some author activity: mclennan, Niespodziany, Jenks, Shirley, Williams, Logan, Kemp-Gee + Young,

rob mclennan has a poem up at Pamenar Press online; the full event of Benjamin Niespodziany's Surreal-Absurd Reading Marathon, featuring a handful of above/ground press authors including Tom Jenks, Vik Shirley, Evan Williams and Nate Logan, is now up on YouTube! ; Meghan Kemp-Gee has a new poem up at Eunoia Review; and Geoffrey Young had a poem a while back on the Best American Poetry blog.

some author activity: Mohammadi, Robinson, carisse, Campanello + Williams,

Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi is interviewed with Klara du Plessis in the latest issue of The Temz Review, where Ben Robinson is also interviewed, and russell carisse also has new work; Kimberly Campanello and Wayne A. Gilbert's 2023 conversation "Moving Nowhere Here" is up on YouTube; and Evan Williams has some new work up at Tyger Quarterly.

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.

Benjamin Niespodziany's virtual reading marathon, September 24, 2023: Logan, mclennan, Walker, Williams, Barwin etc

above/ground press author Benjamin Niespodziany has curated a virtual reading marathon that will go live on Sunday, September 24, 2023 at noon CT, featuring thirty-one readers and nearly three hours of footage! the event also includes plenty of other above/ground press authors, including Nate Logan, rob mclennan, Laura Walker, Evan Williams and Gary Barwin! The premiere link for the event will be here, "live" on YouTube and will continue to be available after the event on his YouTube channel. He has included a list of authors and timestamps, also, if you aren't able to sit through all three hours.

00:00 Intro
01:02 Sparrow
05:12 Rebecca Wadlinger
07:44 Rainie Oet
10:15 Vi Khi Nao
13:07 Nate Logan
15:59 Jose Hernandez Diaz
19:31 Kristin Lueke
20:54 william erickson
25:06 Zachary Schomburg
29:36 Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi
34:37 Angelo Maneage
36:35 Joe Aguilar
42:08 Tyler Barton
50:58 Vik Shirley
54:53 Michael Bazzett
55:21 Daisuke Shen
57:24 rob mclennan
1:07:51 Laura Walker
1:12:56 Tom Snarsky
1:22:00 Evan Williams
1:34:49 Réka Nyitrai
1:36:24 David Wojciechowski
1:45:40 Jay Besemer
1:49:42 Paul Cunningham
1:58:00 David Dodd Lee
2:03:36 Lesle Lewis
2:10:09 Daniel Miller
2:15:51 Rick Bursky
2:24:08 Kai Ihns
2:27:44 Jeff Alessandrelli
2:37:34 Gary Barwin

new from above/ground press: An Extremely Well-Funded Study of Doors, by Evan Williams

An Extremely Well-Funded Study of Doors
Evan Williams
$5

My door is kicked in. It is splintered and sputtering. I stand in its shards, mixed with window glass. It is a structure which resembles a structure only insofar as I still can turn the knob. I turn the knob, and the door does not work. The knob works, the door does not. It is splintered and sputtering.

The intruder jumps from the window upon seeing my doorway stance. I take in hand the knob as a consolation weapon. In the glass of his exit window is a note and pile of money. There is so much money, $800,000. A tricky amount of cash to carry when hoping to be lithe. It is, however, not as large a bill bundle as expected. It is both overwhelming and underwhelming as a feat of agility. Only underwhelming after it is overwhelming, like the beautifully unkempt outside of an abandoned house.

The note says only: Go out and buy the best door.

                                                               *

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2023
as the twenty-first title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover illustration/design: Angelo Maneage

Evan Williams lives behind a white door in Chicago. It has, in its upper third, a peephole partially painted over. Evan is looking through it right now. Someone is knocking.

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: Kemp-Gee, Niespodziany, Williams, Armantrout + Meyerson,

forthcoming author Meghan Kemp-Gee has new work up at Couplet Poetry; Benjamin Niespodziany wrote on forthcoming author Evan Williams' work to accompany some new pieces up at Mercurious; Rae Armantrout has two new poems up at Granta; and Ben Meyerson is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

some author activity: Hawes, Ace, Williams, Coulton, Myers, Schapira + Bell,

James Hawes has a new poem up on the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, as does Samuel Ace and forthcoming author Evan Williams, as well as Valerie Coulton; forthcoming author Peter Myers has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series via dusie; Kate Schapira has new work in Anomaly; and Wade Bell has new work up at The Typescript.

Benjamin Niespodziany’s The Northerners (2021) is reviewed (alongside an interview with the author) by Evan Williams at The Chicago Maroon

Thanks to Evan Williams for providing the first review of Benjamin Niespodziany’s The Northerners (2021), alongside an interview with the author, over at The Chicago Maroon. The review is posted below, but see here for the whole piece, including the interview.

Ben Niespodziany’s The Northerners (above/ground press, 2021) is a collection of 37 short, numbered poems written while watching Alex van Warmerdam’s 1992 film De Noorderlingen on mute.

The Northerners is episodic, like watching a movie in a theater cast in violent strobe-lighting. The divisions between each poem are extreme, and yet, there are always two on a page and, save for the 37th poem, there’s always a degree of visual continuity. Threading the episodic bursts into, if not a narrative, then at least a form of textually-depicted progression, is The Northerners’s cast of characters. Most present are the saint, the boy, the forester, and the butcher. Appearing briefly are the two monks, the neighborhood, the postman, the glutton, the pond, the coat rack, and the forest. While the primary four actors in Niespodziany’s project provide a sense of stability in an otherwise fluid world, the ephemeral background players allow the book a sense of rapid motion through their whirlwind entrance and subsequent exit.

At the core of Niespodziany’s project is the recognition that the illogical exists but is always just beyond our reach. He writes in “[17]”, “The real challenge is not/ lassoing the moon/ but reeling it in once caught.” Each of Niespodziany’s characters encounters this dilemma at some point or another; each of them is able to feel the moon in their grasp but is able to bring it no closer than that. The saint, forester, and butcher have become either so disillusioned by its hardness (“They catch the butcher in bed with/ weaponry and a pint of ink./ Feet of feather, tethered time.”) or so hopelessly optimistic that such an awful thing isn’t true (“The saint/ waits up late/ for a sign./ The moon/ does the same.”) that they have been dissuaded from chasing this magic. Or, perhaps, they are too afraid to do so for fear that it’s just sand.

It is the boy who seems most able to hold at once in his head the fact of worldly limitations and the presence of otherworldly wonder, the boy who seems able to convey both in a single stroke (from “[30]”):    

The boy suspects

a world outside

the neighborhood.

He is a radio

reporting in the forest.

A simple lump in the throat.    

The mode in which Niespodziany has written The Northerners contributes to this sense of just-almost-magic, each poem offering its reader a glimpse of the moon, the illogical, the impossible, or the fantastic, only to leave us on the edge of wonder for the next poem. No poem exemplifies this impulse better than the book’s final numbered piece, “[36]”:

The director

refuses to discuss

the ending. He’s busy

in his pool, writing

something new.    

Niespodziany’s project is novel in method and tantalizing in message. It seems to implore its reader to listen for a radio signal in the forest, to really hear it in its nuance, then to cast a lasso 'round the moon, just to give it a go—maybe it’s ready to be reeled in at last.