some author activity: mclennan, Iijima, Boyle, Spinosa + Jenks,

rob mclennan and Brenda Iijima have new work in Volume 6 of Work and Days; Frances Boyle has a new poem up at Bywords.ca; Dani Spinosa has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Tom Jenks also has new work in the "Tuesday poem" series; and rob mclennan is interviewed by Katie Ebbitt for Cleveland Review of Books, and by Jamie Tennant over at his clever podcast.

some author activity: Notley, Martin, Waldrop, Collis, Trivedi, Olsen + Iijima,

Alice Notley has a new poem up at Harper's magazine; Camille Martin has been posting further to her blog lately; obituary for Keith Waldrop in The New York Times; Stephen Collis is featured up at Etcetera; Amish Trivedi has some new poems up at Tupelo Quarterly; and Geoffrey Olsen and Brenda Iijima have new work in the debut issue of The Call Center Collective.

some author activity: Robinson, Shea, Trivedi, Hyland, Greenstreet, Nilson, Gray, Iijima, Young + Martin,

Elizabeth Robinson, Michael Martin Shea, Amish Trivedi, MC Hyland, Kate Greenstreet and others all have new work in TYPO 34; Geoffrey Nilson, Stephanie Gray (a poem for Brenda Iijima) and Geoffrey Young each have new poems up at the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month; and Camille Martin has been working on a number of collages lately, over at her blog.

new from above/ground press: Report from the Iijima Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

Report from the Iijima Society
Vol 1. No. 1
edited by rob mclennan
$7

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Brenda Iijima

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Vidhu Aggarwal
Alan Davies
Nicholas DeBoer
Steph Gray
Ivy Johnson
Robin Lee Jordan
rob mclennan
Geoffrey Olsen
Beatrice Szymkowiak
Jamie Townsend
Laura Woltag

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
full list of published reports here
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Report on the Society logo by C. McNair, editor’s devil (retired)

Brenda Iijima has published two chapbooks with above/ground press: SWAMP/SWAMP (2017), and Moonbathing in Al Faiyūm (2021), and guest-edited the second issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2019).

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

some author activity: Naughton, Boyle, Rukeyser, Iijima + Scroggins,

Katie Naughton has a poem up in the Tuesday poem series via the dusie blog; Frances Boyle has a poem in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Susan Rukeyser's above/ground press title gets a curious (and positive) review/mention by Gabriel Hart as part of Echoes from the Bear Creek Lending Library via the Bear Creek Gazette; Brenda Iijima has a new piece in collaboration with Janice Lee up at Annulet; and Mark Scroggins writes on Jack Spicer for Hyperallergic.

some author activity: Iijima, O'Reilly, Niespodziany, Banu + Joseph,

Brenda Iijima has new work in the second issue of Counter Poetry; Nathanael O'Reilly has some new work up at PARENTHESIS: NEW MODERNISM; forthcoming author Benjamin Niespodziany has some new work at X-RAY; Simina Banu is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Alexander Joseph is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.

new from above/ground press: Moonbathing in Al Faiyūm, by Brenda Iijima

Moonbathing in Al Faiyūm
Brenda Iijima
$5

Gradually my body gives over to the Sun
Mimics the Sun, becomes the Sun
For a time, there was borderline confusion
Blood recedes, dismisses lunation
Between syzygies is magma
Flowing in a braid of silver nerve energy

Flora and fauna translate atmosphere
Feeling the Sun is a primary need

Money grubbers without soul
What does the Sun know of them?

The Sun cares about flora
Flora interpret the Sun’s rays
Into a disposition of energy conducive
To earthly mattering
We are Sun’s abundance

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Brenda Iijima is a poet, playwright, choreographer and visual artist. She is the author of nine books of poetry. Her involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of genre, process, receptivity, and field of study. Her current work engages submerged and occluded histories, other-than-human modes of  expression and telluric awareness in all forms. Her most recent book, Bionic Communality, is just out from Roof Books. Her first play, Daily Life in China, will be published in spring, 2021 by elis press. Iijima is the founding editor-publisher of Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs. She lives in Brooklyn.

This is Iijima’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after SWAMP/SWAMP (2017).

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

new from above/ground press: THE DEER HAVENS, by Geoffrey Olsen

THE DEER HAVENS
Geoffrey Olsen
$5

the fur is dream and gelatinous
I can’t speak or present can’t speak
life within mouth of leaves
dream mouth

arrayed around the bleak opening
I do not have ownership over blade and all the
things of a blade on the edge of
climactic or feral

and the edge reproducing the dream in
a now of disaster songs
after songs and I’m also
the cat and the imbued indirect
that waits, waiting

unordered, unwindowed

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

cover image: Brenda Iijima

Geoffrey Olsen is a poet living in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of the chapbooks End Notebook and Not of Distends : Address Panicked. Recent poems are published in Deluge, Entropy, Vestiges and The Pi Review. His chapbook, Marrow, is forthcoming from These Signals.

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

some author activity: Perry, Mavreas, Dreiblatt, Iijima, Reed + Gray,

forthcoming above/ground press author Paul Perry answers the "12 or 20 questions" interview; Billy Mavreas is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Ian Dreiblatt is now a columnist for The Believer; Brenda Iijima introduces the late Marthe Reed's Arc Hive via Tupelo Quarterly; and Evan Gray has a poem up in the Tuesday poem series via the Dusie blog.

some author activity: Cook, Earl, Jarvis, Bridgman + Iijima,

[the first park day of spring] Sarah Cook has a new essay, "Poet in Space," over at So To Speak; Amanda Earl is interviewed by Vanessa Shields for AngelHouse / DevilHousePress, and also has a poem and brief interview posted online at Canadian Literature; forthcoming author Jenna Jarvis has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Alyssa Bridgman; and Brenda Iijima writes on Roberto Harrison for The Operating System.

some author activity: Dolman, Flemmer, Iijima + Gray,

Anita Dolman has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Kyle Flemmer is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; he also takes over from Nikki Sheppy as Managing Editor of filling Station magazine this April; Brenda Iijima and Wendy Burk have a conversation over at Entropy; and forthcoming above/ground press author, the Brooklyn poet and filmmaker Stephanie Gray, has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

Jill Magi reviews Brenda Iijima's SWAMP SWAMP (2017) at Harriet

Chicago writer, artist and critic Jill Magi was good enough to provide a review for Brenda Iijima's SWAMP SWAMP (2017) via the Harriet blog, alongside reviews of Eléna Rivera's recent Belladonna* Chaplet and A Transpacific Poetics, Edited by Lisa Samuels and Sawako Nakayasu. Thanks so much! And we must have similar tastes to Magi, given Rivera's recent above/ground press title, and even Samuels' long ago issue of STANZAS [see the STANZAS bibliography here]. This is the second review of Iijima's chapbook, after Greg Bem reviewed such over at Yellow Rabbit. You can read Magi's full review here. Her review of Iijima is below:

SWAMP SWAMP by Brenda Iijima, above/ground press, 2017.

In the photograph on the cover of this chapbook, Robert Smithson stands behind a woman, Nancy Holt, who is looking through a camera, operating it. Bob Smithson, arms folded, squints to see what she may be seeing. He is directing. As a project of resistance and disruption, Brenda has listened to Holt and what it means to not hear her clearly. And so Brenda doubles the film—hence the title SWAMP SWAMP—inserting an imagined texture, a talk-back session emanating from Holt, from the land itself, and from the forces of history.

I recall the Smithson show at the Whitney that Brenda refers to in her short essay at the end of the chapbook—and I distinctly remember loving the physicality of this film. The audio was disturbing to me as well; as if Holt was being pursued by Smithson’s ever art-forward purpose. I may have given over to the work, in a sense, deciding that the tension between them added to the disturbing rattle of the blindingly tall stalks of marsh grass. All of these memories mean that I was happy to revisit this work with the arrival of Brenda’s chapbook.

SWAMP SWAMP begins with the italicized line “Just walk in a straight line,” evoking obedience, discipline, and the language of poetry itself. It is Smithson’s voice. There’s an air of dismissal in the word “just,” and that word comes up again in the directives, indicating that Holt was taking some risks, displaying hesitancy. The first line is a directive to ignore the poetics of the meander, but Brenda, happily, intervenes by responding to all the directives with a lush interiority, and with historical remembrance.

Brenda writes the swamp as place and relationship—even though the site was really a marsh, as she points out. She returns the site to the complex ecosystem that it is, resisting easy access, comprehension, and the view that would call this site “nowhere”: “Some would call this no-man’s land—it is precisely the reverse.” At first I thought the reverse of “no-man’s” might be “everyone’s” but I don’t take Brenda’s project to be a universalizing gesture—so I came up with “yes-woman’s land” as a kind of “reverse,” though Brenda recognizes this land as already-inhabited, not empty, and so the text establishes itself as a North American post-colonial reclamation.

There are also snippets of Holt's autobiography: “My house was Tudoresque—a brick and stucco edifice. And the formative years, carefree—blithely unaware of what privilege consisted of besides the tree lined streets of the neighborhood where I would play unrestrained. How straight a line! How straight can I enter—logic to do with the body often foregrounds mechanistic functions, meanwhile hormonal impulses steer corporeal mass, meter motor control.”

It is glorious to me that Brenda has brought both “privilege” and “hormones” into the work—and in such close proximity! Yes, a body is not just mechanical—it is comprised of the perforating combinations of mechanics, chemistry, feedback loops.

Importantly, though, a woman’s body, as Brenda writes, is variously “unrestrained” according to class, color. And so Brenda moves this work away from a predictable and perhaps tired white feminist reclamation project that would position Holt as only oppressed vis a vis Smithson. Holt, spoken through Brenda’s voice, is, in fact, not without privilege. And so the complications gather.

I have always thought of Brenda’s poetry and editorial work to be pedagogical, an invitation for more voices, more inquiry, and an invitation to leave the traces of inquiry inside the work. And Brenda’s mode of inquiry always involves the body: a sensual epistemology. The chapbook’s culminating statement provides information on the project’s origin and this gesture of disclosure has the potential to inspire other projects. Her statement/essay concludes with this:

“A whispering subtext—an underlying dimensional reading into the triangulation: Robert Duncan’s poem of utopian yearning to return to the meadow of his imagination. The contrast between Duncan’s ideal meadow with a space that can’t hold out against chaos, disturbance, domination and appropriation—that is constantly managed and defined by historical ramification, lives in layer of relation and recognition.”

Reading this work, I would add that “a place of first permission” (Duncan’s line, quoted by Brenda) may also be a site, upon review, of misrecognition. Brenda’s work here takes the slippage of mishearing and misrecognition as the perhaps ideal site for poetry.

some author activity: Hall, Earl, Iijima, hanna + Deen,

Phil Hall has a new poem up at Halibut Haiku; Amanda Earl has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Brenda Iijima has new work in issue #8 of DATABLEEDZINE; natalie hanna has a new poem up as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at dusie; and Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks interviews Faizal Deen.

Greg Bem reviews Brenda Iijima's SWAMP / SWAMP (2017) and Carrie Hunter's Series out of Sequence (2017) at Yellow Rabbits

Seattle WA poet and reviewer Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first reviews of Brenda Iijima's SWAMP / SWAMP (2017) and Carrie Hunter's Series out of Sequence (2017) over at Yellow Rabbits. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. It reads:

A mid-weekend review session: two new books by above/ground press.

“Advancing negligible inches, the reeds are porous barriers, beige poles sharp tall, we are not soldiers, this is not a battlefield at present, but was it?” In Brenda Iijima’s SWAMP SWAMP, a response to the 1971 film SWAMP by Robert Smithson, concepts of terraforming and terra-informing lead to better knowing the form of humans. Feminist, postcolonial, journalistic, what starts at the beginning of the swamp leads through it, the element of the surprise, the unexpected, and the unpredictable binding us to new relationships with knowledge, besieged by and through white settler imperialists, entire systems of militaries, and the shadows of society that rear their head through and through by a revisiting of recent and subconscious representations. Released in 2017.

“If you cannot be honest with yourself, how can you get the truth out of anyone else?” Life’s ride’s most enjoyable moments are enjoying the moments of life. Livelihood and the inclusion of experience is a theme erupting from the strands of language threaded together in Carrie Hunter’s Series out of Sequence, which collages together lines from at least a handful of contemporary and nearly-contemporary films and television shows, from Minority Report to Daredevil. The result is a book of poetry that feels as alive as the maximalist culture we live within, an ecology of its own. Here, in this anti-sequence, there is the sense of the ecological, but also the sense of the chaotic, as contexts morph and blend and merge into one another. And yet via Hunter as the peripheral artist of the craft, the language feels universal and total, allowing an experience wholly unique and of itself, but beyond itself, magnetically envisioning the limits (and limitlessness the same) of our world. Released in 2017.

Recommended listening: "Endangered Species" by Pat Metheny and Ornette Coleman.

New Orleans Poetry Festival + Small Press Fair, April 20-23, 2017 : Smith, Iijima, Hunter, Reed + Poe, etc

above/ground press authors Jessica Smith (The Lover is Absent, 2017), Brenda Iijima (SWAMP/SWAMP, 2017), Carrie Hunter (Series out of Sequence, 2017), Marthe Reed (After Swann, 2013) and Deborah Poe (Keep, 2012) read along with a whole mound of other poets as part of this year's New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Fair, April 20-23, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana. You can see their full schedule here.

new from above/ground press: SWAMP / SWAMP, by Brenda Iijima

SWAMP
SWAMP
Brenda Iijima
$4

Just walk in a straight line.

I think—I think I am, but thank you. Tall grasses overwhelm the viewfinder and we press along through the swamp, a space of nonexistent contours. You could be a scarce plant and grow according to the precarious circumstances of your immediate ecosystem or controlled and manipulated in a laboratory—a genetically modified organism designed to carry out very specific functions when reintroduced outdoors. A profusion of alternative modalities… My house was Tudoresque—a brick and stucco edifice. And the formative years, carefree—blithely unaware of what privilege consisted of besides the tree lined streets of the neighborhood where I would play unrestrained. How straight a line! How straight can I enter—logic to do with the body often foregrounds mechanistic functions, meanwhile hormonal impulses steer corporeal mass, meter motor control. Occasionally there is a sense of severe restriction—pumped chemicals and chain reactions cause a lockdown of muscle tissue. A confluence of biomorphic responses compels language and human systems as all relational actions correspond with a flood of meaning rushing to the gesticulating brain. Fatty exchanges generate syntax—subtitle actions. The constant compulsion to explain phenomena furthers the reliance on conventional language and pumps up the justification of human otherness—this feels outmoded, communicative cues abound in myriad forms. Navigating reality involves intuition, a form of perception that doesn’t necessarily participate in language structures because intuition can function beyond image, outside of object-oriented thinking. This affects Bob a lot, processing thoughts that have to do with commanding presence. Below the root systems are soggy rotten teeming microbial forms. Tangled coordinates. He bolts ahead, stumbles, gains equilibrium.


Straight in, to that clump.
It is ok now; you are on fairly solid ground. Straight in, just go right in.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Brenda Iijima’s involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of poetry, research movement, animal studies, ecological sociology and submerged histories. She is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. Her most recent book, Remembering Animals was published by Nightboat Books in 2016. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). She is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, located in Brooklyn, NY (http://yoyolabs.com/).

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