founded July 1993 : CELEBRATING THIRTY-PLUS YEARS OF CONTINUOUS ACTIVITY + MORE THAN 1400 PUBLICATIONS TO DATE! Ottawa-based poetry chapbook + broadside publisher; publisher of The Peter F. Yacht Club (a writer's group magazine) + Touch the Donkey (a small poetry magazine) + G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] + periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, as well as home of The Factory Reading Series (founded January 1993); edited/published/curated by rob mclennan
Showing posts with label Christine McNair. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christine McNair. Show all posts
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan, The Peter F. Yacht Club annual regatta/christmas party/reading
at Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way, Ottawa Saturday, December 27, 2025 doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
with readings from yacht club regulars and irregulars alike, including: Jennifer Baker, Frances Boyle, Conyer Clayton, David Currie, Michelle Desbarats, AJ Dolman, Amanda Earl, Claire Farley, Cara Goodwin, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre, IAN MARTIN, rob mclennan, Christine McNair, James Moran, Lee Parpart, Colin Quin, Mahaila Smith, Grant Wilkins and Chuqiao Yang (and possibly others,
she left under a cloud cirrus
– cirrocumulus – altocumulus altostratus
– nimbostratus – cumulus virga
- cumulus fractus - cumulus congestus noctilucent
- cumulonimbus – mammatus – nacreous
– cirrostratus nebulosus – arcus–panus undulatus asperita
roughweather
TWO POEMS: “she left under a cloud” by Christine McNair for travels around Ireland, July 2025 above/ground press
broadside #353
Christine McNair'smost recent book is her hybrid poetic memoir Toxemia(Book*hug, 2024). Her two previous books of poetry were Conflict
(2012) and Charm (2017). She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.
Thanks very much to RedBird, including bartenders Josephine and Taylor, who were kind and attentive hosts, and Christine McNair (above, with Grant Wilkins) who ran both the door and the book table. And, honestly, if you want music lessons or your kids want music lessons, check out RedBird. Our wee Aoife has been doing ukulele lessons there for a while and she absolutely loves it.
Latinx poet Carlos A. Pittella came in from Montreal (and was flying somewhere else ridiculously early the following morning), and had such a marvellous, gestural energy to his presence, and to his work. I was first introduced to his work through a recommendation from above/ground press author Misha Solomon, who was introduced to me through a recommendation from above/ground press author Sarah Burgoyne, who was introduced to me through a recommendation from Stuart Ross. Thank you, all! Carlos was launching his first English-language chapbook, footnotes after Lorca (2024), a chapbook with a dark and layered undertone, composed and performed with an absolute joy of playful language. Check out Carlos' recent essay on the chapbook, here.
It is strange to think that Kitchener, Ontario poet and editor Chris Banks and I hadn't actually interacted in-person for twenty years or so, since around the publication of his first full-length collection. The poems of his above/ground press debut, Tiny Grass Is Dreaming (2024), displays such a thoughtful, meditative sharpness (and apparently he's been writing up a storm lately). Check out Chris' recent essay on the chapbook, here.
One of my long-time favourites, as you probably already know, is Gil McElroy, a poet currently living in North Bay, Ontario. I've been publishing his work since the mid-1990s, don't you know. He said that his new chapbook, his tenth above/ground press title, Small Consonants (2024), wasn't meant to be read aloud, so he read from some previous work, including poems referencing the Perseids.
Did you hear that Ottawa poet (originally from Alberta) Shane Rhodesand his family are moving to Australia in a couple of weeks? It means that this was most likely his last Ottawa reading before they catch their flight. He read from his above/ground press debut, It's Here All the Beauty I Told You About (2024), a chapbook I am very pleased about, as I've been itching to publish his work since his full-length debut introduced me to his work, some two decades ago. His current work-in-progress (which includes the chapbook), explores Alberta/western mythology, imagery and collage, and the death of his mother,
Thank you to everyone who came out to help celebrate! And what might the next year bring? Thirty-one years, nearly fourteen hundred publications, hundreds of authors and three celebratory anthologies (including the third that appeared last fall through Invisible Publishing), among other schemes, blogs, events and ephemera. As you can see from the sidebar, I've a whole mound of forthcoming titles through the press, currently working on chapbook titles by authors including Vik Shirley, Alice Burdick, ryan fitzpatrick, Peter Jaeger, John Levy, alex benedict, Ryan Skrabalak, Scott Inniss and David Phillips, among others. I did offer last night that anyone who wished to subscribe to the press from this moment right now through to the end of 2025 could for the low price of $100 (for American addresses, $100 US), which I'm willing to offer here as well, an offer good until the end of this month (just send me an email: rob_mclennan (at) hotmail (dot) com). I mean, I'm producing some sixty to eighty chapbooks a year, that's a good deal, isn't it? Who knows what might come next?
span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
The Factory Reading Series the glorious return (after four years!) of the pre-small press book fair reading celebrating 29 years of the ottawa small press book fair featuring readings by:
Rae Kearney (new to Ottawa!) James Hawes (Montreal) Tyler Pennock (Toronto) Derek Beaulieu (Banff) + possibly (childcare-dependant) Christine McNair (Ottawa)
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan Friday, November 17, 2023 doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm The Carleton Tavern, 223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)
Rae Kearney[pictured] is a poet and designer who just moved to Ottawa after spending time on the west coast. This year, she helped edit and design The Lupine (2023), a new journal published alongside the Whistler Writers Festival. Previous work can be found at above/ground press (2020) and in antilangmag no.3 (Winter 2019). James Hawes lives and writes and makes films in Montreal. His poems have been published in print and online journals across Canada. His full length book of poetry Breakfast With a Heron (Mansfield Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit Award. He is the author of 3 chapbooks; Bus Metro Walk (Monk Press) was long-listed for the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize, The Hotdog Variations (above/ground press) and under an overpass, a fox (Turret House) was recently shortlisted for the 2023 Nelson Ball Prize. He started Turret House Press in 2023, dedicated to publishing new and experimental Canadian poetry. He has 2 cats.
Tyler Pennock is the inaugural Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University. They are a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, and is a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013.Their first book, BONES (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry. Their second book, BLOOD was released in September 2022. They currently teach at the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto.
Derek Beaulieuis the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence: Lectures and Writings, was published by Sweden’s Timglaset Books, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to Albertan literature and is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award.’ Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, has served as poet laureate of both Calgary and Banff, and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews is a poet and literary critic. She is the author of A
Brief History of Fruit, winner of the Akron Prize for Poetry from the
University of Akron Press, and BETWEEN, winner of the New Women’s Voices
Chapbook Prize from Finishing Line Press. She teaches creative writing and
American literature at the University of Ottawa, and you can find her on Twitter
at @kqandrews.
Susan J. Atkinson : “Reading Palms,” “The Dining Room Poem by another Poet”
and “Interpreting Rothko”
Susan J. Atkinson’spoems have won a number of awards, most recently
first prize in the 2019 National Capital Writers Contest and chosen as a
Notable Mention in the 2020 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse. She has new work
in Grain Magazine and The Queen’s Quarterly. Her first full-length
collection, The Marta Poems was published by Silver Bow Publishing
in 2020 and her chapbook The Birthday Party, The Mariachi Player and
The Tourist came out in Spring 2021 with Catkin Press. Visit www.susanjatkinson.com
for more information.
Frances Boyle : “The whole tall world” and “Abbey”
Frances Boyle is the author of two poetry books, most recently This
White Nest (2019). She has also written Tower, a Rapunzel-infused
novella (2018), and Seeking Shade, a short story collection (2020) which
was a first-place winner of the Miramichi Reader’s Very Best! Awards, and a
finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and the ReLit Award. Her writing has been
selected for the Best Canadian Poetry series, nominated for the Pushcart
Prize and Best of the Net, and published throughout North America and
internationally. Frances’s third book of poetry is forthcoming in fall 2022
with Frontenac House Press. www.francesboyle.com
Jason Christie : “Slow death”
Jason Christielives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of Canada
Post (Invisible), i-ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor
(Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). His most recent chapbooks
are: Bridge and Burn (above / ground) and Heavy Metal Litany
(Model press). He is looking for a home for a new manuscript of poetry he wrote
with the help of several Python scripts.
Conyer Clayton : “Family Dinner” and “Intruder,” both from But the
sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (Spring 2022, A Feed Dog
Book by Anvil Press).
Conyer Clayton is a writer, musician, editor, and gymnastics coach
living on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. Her debut collection, We Shed
Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won an Ottawa Book Award
and was a Relit Award finalist. She's released 2 albums and many chapbooks;
recently, Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) by VII, of which she is a
member, and Sprawl (Collusion Books, 2020) written with Manahil
Bandukwala, shortlisted for the bpNichol Award. Her second book, But the sun,
and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press)
is forthcoming Spring 2022.
Laurie Anne Fuhr : “applicable skills of the military brat #1” and “applicable
skills of the military brat #2,” from night flying (Frontenac House
2018).
Laurie Anne Fuhr, ex-Ottawan, current Calgarian, is author of night
flying (Frontenac House 2018), which was shortlisted for the Robert
Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry 2016 in ms form. Fuhr had work in several
anthologies in 2021, including Uncommon Grounds: poems by the Espresso Poetry
Collective (epcpress 2021); Wonder/Shift 40th Anniversary Anthology
(AWCS Press 2021); and The Stroll of Poets Anthology (2021), and had a
poem on a tall can with Blindman Brewing's Session Stories series (ed. Jason
Lee Norman). Her poem mixed media was shortlisted in the Freefall Magazine
poetry contest 2020 (Judge Gary Barwin). Her work has been published in an
above/ground chapbook and in many periodicals like This Magazine, Journal
of Literature and Aesthetics (India), Bywords, and Prairie Journal.
Fuhr is a poetry instructor with alexandrawriters.org; its poetry workshops are
now open to all on Zoom.
natalie hanna : “keep moving / keep sleeping” and “to learn of
making”
natalie hanna is a queer, disabled, feminist, Middle Eastern,
Ottawa-born lawyer. She runs battleaxe press, and has authored thirteen
chapbooks, including three titles with above/ground press, Baseline Press
(2020), and collaboratively with Liam Burke, machine dreams, from Collusion
Books (2021). She is working on her first full length poetry collection. Her poetry,
interviews, and commentary have been published in Canada and the U.S. Learn
more: https://nhannawriting.wordpress.com.
Robert Hogg : “The Poem that Starts in the Night”
Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo
and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early
Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets, co-edited
MOTION - a prose newsletter, and graduated with a BA in English and
Creative Writing. His books include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez,
1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light,
Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There
Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW,1993; and as editor, An English Canadian
Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009. He
recently published several chapbooks: from LAMENTATIONS, Ottawa: above/ground,
2016; two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press
in Kemptville, ON; Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press (Ottawa
2019); A Quiet Affair – Vancouver ’63 (Trainwreck, May 2021); and in
August 2021 a chapbook titled From Each Forthcoming (above/ground). In
December 2021, a chapbook will be released from Hogwallow Press, called The
Red Menace, and another from Apt 9 Press in Ottawa, called Apothegms.
Margo LaPierre : “A Video of You, Laughing” (first published in Mineral
Lit Mag), “Hysterosonogram” (forthcoming 2022 in Sable Books’ disability
anthology The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet) and “Air Show” (first
published in Train Journal)
Margo LaPierre is a freelance editor and author of Washing Off
the Raccoon Eyes (Guernica Editions, 2017). She serves as newsletter editor
of Arc Poetry Magazine and is a member of poetry collective VII. She is
the winner of the 2021 Room Poetry Contest and the 2020 subTerrain
Lush Triumphant Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2021 Fiddlehead
Creative Nonfiction Contest. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at
UBC. Find her on Twitter @margolapierre.
Gil McElroy is reading three new poems from his ongoing project, The Julian Days.
Gil McElroy is a poet currently living in Colborne, Ontario.
rob mclennan : “Autobiography of green,” “Coordinates” and “Burning
the dead grass”
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious
capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home
full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of
more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most
recent poetry title, the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press,
2022), is now available for pre-order. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic
beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and
mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as
writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
Christine McNair : “Déjà Entendu” and “Déjà vu”
Christine McNair has published two books of poetry with Bookhug – Conflict
(2012) and Charm (2017). Her most recent manuscript is a hybrid
non-fiction poetry manuscript focused on preeclampsia, illness, and disability.
She works as a book doctor in Ottawa.Also
– she recorded this last year for Canthius but it may have been lost in
the ether, much like she was lost in the Christmas tree.
Pearl Pirie : “Daily you detail weather” & “time scales
mountains” are from the tentatively titled, “Well-Behaved Thistle.” If you’re a
potential publisher, ask for it by name.
Pearl Pirie’s fourth poetry collection is footlights (Radiant
Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures (Apt 9 Press, fall 2021) is
minimalist poems. Mudflaps for Short Dogs is out from Trainwreck Press
(July 2021). Interact with her at Instagram or Patreon at Pearlpiriepoet.
Stuart Ross : “A Stephen Crane Christmas,” “Sixty-Two” and “Razovsky
On The Volga”
Stuart Rossis a writer, editor, and writing teacher, the author
of 20 books of fiction, poetry, and essays, and countless chapbooks and ephemera.
He received the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2021 James Tate Poetry
Prize. Stuart’s work has been translated into Nynorsk, French, Spanish, Estonian,
and Russian. His most recent book is 70 Kippers, written with his
dearest friend, the late Ottawa poet Michael Dennis. Stuart’s hybrid poem/essay
The Book Of Grief And Hamburgers, dedicated to Michael, comes out this
spring from ECW Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Renée Sarojini Saklikar : from the Perimeter sequence in Bramah and The Beggar
Boy
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is a poet and lawyer who lives in Vancouver on the unceded
traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She is the author of four books,
including the ground-breaking poetry book, children of air india, about
the bombing of Air India Flight 182 which won the Canadian Authors Association
Poetry Prize and is the co-author, with Dr. Mark Winston, of the poetry and
essay collection, Listening to the Bees, winner of the 2019 Gold Medal
Independent Publishers Book Award, Environment/Ecology. She is currently
working on Book 2 of the THOT J BAP series, an epic fantasy in verse.
This poem is from the
Perimeter sequence in my epic fantasy in verse, Bramah and The Beggar Boy
(Nightwood Editions, 2021).
An early version of this poem,
one of the first in my long poem series, https://thotjbap.com/, first appeared in
a beautiful hand made chapbook by the late Marthe Reed, to whom I was introduced
by rob mclennan at the Factory Reading Series in Ottawa.
Other poems from the sequence
also appeared in Kathryn Mockler’s The Rusty Toque.
With gratitude for these, past
and present, who support/supported long form poetry.
D.S. Stymeist : Big Ride: Passage 1” and “Tonic.”
D.S. Stymeist’s debut collection, The Bone Weir, was published
by Frontenac in 2016 and was a finalist for the Canadian Author’s Association
Award for Poetry. He continues to publish widely in both academic and literary magazines.
Alongside fending off Crohn’s disease, he teaches creative writing and crime
fiction at Carleton University. He’s the former president of VERSe Ottawa,
which organizes VERSeFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.
On special assignment: Cameron
Anstee, Stephen Brockwell, jwcurry, Anita Dolman, Amanda Earl, Lea Graham, Marilyn
Irwin, Chris Johnson, Janice Tokar, Roland Prevost, Sandra Ridley and Chris Turnbull.
