, Katerina Vaughan Fretwell and Bänoo Zan!

Poetry NOW: 8th annual Battle of the Bards

Wednesday, March 30, 2016 - 7:30 PM
Special Event: IFOA Weekly
Brigantine Room
235 Queens Quay West
Toronto M5J 2G8
Cost: $10/FREE supporters, students & youth 25 and under
http://ifoa.org/events/poetry-now-8th-annual-battle-of-the-bards

1 stage. 20 poets. 1 winner.

Our popular poetry competition returns in 2016 to feature readings by 20 of Canada’s upcoming and established poets. Judges Geoffrey E. Taylor (IFOA’s Director), Jen Tindall (IFOA’s Artistic Associate) and Andy McGuire (winner of 2015 IFOA Poetry Games) will select one winner, who will receive an automatic invitation to read at the 37th edition of the International Festival of Authors AND an ad for their book in NOW Magazine!

The event will be hosted by NOW’s Susan G. Cole.

Poetry NOW is presented in partnership with NOW Magazine.

some author activity: beaulieu, Pirie, Reed + Best,

derek beaulieu and his work are written up in Metro Magazine, and beaulieu is referenced as part of the Calgary Mayor's annual Poetry Challenge; Pearl Pirie wrote on the work of Gustave Morin for the Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry; Marthe Reed has some new poems up at Entropy; and Ashley-Elizabeth Best has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

Robert Anderson reviews Ashley-Elizabeth Best's Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On (2015)

Our pal Robert Anderson was good enough to review Ashley-Elizabeth Best's Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On (2015) over at Fjords Review. Thanks, Robert! You can see Anderson's full review here.

some author activity: Graham, Ball, Best, MacLeod + eckhoff,

Lea Graham has four new poems up at milk magazine; Nelson Ball has a new poem up at One Sentence Poems; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has some new poems up at Glasgow Review of Books; and the audio of three poems from Kathryn MacLeod's mouthpiece (1996) are now online at Our Teeth, as read by kevin mcpherson eckhoff.

Ashley-Elizabeth Best launches in Kingston, October 15, 2015

Ashley-Elizabeth Best launches her new above/ground press chapbook, Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On (2015), on October 15, 2015 at Novel Idea Bookstore, reading alongside Susan Olding, Erika Lamon and Michael e. Casteels.

some author activity: Irwin, Best, timewell, Trivedi + Abel,

Marilyn Irwin has a poem featured on the Matrix Magazine website; Ashley-Elizabeth Best is interviewed over at Kingstonist; lary bremner/timewell has a new photo album up at the Kootenay School of Writing website; Amish Trivedi has a blog; and Jordan Abel is seeking submissions for a special issue of filling Station magazine, "Experimentation in First Peoples' Art and Literature."

And we'll see you at The Fisher Fine and Small Press Fair today at the University of Toronto, yes?

new from above/ground press: Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On, by Ashley-Elizabeth Best

Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On
Ashley-Elizabeth Best
$4

He's Not Out There Looking For Me


Stand up and name your text, I remind him.
He thinks I hide a surplus of love.

I offer him approaches on how to behave,
but he is young and led away by little
sorceries, practices conjuration with spray
cans and bird bones.

The moon is rehearsing its postures,
a cratered canvas to skeleton the night sky.

I'm so tired of my whole life revolving
around my body.

He won't rise again.

He cost me much, but I wish he lived
to cost me more.

Bruised present. You cannot wait
for things to name themselves.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2015
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ashley-Elizabeth Best is from Cobourg, ON. Her work has been published in Fjords, CV2, Berfrois, Grist and Ambit Magazine, among other publications. Recently she was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first collection of poems, Slow States of Collapse is forthcoming with ECW Press. She lives and writes in Kingston.

This is her first chapbook and second publication with above/ground press, after the "poem" broadside "from Algonquin" (#315, 2012).

[produced as part of the above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch, also featuring Hugh Thomas and Amanda Earl, August 27, 2015]

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

above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch: Best, Earl + Thomas,

above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch
with readings by:

Ashley-Elizabeth Best (Kingston)
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
+ Hugh Thomas (Montreal)

Thursday, August 27, 2014
7pm door / 7:30pm reading
Raw Sugar Cafe
692 Somerset St W, Ottawa
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
$5 at the door / includes a copy of a recent above/ground press chapbook, or a copy of Touch the Donkey!

Ashley-Elizabeth Best [pictured] is from Cobourg, ON. Her work has been published in Fjords, CV2, Berfrois, Grist and Ambit Magazine, among other publications. Recently she was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first collection of poems, Slow States of Collapse is forthcoming with ECW Press. She lives and writes in Kingston.

She will be launching her chapbook, Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On. This is her first chapbook and second publication with above/ground press, after the "poem" broadside "from Algonquin" (#315, 2012).

Amanda Earl is a troublemaker who haunts the streets & watering holes of Ottawa for inspiration. She is still in love with Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014), her poetry book celebrating the spirit of Montparnasse & hopes that you will be too. Find  her on Twitter @KikiFolle or read about her in secret at AmandaEarl.com.

She will be launching her chapbook, A BOOK OF SAINTS, an excerpt from Saint Ursula’s Commonplace Book. This is Earl’s fourth chapbook with above/ground press, after Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008) and Eleanor (2007).

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator who has just moved to Montreal, where he will be teaching mathematics at UQAM.  His most recent chapbook, Albanian Suite, was published by above/ground press in 2014.  His previous chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, also published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award.

He will be launching a chapbook of "naive translations," Six Swedish Poets. This is his third chapbook with above/ground press, after Albanian Suite (2014) and Opening the Dictionary (2011).

above/ground press at Word on the Street: Toronto (today!)

If you wander by The League of Canadian Poets booth at Word on the Street in Toronto today, they'll be handing out (while supplies last) a stack of above/ground press "poem" broadsides! I've been digging through the archives lately, and have discovered multiple broadsheets still in print by Sarah Pinder, Natalee Caple, Nelson Ball, Gil McElroy, Ken Norris, Steven Heighton, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Wanda Praamsma, George Bowering, Joe Blades and Christine McNair, among numerous others. Why not stop by?

some author activity: Martin, Brockwell, Best, Tucker, Sand, Mangold, mclennan + McNair,

Camille Martin, Stephen Brockwell, Ashley-Elizabeth Best and Aaron Tucker all have new poems online in the new issue of The Puritan; Kaia Sand reads with Maged Zaher at The Switch, Portland OR on August 9, 2013; Sarah Mangold reads with Laura Newman and Gregory Laynor at the Hedreen Gallery at Seattle University, Seattle WA on July 25, 2013; and don't forget rob mclennan and Christine McNair's combined reading and chapbook launch at the In/Words Reading Series in Ottawa on July 31, 2013!

Some author activity: McCann, Robertson, beaulieu, Earl, Best + Maguire,

Marcus McCann has a new poem posted in the dusie "Tuesday Poem" series; Lisa Robertson has a new poem up at Jerome Rothenberg's Poems and Poetics blog; derek beaulieu had one of the last pieces in Amanda Earl's 2013 NationalPoetryMonth.ca; Amanda Earl discusses her work, including some of her above/ground press publications, over at the Oh Get A Grip! blog; Ashley-Elizabeth Best, author of a recent above/ground press "poem" broadside, was recently featured with a new poem on The Toronto Quarterly; and Shannon Maguire has a poem up on the BookThug blog as part of poetry month.