Publishing-in-Transit: Cole Swensen zoom-interviewed Jennifer Baker, rob mclennan + Misha Solomon on above/ground press for Brooklyn Rail: recording now online,

It was such a good conversation! Check out the full hour-plus conversation with myself, Misha Solomon and Jennifer Baker on and around above/ground press, conducted by the brilliant Cole Swensen and hosted by Brooklyn Rail, either here through their site or via their YouTube channel. We talked about VERSeFest, we talked a brief history of above/ground press, we talked about Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] (and hear the legend of how the donkey got its name) and even the “Tuesday poem” series. You can order Misha Solomon’s above/ground press titles here (and his new book over here), Jennifer Baker’s above/ground press titles here, and my above/ground press titles here (or the chapbook I read from, even). Cole Swensen even has an above/ground press title! But you know she has a new book as well, yes? Thanks to everyone who made this thing happen!

Cole Swensen zoom-interviews rob mclennan, Misha Solomon + Jennifer Baker May 20th on above/ground press for Brooklyn Rail,

Publishing-in-Transit: above/ground
Featuring Jennifer Baker, rob mclennan, Misha Solomon

Wednesday, May 20, 2026
1 p.m. Eastern / 10 a.m. Pacific

REGISTER HERE

Poets Jennifer Baker, rob mclennan, and Misha Solomon join Rail contributor Cole Swensen for a conversation on Zoom on above/ground press (which turns thirty-three years old this summer, by the way). 

Jennifer Baker is a poet and Teaching Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe territory at the University of Ottawa. She is the author of four chapbooks: Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014), Groundling (Trainwreck Press, 2021/reissued by above/ground press, 2023), Memento Mishka (co-authored with David Currie, Apt. 9 Press, 2023), and Wee Walk (above/ground press, 2026). Her work has been featured in Groundwork: Best of above/ground press (2023), Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, The Journal of Canadian Poetry, Canadian Literature, Dusie, and the Delisted project. 

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 some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he founded above/ground press, a publisher of chapbooks, journals and other ephemera, way back in July 1993. He also spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has appeared in journals across Canada and has been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry 2024, 2026, and 2027 (Biblioasis) and in On Occasion: Poems for the People (Coach House Books). He is the author of three chapbooks, including FLORALS and Misha Solomon's BIODÔME: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster (above/ground press), and one full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet (Brick Books). He has a BA from Columbia University, an MA from Concordia University, and he is currently a student in Concordia’s Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD program.

Cole Swensen [see her above/ground press title here] is the author of twenty volumes of poetry, most recently And And And (Shearsman Books, 2023), which was long-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize, and a collection of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise. A book of hybrid poem-essays, Art in Time, was published by Nightboat in 2021. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the LA Times Book Award and has been awarded the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series. She has also translated over twenty volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French and won the 2024 ALTA National Translation Award and the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Translation Award.

some author activity: Barwin, Tierney, Strang, Mc Donnell, Sparrow, Swensen, Johnson + Earl,

Doreen Nicoll interviews Gary Barwin for the Small Change Podcast; Orchid Tierney has new work in petrichor; Catriona Strang has a poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Conor Mc Donnell, Noah Sparrow, Cole Swensen and Chris Johnson; and Amanda Earl is part of an assemblage of translations of John Keats over at Asymptote, as curated by Johanna Drucker.

some author activity: McElroy, Thomas, Burgoyne, Norris, Bolster, Swensen + eckhoff,

Gil McElroy has some new work in long con magazine, as does Hugh Thomas and even Sarah Burgoyne, offering her thoughts on the work of Gail Scott; part four of Ken Norris' memoir, "Confessions of a True Believer," is now online; Stephanie Bolster answers questions over at On Creative Writing; Cole Swensen has some work up at Big Other; and kevin mcpherson eckhoff has started to publish fiction.

some author activity: Naughton, Swensen, O'Reilly, Mohammadi, Rogal + Beaulieu,

Katie Naughton is interviewed by Josephine Gawtry for the blog for Colorado Review, as is Cole Swensen, interviewed by Jake Friedman; Nathanael O'Reilly has work in the fourth issue of Saltbush; Khashayar Mohammadi has some new poems in The /tƐmz/ Review, as does Stan Rogal; and Derek Beaulieu offers his 2023 year in review.

some author activity: Cadsby, Swensen, Martin, Solomon + Williams,

Heather Cadsby is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Cole Swensen has two new poems in Big Other; Camille Martin's work is featured in the latest issue of Of Poets & Poetry; Misha Solomon has a new poem up at Plenitude magazine; and an excerpt of Evan Williams' new chapbook is now online at Cleveland Review of Books.

some author activity: Swensen, Ross, O'Reilly + mclennan,

Cole Swensen has some new work up at Harvard Review Online; Stuart Ross offers his annual New Year's poem over at his blog, and is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Nathanael O'Reilly is included in the Spotlight series; rob mclennan has a new poem up at his blog, and offers his 'best of' list of 2022 Canadian poetry books.

some author activity: Spinosa, Siklosi, Beaulieu, Swensen, Smith, Ross + Schmaltz,

Dani Spinosa writes on Kate Siklosi for Open Book, Kate Siklosi also has some new work up at Poem Atlas, as does Derek Beaulieu; Cole Swensen has new work up at The Brooklyn Rail, as does Dale Smith; Stuart Ross has a new poem online as part of National Poetry Month at the Chaudiere Books blog; and Dani Spinosa writes on Eric Schmaltz for Open Book.

above/ground press chapbook bundles in the 2018 Belladonna* auction!

above/ground press has donated six different above/ground press 2018 titles (three copies of each) for the sake of the 2018 Belladonna* auction!

To help support some of the work they do (check out their website to get a sense of it), you can bid on one of three identical bundles of above/ground press poetry chapbooks: MOTHER OF ALL, by Anna Gurton-Wachter; Each Acre, by Megan Kaminski; Seventeen Summers, by Cole Swensen; Everything will be taken away., by Julia Polyck-O’Neill; Twenty-Five, by Emily Izsak; and CONCEALED WEAPONS / ANIMAL SURVIVORS, by natalie hanna.

See the links to the three identical bundles here, here and here.

Now, yes, all of these titles are still in print, but why not see if you want to support Belladonna* in their glorious works?

You can always come back here after, and order titles individually, or simply pick up a 2019 above/ground press subscription. Right?

new from above/ground press: Seventeen Summers, by Cole Swensen

Seventeen Summers
Cole Swensen
$5

And Golden Apple Tree, 1903, also lost

in the 1945 fire at Schloss Immendorf, so also now

known only in black and white, and thus the burden of apples

that must have weighed entire skies

have become just as many blind spots,

small exits, erasures out of which we also slip, wondering

about the green beneath, also erased, which seems

nonetheless particularly rich. That light and thus the houses

build vertically in planes
             an economy of climbing
things green after green
             Malcesine on Lake Garda (1913)
(also lost in the fire) in the trees
                is lost in the upper framing

making the small town seem to go on rising

softly breaking other frames, unseen, tithing.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image: Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge on the Jetty in Litzlberg, 1906
cover image credit: Collection Villa Paulick, courtesy Klimt Foundation, Vienna

Cole Swensen (coleswensen.com) is the author of 17 books of poetry, most recently On Walking On (2017), and a volume of critical essays, Noise That Stays Noise (2011). Her work has won the Iowa Poetry Prize, the SF State Poetry Center Book Award, and the National Poetry Series and has been a finalist twice for the LA Times Book Award and once for the National Book Award. A former Guggenheim Fellow, she’s also the translator of over 20 volumes of poetry, prose, and art criticism from French, and has won a PEN USA Award in Literary Translation. She edits the small press La Presse (lapressepoetry.com).

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

Best American Experimental Writing 2014 : Armantrout, Greenstreet, Kronovet, Maguire, Reed + Robinson,

The first edition of the annual Best American Experimental Writing, guest edited by Cole Swensen, is now available from Omnidawn Publishing! It includes work by seventy-nine different contributors, including above/ground press authors Rae Armantrout, Kate Greenstreet, Jennifer Kronovet, Shannon Maguire, Marthe Reed and Elizabeth Robinson. Congrats to all!

some author activity: Dolman, Armantrout, Robertson, mclennan, Ladouceur + Hancock,

Anita Dolman has a new short story, "Happy Enough," appear as an e-book; Stephen Burt does the fifth in a series of five first readings of Rae Armantrout's "Spin" over at Jacket2; Lisa Robertson reads in Vancouver with Cole Swensen on Wednesday, March 19; rob mclennan has two new poems in the first issue of Fruita Pulp; Ben Ladouceur is the writer for the new web series, Other Men (and he writes on his blog here on how he started writing for a web series); and Brecken Hancock has a new poem up at Hazlitt.

rob mclennan's chapbook, Trace, is reviewed in Broken Pencil #60

Scott Bryson was good enough to review rob mclennan's chapbook, Trace, (2013) in Broken Pencil #60. Thanks, Scott (although the review doesn't sound altogether complimentary...)! Copies of Trace, are still available, here.

Above/ground press publisher, rob mclennan's, latest collection for his own press is a brief one: six prose poems, all but one of them nine lines in length.
    Trace, (take note of that oddly-placed comma) opens with a paragraph borrowed from Cole Swenen's book of poetry, greensward, a collection that Swensen's publisher (Ugly Duckling Presse) remarks is "sometimes poised precariously on the line between sense and non-sense." The author's verse shares that precarious position on the edge of clarity, and it never completely departs from it. Trace, is thus half an observance of nimble wordplay and half an exercise in struggling to locate meaning.
    Reaching a state of understanding with mclennan's text is all the more difficult due to his purposeful overuse and misuse of commas -- it's a model he's employed previously. A particularly obtuse sample from "[dactyls, syllable, your bluesky dress]" reads: "Transmitted, boxwood. Weak, in this noise. Hand-painted ethics, sign."
    It's at least clear that the majority of this chapbook describes tidbits from the history of Ottawa, but after several read-throughs and a fair amount of internet research, it's obvious that complete comprehension will be elusive for anyone who isn't intimately familiar with the nation's capital. One gets the sense that was mclennan's intent, so it's a success in that respect.