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: Brenner, Adams, Smith, Pirie, McElroy, Pittella, Banks + Rhodes,

Summer Brenner has an essay up at Literary Hub; Carrie Olivia Adams was recently featured on the podcast Plain Reading; Mahaila Smith has a new poem up at the DOG TEETH newsletter; and Pearl Pirie offers her report on the recent above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/event/launch, featuring readings by herself, alongside Gil McElroy, Carlos A. Pittella, Mahaila Smith, Chris Banks and Shane Rhodes!

report: the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/launch/party!

You probably already know, but I hosted an above/ground press thirty-first anniversary reading/launch/party at RedBird last night, featuring readings and chapbook launches by Chris Banks (Kitchener), Mahaila Smith (Ottawa), Gil McElroy (North Bay), Pearl Pirie (rural QC) Carlos A. Pittella (Montreal) and Shane Rhodes (Ottawa). Anniversaries are the best! And don't forget that the press is running a big anniversary sale until the end of this month.

It was good to have another in-person anniversary event! Do you remember my report from last year's anniversary reading? Or the 2019 one? I mean, I think these reports help keep such events in memory. Remember the twenty-fifth anniversary event (when the t-shirts were introduced, for example) or the twenty-third anniversary event (including the Toronto event that same year) or the nineteenth anniversary event? So many events! Wishing I'd actually archived the big tenth anniversary event as well, but that was well before the full advent of blogs, after all (well, five minutes before all of that). I had ten readers, two musical acts (including Emm Gryner) and CBC Radio's Alan Neal hosting, produced by Elaina Martin, who went on to found and produce Ottawa's infamous Westfest. Remember that? I don't even remember all who I had to read for that event. Michael Dennis, certainly, along with (I think) Stephen Brockwell, AJ Dolman, Colin Morton, John Barton and Karen Massey. Who else? All I can find online is this reference to the event via Bywords.

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.

It was a great crowd! And good to see further above/ground press authors, including Stuart Ross (did you know his own Proper Tales Press is only four years away from fifty? did you see the website we built when his press turned forty?), Karen Massey, Stephen Brockwell, Grant Wilkins and bpNichol chapbook award-winner Jason Christie! There were a couple of folk unable to attend due to Covid (mild, at least), which was frustrating, but it was great to see Margo LaPierre, Brian Pirie, Susan Atkinson, Manahil Bandukwala, Salem Paige, Allison Armstrong and Helen Robertson! Very nice, also, to see a whole stack of folk in the audience that I didn't actually know. I mean, that's good too, yes?

The first reader was Ottawa poet Mahaila Smith, launching their above/ground press debut (and third chapbook overall), Enter the Hyperreal (2024). There is a sharpness to Smith's work, and anyone who references the work of the late American poet Barbara Guest is very much applying good judgement. Check out Mahaila's recent essay on the chapbook, here.

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.

There is such lovely, small detail in the poems of Pearl Pirie's latest above/ground press title, her sixth, Rushing Dusk (2024), a small chapbook featuring cover artwork by my middle daughter, Rose. Check out Pearl's essay on the chapbook, here. And you saw the festschrift we recently produced on her work as well, yes?

Did you hear that Ottawa poet (originally from Alberta) Shane Rhodes and 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?

the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading/launch/party : August 10 2024 : Red Bird Live,

: tickets available here :

new from above/ground press: Small Consonants, by Gil McElroy

Gil McElroy
Small Consonants
$5

1


Basic as the game of power, trembling in the weeds.
I want a base & constitutive image.
It keeps but showing a man (sic).
It keeps but that level.
It keeps but drawing figures of a science.
The point is fraught with variables.
Ignore those battles beyond.
Instead, recoil back into amnesia, the empty houses of memory.
Unravel.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gil McElroy currently lives in North Bay, Ontario. He’s published five books of poetry (most recently Long Division with the University of Calgary Press), a collection of his writings on contemporary visual art, and a memoir of growing up a military brat during the Cold War.

This is Gil McElroy’s tenth above/ground press title, following “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (1999), “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Twentieth (2013), The Doxologies (2014), LAOS (Some Julian Days) (2018), Some Julian Days: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2019) and Cartesian Wells (2023). He also had a poem in the above/ground press twenty-fifth anniversary broadside series (2018).

[Gil McElroy will be launching Small Consonants on August 10 as part of the above/ground press 31st anniversary reading, alongside Mahaila Smith, Carlos A. Pittella, Chris Banks, Pearl Pirie and Shane Rhodes; tickets available here]

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: Cartesian Wells, by Gil McElroy

Cartesian Wells
Gil McElroy
$5

x1

All’s well that ends the
whatnesses of
the cosmos, the
fierce dos (although you can still say
your don’ts, feeling
for the sunny parts
of the story) of
them hawks &
eagles, them
parrots, all
mutual birds with
densely speckled
alphabets &
the beauty over which
we vote

Oh, &
filaments of
warmbloodedness

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gil McElroy is a poet, visual artist, and curator currently living in North Bay, Ontario. His most recent book of poetry is Long Division (University of Calgary Press, 2020).

Gil McElroy is the author of eight previous above/ground press chapbooks, including “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (1999), “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Twentieth (2013), The Doxologies (2014), LAOS (Some Julian Days) (2018) and Some Julian Days: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2019). He also had a poem in the above/ground press twenty-fifth anniversary broadside series (2018).

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: Lewin, McElroy, Cooley, Press, Nećakov + Earl,

Vivian Lewin has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, as does Gil McElroy, and Dennis Cooley, and K.I. Press; Lillian Nećakov has a piece in the "one good memory" series, via Silver Birch Press; and Amanda Earl has a new poem in the "poetry pause" series for National Poetry Month via The League of Canadian Poets.

The Peter F Yacht Club #30 : the virtual issue,

I know the holidays just aren’t the same without our usual Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta, set between Christmas and New Year’s Eve (an event I originated in 2005 for the sake of an “office Christmas party” for our informal writer’s group), but we’ll get back to that soon enough. If you are interested in such, you can see my report on the 2019 event here, the 2018 event here, the 2017 event here, the 2016 event here, the 2015 event here, the 2013 event here, the 2012 event here (there have been at least a decade’s worth of further events, but apparently I made no reports on those, save for the 2007 event). But next year, right? Until then, here is a virtual event, posted as issue #30 of The Peter F. Yacht Club [see information on the prior issue here]. We are far more than halfway out of the dark, I’d wager.

Kimberly Quiogue Andrews : “Jesus in a Prom Gown”

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’s poems 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 Christie lives 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.

Monty Reid : two poems from “Playground”

Monty Reid is a damaged Ottawa poet.

Stuart Ross : “A Stephen Crane Christmas,” “Sixty-Two” and “Razovsky On The Volga”

Stuart Ross is 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.

“poem” broadside #354 : “JD2458624,” by Gil McElroy

 

 

 

I did,
to hear, in air-
conditioned worrying, staying
away from
the amphetamines & ideas
of my passage. What
of building a mid-
sentence apology? What
of it? My
short, un-
ruly shirt saturated
in that Bolivian
summer, until
blood & flesh excluded
me.

Ah, well. I’ll
mouth their
intents, their
funerals, even
their eyes.

There. There’s
my world, which
is harder.

JD2458624
by Gil McElroy
September 2021
above/ground press broadside #354

Gil McElroy is a poet currently living in Colborne, Ontario. His most recent book is Long Division (University of Calgary Press, 2020). He has published eight chapbooks through above/ground press, most recently Some Julian Days: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2019).

some author activity: Armantrout, O'Reilly, Sikkema, McElroy, mclennan + Turner,

Rae Armantrout has a new poem posted in the London Review of Books; Nathanael O'Reilly has work in the debut issue of Bealtaine magazine; Michael Sikkema has a new poem up on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Gil McElroy; and rob mclennan and Michael Turner (among others) have new poems posted as part of The Mirimachi Reader.

some author activity: McElroy, Nilson, Cortese + Townsend,

Gil McElroy has a new essay in the "Talking Poetics" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Geoffrey Nilson reviews Sonnet L'Abbé's Sonnet's Shakespeare over at the Hamilton Review of Books; Franco Cortese is interviewed at Touch the Donkey; and Jamie Townsend is interviewed on Steve Abbott over at FULL STOP.

Bill Neumire reviews Gil McElroy's LAOS (Some Julian Days) in Vallum 16:1

Bill Neumire was good enough to provide the first review of Gil McElroy's LAOS (Some Julian Days) (2018) in Vallum 16:1, "Connections," which was just released at the beginning of the month. Thanks so much! To see the full review, you have to pick up a copy of the issue, but the three-page review includes:

The speaker of these poems, though framed in a clipped, military aura, is a judgmental observer offering a tint of sadness in abstraction. It’s musical and emotionally effective, and he even becomes touchingly connected, or at least desiring of connection in lines like, “[t]he / very knowing / of you…” and “[t]ouching, / touching the ugly / of each other” from section 2457712. The continuous structure rings similar to Leaves of Grass or other projects of continuation, but unlike Whitman, it’s not an inclusively democratic gesture; rather, the language is quirky, Cummings-like in its jarring utterances that remain committed to sound, to alliteration, internal rhyme, and slant rhyme.

some author activity: Blades, Pirie, Massey, McElroy, mclennan, Clayton + Polyck-O'Neill,

Joe Blades has a new poem on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of #NationalPoetryMonth, as does Pearl Pirie, Karen Massey and Gil McElroy; rob mclennan has a poem in the Poetry Pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; forthcoming author Conyer Clayton is interviewed over at Train : a poetry journal, and has new work at talking about strawberries all of the time; and Julia Polyck-O'Neill is also interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time.

new from above/ground press: Some Julian Days: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by Gil McElroy

Some Julian Days : Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Gil McElroy
with a new afterword by the author
$5

Julian Day 2448254

So we reach a level
of particularity, & such acts of
motion as are prior to hindsights
are, on their own,
largely erased.  We face
the inevitable need
for rooms & the stuff
of homes.

One
religion is needed, one
avenue & form of literature - happy
English words, useful
in the distant study
of the dead.

I lack
all the right words
for instincts. Have we
completely acceptable senses?
Or is the formation
of successive days but one tiny occasion
of senses newly dead?

Understand,
such a place in myself
is built
with appropriate names.

Light & desire
generate words
in my heart.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Some Julian Days was originally produced by above/ground press in an edition of 300 copies, March 1999.

Gil McElroy is a poet, visual artist, curator, and visual arts critic. He has published four books of poetry with Talonbooks, a collection of art writing with Gaspereau Press, and a memoir about his father and what it was like growing up a military brat during the height of the Cold War that was also published by Talonbooks. His visual art has been exhibited in galleries across Canada, and he has curated exhibitions for numerous art galleries.

He’s also published numerous chapbooks, and in 2013, was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for The Merton Lake Propers published by Baseline Press in London, Ontario.

He currently lives in Colborne.

Gil McElroy is the author of seven previous above/ground press chapbooks, including “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (1999), “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Twentieth (2013), The Doxologies (2014) and LAOS (Some Julian Days) (2018). He also had a poem in the above/ground press twenty-fifth anniversary broadside series (2018).

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

new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #27; VERSeFest special!

The Peter F Yacht Club #27
VERSeFest 2019 special
edited by rob mclennan
$6

With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars, irregulars and VERSeFest 2019 participants, including Manahil Bandukwala, Frances Boyle, Klara du Plessis, Amanda Earl, Avonlea Fotheringham, Lea Graham, natalie hanna, Richard Harrison, Harold Hoefle, Bob Hogg, Gil McElroy, rob mclennan, David O’Meara, Roland Prevost, Claudia Coutu Radmore, Armand Garnet Ruffo and Renée Sarojini Saklikar

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[a small stack of copies will be distributed free as part of the eighth annual VERSeFest, March 26-31, 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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

above/ground press t-shirts!

I finally had more t-shirts made, gloriously and brilliantly produced by Ottawa's own Troublemaker Print, and designed by Christine McNair.

I have various sizes! send me an email at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com to see what is currently available.

above/ground press author Gil McElroy

$20 each /

above/ground press author Lea Graham

To order, send cheques (add $3 for postage; in US, add $5; outside North America, add $8) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com. 

new from above/ground press: LAOS (Some Julian Days), by Gil McElroy

LAOS (Some Julian Days)
Gil McElroy
$5

It was
unnecessary history noticed,
the kiss of the Ice Age, all
crude & bright. & those
gaunt rooms we left behind, so
numerous & clumsily impressive? Well,
they have doubtful conjunctions now,
don’t they? It’s
‘cause of
the slighting effect of their dishes, &,
of course, our free-range palettes.

All in
all in
the absence
of hence.



[ALSO: the place turned itself inside-out, pointedly
aloof as befits a soap-inscribed sound.]


                    2457652

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

Gil McElroy is a poet, visual artist, curator, and visual arts critic. He has published four books of poetry with Talonbooks, a collection of art writing with Gaspereau Press, and a memoir about his father and what it was like growing up a military brat during the height of the Cold War that was also published by Talonbooks. His visual art has been exhibited in galleries across Canada, and he has curated exhibitions for numerous art galleries.

He’s also published numerous chapbooks, and in 2013, was co-winner of the bpNichol Chapbook Award for The Merton Lake Propers published by Baseline Press in London, Ontario.

He currently lives in Colborne.

Gil McElroy is the author of six previous above/ground press chapbooks, including “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (1999), “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (2005), Twentieth (2013) and The Doxologies (2014). His Some Julian Days is scheduled for a reissue in 2019 as a “Twentieth Anniversary Edition.”

[McElroy launches this chapbook in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 25th anniversary broadside launch event with Sarah Mangold and Sandra Ridley on Tuesday, October 30, 2018 as part of the ottawa international writers festival]

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

25th Anniversary of above/ground press at OIWF: w Ridley, McElroy + Mangold

25th Anniversary of above/ground press
with Sandra Ridley, Gil McElroy and Sarah Mangold
Hosted by Stephen Brockwell
as part of the ottawa international writers festival

"The impact of above/ground press has been so great, some authors can’t remember a time without it."
— Apt. 613

Tuesday, October 30, 2018
FREE EVENT
7pm, Christ Church Cathedral • 414 Sparks Street Ottawa

As part of its silver anniversary year, the above/ground press has produced a limited edition set of single-poem broadsides by an array of above/ground press authors.

Curated by publisher/editor rob mclennan and designed by Christine McNair, the series will be launched by Sarah Mangold, Gil McElroy and Sandra Ridley, who will be joined on-stage by rob mclennan for a conversation on the press’s twenty-fifth year. Moderated by Stephen Brockwell.

More details on the broadsides to be announced very soon! Copies will, of course, be available at the event;

See Sandra Ridley's bio here ; Gil McElroy's bio here ; Sarah Mangold's bio here

for further information on the event and the festival, check out the link here

some author activity: Notley, Bowering, Dennis, Robinson + McElroy,

Gil McElroy, sporting his brand new above/ground press t-shirt

Alice Notley's lecture on Allen Ginsberg, presented as the keynote at the Allen Ginsberg Symposium this past May at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York City, is now online; George Bowering has a new essay in the "On Writing" series, over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Michael Dennis is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Elizabeth Robinson has a new craft essay up at Brevity.

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Gil McElroy

This is the thirteenth in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.

above/ground press, in the guise of a magazine entitled Stanzas, came into my life in the mid-1990s when I was living in Halifax, and of course this was my introduction to rob (whom I wouldn’t actually meet until 2001 when we did a poetry reading together at York University).

Here’s where I might embrace one of the most overused and hackneyed clichés and tell you that it changed my life. But the thing is: it did, actually.

This, of course, was in the days before the advent of social media, and connecting with other writers, others of your own ilk, was more difficult, especially if you’re an introvert with a penchant for aloneness who still wants some kind of connection.

(ahem)

rob and above/ground became that for me. To say he and it were supportive doesn’t quite capture it. At the time of our introduction I was on a bit of precipice, finding myself nearing the literary edge where I was going to call it quits, though not sure at all how that would happen when the need to put the words together was such a fundamental part of who I was (and am). Difficult times.

above/ground and rob ensured I wouldn’t have to figure out what going over the edge would actually feel like. They gave me community, and community, as I learned, is everything. Here was a world of others, the like-minded, the bloody-minded… the minded, all shaping worlds I was given access to, no questions asked. And rob generously fed me into that cauldron of shape-shifting, publishing my work in magazines, chapbooks and broadsheets, and recommending it to others. The myriad forms of what he was doing changed my life.

Can’t of course speak for anyone else, but for me it was akin to a miracle. And each package of newly shape-shifted pieces I find stuffed in my mailbox continues to push the margins of what I know and sometimes become overly comfortable with. Social media now (virtually) connects me, but rob and above/ground materially included me, a fistful of chapbooks and broadsheets in my greedy little hands giving me entry unto other worlds that bump and collide with mine own, reshaping and reconfiguring things.

Sometimes that’s not comfortable, and sometimes it’s even unwanted. But it’s always necessary.

-Gil McElroy, March 2018

Gil McElroy is a writer living in Colborne, Ontario.

Gil McElroy is the author of six above/ground press chapbooks, including “Echolocations” (½ of STANZAS #5, April 1995), Some Julian Days (March, 1999) “Meteor Showers” (STANZAS #31, 2002), (The Work of Art) In the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (November, 2005), Twentieth (February, 2013) and The Doxologies (2014). His Some Julian Days is scheduled for a reissue in 2019 as a “Twentieth Anniversary Edition.”