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: Hall, Thomas, Niespodziany, Robinson, Mohammadi + Clayton,

Phil Hall is interviewed by Sharon Berg at The Artisanal Writer; Hugh Thomas is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Benjamin Niespodziany interviews Elizabeth Robinson over at neon pajamas; Khashayar Mohammadi is interviewed over at The Temz Review; and Conyer Clayton is also interviewed by Sharon Berg at The Artisinal Writer.

some author activity: hanna, Thomas, Trivedi, Maguire, Barton, Aigen, Spinosa + Weaver,

natalie hanna has a new poem on the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, as do Hugh Thomas, Amish Trivedi and Shannon Maguire; John Barton is interviewed for the Chaudiere Books blog in the "Six Questions" series; Razielle Aigen is interviewed at Train : a poetry journal; and Dani Spinosa writes on Andy Weaver for Open Book.

some author activity: Rosenthal, Koss, Thomas, Robinson + Ross,

Sarah Rosenthal and Valerie Witte have a two-part piece up at many gendered mothers, on Yvonne Rainer and Simone Forti; Zane Koss has four poems in The Temz Review; Hugh Thomas has a new cento posted as part of the Proper Tales Press 40th anniversary essays series; Elizabeth Robinson has a new essay at my (small press) writing day; and Stuart Ross has work in SurVision magazine.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 21: Kirby, de Belle, Walsh, Thomas, Rogal, Flack. Bartram, Hetherington + Mohammadi

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
pre-small press book fair reading
featuring readings by:

Kirby (Toronto ON)
Julie de Belle (QC)
Matthew Walsh (Toronto ON)
Hugh Thomas (Montreal QC)
Stan Rogal (Toronto ON)
Brian L. Flack (Prince Edward County ON)
Victoria Hetherington (Toronto ON)
Jessica Bromley Bartram (Ottawa ON)
+
Khashayar Mohammadi (Toronto ON) (cancelled)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 21, 2019;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Jack Purcell Community Centre]

Kirby's earlier chapbooks include Simple Enough, Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, The world is fucked and sometimes beautiful, She’s Having a Doris Day (knife | fork | book, 2017), and their full-length debut, This Is Where I Get Off (Permanent Sleep Press, 2019). Kirby is the owner/publisher of knife | fork | book  www.jeffkirby.ca

Born in Ottawa Ontario, but living in Quebec, Julie de Belle has been writing poetry in both official languages since her early teens. She was a member of the Literary Translators of Canada where she first trying her hand at translation with Words on the Move. In 2013, she published her first collection of poetry in both French and English (not in translation but rather as two separate minds) called 2FACES with Broken Rules Press. Julie performs regularly at Twigs & Leaves in Ste. Anne de Bellevue and at Kafe Poe in Pincourt. She has given poetry workshops and performances in local libraries and cultural centres. Julie de Belle is a retired ESL teacher, has taught in China and in James Bay, and now works freelance from home, both writing and translating.

Matthew Walsh is a queer writer from Nova Scotia whose work has appeared in Matrix, The Malahat Review, and Pulp Literature among others. His first book of poems was published with Goose Lane/ Ice House and is titled: These are not the potatoes of my youth.

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator living in Montréal, where he teaches mathematics at UQAM.  Maze, his debut poetry collection, was published by Invisible Publishing in June 2019. His poetry has appeared in chapbooks published by Bookthug, Paper Kite Press, above/ground, and, most recently, shreeking violet press (in a collaboration with Stuart Ross and Dag Straumsvåg).

Stan Rogal is the author of more books of poetry and fiction than one can reasonably count. He didn't send an author biography, but I know he has a new book of fiction out this spring with Insomniac Press, and a handful of poetry chapbooks with above/ground.

Brian L. Flack is the author of three novels … In Seed Time, With A Sudden & Terrible Clarity, and When Madmen Lead the Blind, and a collection of poems … 36 … Poems. He has contributed literary & social criticism to books, periodicals, and academic journals, and written many reviews for newspapers. For several years, he was the host of a weekly radio programme, “Bookviews”, on Q-107, in Toronto. In another life that he enjoyed for almost 40 years, he was a Professor of English Literature. He lives with the painter Susan Straiton ... by the lake, in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

Jessica Bromley Bartram is an illustrator, graphic designer, and writer who lives in Ottawa with her partner Ian and beagle-esque dog Eleanor. Ghost Water Kiss is her first short story collection. She has also illustrated two picture books for Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Charles by S.E. Hume, which was published in 2018, and Summer North Coming by Dorothy Bentley, which will be released in spring 2019. Her work is included in 4PANEL 2, appears on the cover of Bird House by Ben Ladouceur, and she has published illustrations in Room Magazine (issue 42.1), CAROUSEL (issue 39), and The Globe and Mail.

Victoria Hetherington [pictured] is a Toronto-based writer, visual artist and the author of I Have to Tell You (0s&1s, 2014). Her debut novel Mooncalves appeared in April 2019 with Now or Never Publishing.

Khashayar Mohammadi is an Iranian-born writer/translator based in Toronto. He is the host of knife | fork | book’s Chapbook Club and the author of the chapbooks Moe’s Skin with ZED PRESS (2018) and Poetry as Omission forthcoming with Anstruther Press. His poems have also appeared in Poetry is Dead, Bad Nudes, Half a Grapefruit Magazine, Bad Dog Review and elsewhere across Turtle Island. He is currently working on a translation anthology of contemporary female Iranian poets.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 24: Earl, Thomas + hanna,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
pre-small press book fair reading
featuring readings by:

Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
Hugh Thomas (Montreal)
and natalie hanna (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 24, 2017;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Jack Purcell Community Centre]

Amanda Earl writes poetry, prose and visual poetry in Ottawa. She's managing editor at Bywords.ca, fallen angel of AngelHousePress, co-host of The Small Machine Talks podcast with a.m. kozak, editor of the Close Reading Service for New Women Poets and chief troublemaker at the Home for Whimsical Misfits. More about chapbooks, books, awards, grants and professional stuff at AmandaEarl.com.

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator living in Montréal, where he teaches mathematics at UQAM.  His most recent chapbook, Six Swedish Poets, was published in the summer of 2015 by above/ground press.  It records his attempt at translating Swedish poems without knowing any Swedish.

natalie hanna [pictured] is an Ottawa lawyer working with low income populations, and an alumna of Carleton and Ottawa universities. Her writing focusses on feminist, political, and personal themes. In 2016, she joined the Sawdust Reading Series as Administrative Director and joined the board of Arc Poetry Magazine later that year. She runs battleaxe press - a local poetry small press. dark ecologies is her ninth chapbook, and second with above/ground press (this evidence against you, 1999). "dark ecologies" tries to balance identity and violence.

above/ground press in Toronto : a report,

[Braydon Beaulieu, reading] above/ground press recently celebrated twenty-three years via an event in Toronto [don't forget the Ottawa event for same next week!] with readings and launches by above/ground press authors Braydon Beaulieu, Ashley-Elizabeth Best, Sean Braune, Stephen Brockwell, Sharon Harris, Hugh Thomas and Aaron Tucker at The Steady Bar and Cafe. Thanks so much to all who participated!

[the crowd] The crowd was good, with a variety of Toronto writers (and non-writers, most of whom I didn't know) attending, including Ken Sparling, Dale Smith, Natalie Zina Walschots, Kateri Lanthier, Richard Greene, Stan Rogal, Hazel Millar, Shannon Bramer, Jay MillAr, Teresa Yang, m erskine, as well as poet Doyali Islam, who generously donated her time and energy to work both door and book table. The venue, of course, worked perfectly, with thanks to them, as well as to Aaron Tucker, who secured it for me.

[Stephen Brockwell] Stephen, of course, was good enough to speak briefly to the volume and enthusiasm of the press over the years, especially given how close the press is to eight hundred publications (a dozen or so, I'd say, and still counting). Sometimes I'm even baffled by the amount of material I've produced through the press, although to me, the first decade is somehow the most impressive (that's when the struggle was far more than it has been since).

[Sean Braune] I was thinking back across the years, and this might have actually been the third above/ground press event I've organized in Toronto, and not the second. My records show an event from November, 1997 with myself,  Natalee Caple and Stephen Cain (both of whom were reading from recently-released above/ground press titles) along with Ottawa poet Jim Larwill, and my recollections suggest another event around the same period, with Una McDonnell and Stan Rogal (both of whom were reading from recently-released above/ground press titles; see his listed here) and Ottawa poet b stephen harding. Both of those events were held at the Imperial Library Pub on Dundas Street.

[Hugh Thomas] It almost makes me think I should be attempting anniversary events and/or general above/ground press readings in Toronto a bit more often. Although at least two in the crowd didn't understand, at first, that above/ground is an Ottawa-based publisher, and wondered why I'd pointed out the rarity of the Toronto above/ground press reading. Heck, at this point, I probably have enough authors around that I could easily do more than a couple of cities, whether Montreal, Vancouver or even an American city or two. The one time I did an above/ground press feature in New York, as part of the Boog City series in January 2004 (for the sake of the tenth anniversary anthology), we had to fly everyone in (Brockwell, myself and Clare Latremouille).

[Hazel, Shannon and Ashley-Elizabeth at the end of the evening] The high points were plenty and the performances great; the highlights would also include the fact that I hadn't actually heard Braune or Beaulieu (now that he's relocated from Calgary to Toronto) read before (both of whom are also reading at the Ottawa event), the stellar reading that Hugh Thomas gave, or even the fact that Shannon Bramer appeared (I've barely seen her in years; remember that chapbook I produced of hers, moons back?).

[myself with Dale Smith and Stephen Brockwell, pre-reading] A lovely bonus to the day was the fact that I was able to meet up for a pre-reading drink with Dale Smith at the Duke of York, a wee pub just close to our hotel. Stephen Brockwell met up with us later, once he'd arrived via rail.

Rebecca Anne Banks reviews Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014)

Rebecca Anne Banks was good enough to review Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014) over at Subterranean Blue Poetry. Thanks, Rebecca! See the original review here. This is actually the fourth review of Albanian Suite, after Amanda Earl's review, one by Edric Mesmer, and another by Ryan Pratt over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

This brilliant Chapbook, Albanian Suite is the gift of Hugh Thomas. Poet Thomas lives and works in Fredericton, New Brunswick as a mathematics professor at the University of New Brunswick. He has published Franzlations, “a collection of illustrated Kafka remixes”, chapbooks and been published in various journals 1cent #404, Numero Cinq, BafterC, dig, the Dusie poetry blog amongst others.

In the Acknowledgments, he presents his work as having spun off the poems of Albanian poet Visar Zhiti amongst others, not as a strict translation, because he does not understand Albanian, but this Writer suspects in the true spirit of Albanian.

In the background, down some cobblestone street on a rainy day, Paul Simon sings, “April, Come she will” “When streams are ripe and swelled with rain;/ May, she will stay,/ Resting in my arms again.”

This Writer appreciates and revels in the thick, rich images, as if paintings of a certain noblesse oblige, the lost and present circumstance of decay of the old world Europe, in the new. The metaphors in poetry drip with love and remorse and the passage of time, as if the stone remains despite the rain. From Music I heard with you, “The choir in the clouds hums a Bach cantata/ but someone in the world is coughing/ and Bach is galloping on horseback/ gazing into his crystal of disinterest./ The fierce demons pursuing him/ now just seem wistful.”

As if the last line of defense, the poetry can be heavily laconic as in The Strange Mine of Pork Poetry – “Not enough, those phased lectures of miasma given by a mime – I plugged myelf into the electrical circuit, getting an immediate shock./ The stratagem that sold me the ruins offered drums and furniture, contact with poets leery of bestsellers, literary arms, or –sob!-restaurant meals./ We made examinations down the strange mine of pork poetry, grew wings, became curious about the flowering shrubs among the ruins of ten maps and the vaults of fish.” Also in Sappho II – “cadence address catch dreams/ pays and agree, chlorate of poems,/ empathic, the old epidemic/ things themselves”.

Tucked into the body of the work are two beautiful New Age "translations":

Clear

"After so many

clouds

one

by one

out come the stars


I breathe in

the chill

left me

by the sky’s

colour


Myself

a fugitive

image


Caught

in an eternal

circuit"

(translated from the Italian of Giuseppe Ungaretti)

and,

Stars

"When night comes,

I stand on the steps and listen,

stars are swarming in the garden

and I stand in the dark.

Listen, a star just fell with a clang!

Don’t walk on the grass in bare feet;

my garden is full of shards."

(translated from the Swedish of Edith Sodergran)

As if one long lament on love lost, the corruption of love in post-modern times, the passage of time, the grey and violence of post-modern times, the hard technocracy, the unsatisfactory nature of postmodern poetry, perhaps how everything has grown old. As if the world has existed inside some long ago war for too long.

Key of Roses, Bruges

for maria erskine

"Demobilized pigeons throng the park

where something happened.

We wait for each other. We cross the pool,

raising barely a ripple.

Some mythological animal

-you said griffin, I said narwhal-

stopped us with an extended claw,

said something in Flemish about life and gardens.

The windows were illuminated even if we weren’t,

and there was dancing among the chimneys.

Overhead, let down on a string out of heaven,

a glockenspiel, as such a total disappointment!"

A celebration of the New Age in poetry, thick with European sensibility and the love diaspora N.A. A fantastical read of Old World Europe, Albanian Suite by Hugh Thomas.

above/ground press in Toronto : this weekend!

You might already know we're at a book fair this weekend, and they were good enough to post a photo to Instagram of two of our titles as part of their publicity! Titles by Hugh Thomas and Amy Dennis (and of course, both are still available). Might we see you Saturday? There might even be a new title or two (that we haven't told you about yet...

new from above/ground press: Six Swedish Poets, by Hugh Thomas

Six Swedish Poets
Hugh Thomas
$4

Deterrence

Do not ingest the pink gangster. 
Put sand on the little table
and burn an apple beside your bed.
You have been unlucky with your garden,
for you there is parking. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2015
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator who has just moved to Montreal, where he will be teaching mathematics at UQAM. His most recent chapbook, Albanian Suite, was published by above/ground press in 2014. His previous chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, also published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award.

This is his third chapbook with above/ground press, after Albanian Suite (2014) and Opening the Dictionary (2011).

[produced as part of the above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch, also featuring Ashley-Elizabeth Best and Amanda Earl, August 27, 2015]

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

above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch: Best, Earl + Thomas,

above/ground press twenty-second anniversary reading and launch
with readings by:

Ashley-Elizabeth Best (Kingston)
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
+ Hugh Thomas (Montreal)

Thursday, August 27, 2014
7pm door / 7:30pm reading
Raw Sugar Cafe
692 Somerset St W, Ottawa
lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
$5 at the door / includes a copy of a recent above/ground press chapbook, or a copy of Touch the Donkey!

Ashley-Elizabeth Best [pictured] is from Cobourg, ON. Her work has been published in Fjords, CV2, Berfrois, Grist and Ambit Magazine, among other publications. Recently she was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her first collection of poems, Slow States of Collapse is forthcoming with ECW Press. She lives and writes in Kingston.

She will be launching her chapbook, Now You Have Many Legs To Stand On. This is her first chapbook and second publication with above/ground press, after the "poem" broadside "from Algonquin" (#315, 2012).

Amanda Earl is a troublemaker who haunts the streets & watering holes of Ottawa for inspiration. She is still in love with Kiki (Chaudiere Books, 2014), her poetry book celebrating the spirit of Montparnasse & hopes that you will be too. Find  her on Twitter @KikiFolle or read about her in secret at AmandaEarl.com.

She will be launching her chapbook, A BOOK OF SAINTS, an excerpt from Saint Ursula’s Commonplace Book. This is Earl’s fourth chapbook with above/ground press, after Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008) and Eleanor (2007).

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator who has just moved to Montreal, where he will be teaching mathematics at UQAM.  His most recent chapbook, Albanian Suite, was published by above/ground press in 2014.  His previous chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, also published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award.

He will be launching a chapbook of "naive translations," Six Swedish Poets. This is his third chapbook with above/ground press, after Albanian Suite (2014) and Opening the Dictionary (2011).

"poem" broadside #332 : "Autobiography" by Hugh Thomas

I was smelly that day.
Someone stole these flowers.
You saw the red car that was black.
Hey, Professor!

Autobiography
by Hugh Thomas
produced for The Factory Reading Series,
Ottawa, February 20, 2015
above/ground press broadside #332

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator living in Fredericton, where he teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. His most recent chapbook, Albanian Suite, was published by above/ground press in 2014. His previous chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, also published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award.

The Factory Reading Series: Paige, Sheppy + Thomas, February 20, 2015

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series presents:

Abby Paige (Ottawa)
Nikki Sheppy (Calgary)
+ Hugh Thomas (Fredericton)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, February 20, 2015;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Abby Paige is a writer and performer whose work has been published in the US and Canada, recently including Room, Ottawater, Arc, and the Montreal Review of Books. Her chapbook, Other Brief Discourses, was published by Ottawa’s above/ground press in 2013. Abby was born and raised in Northern Vermont, and her solo show, Piecework: When We Were French, explores the legacy of French-Canadian immigration to northern New England. She has toured with the show throughout New England, and it is now available on DVD.

Nikki Sheppy is a poet, editor and arts journalist. She has a doctorate in English literature from the University of Calgary. Her book reviews have appeared in Uppercase Magazine, Alberta Views, and Lemon Hound, and her poetry in Event and Matrix. She serves as President of the Board of filling Station, Calgary’s experimental literary and arts magazine, and is the author of the poetry chapbook, Grrrrlhood: a ludic suite (Kalamalka 2014).

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator living in Fredericton, where he teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick.  His most recent chapbook, Albanian Suite, was published by above/ground press in 2014.  His previous chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, also published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award.

Amanda Earl reviews Sarah Rosenthal's Estelle Morning Star (2014), Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014), N.W. Lea's Present! (2014), Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014), Eric Baus' THE RAIN OF THE ICE (2014) and Rachel Moritz' Many forms in water (2014)

Amanda Earl was good enough to review Sarah Rosenthal's Estelle Morning Star (2014), Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014), N.W. Lea's Present! (2014), Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014), Eric Baus' THE RAIN OF THE ICE (2014) and Rachel Moritz' Many forms in water (2014) as a group post on a variety of above/ground press in 2014 so far over at her enormously clever blog (might this be a time to remind you about the 2015 subscriptions?). Thanks, Amanda! See her original post here, and all of the titles she mentioned are still available (so far). And, for those keeping track, there are three previous reviews of Martin's chapbook here and here and here, a previous review of Baus' chapbook here, a previous review of Lea's chapbook here, and two previous group reviews that include Lea and Thomas here and even here.

hunting for the dark: above/ground press...2014 so far...

on an unseasonably rainy & cold night in mid-August I had an appetite for the above. I wanted to look in less obvious places. I have a stack of above/ground press chapbooks published in 2014, since i am a subscriber…i was curious to see if any of the authors had a penchant for the Gothic, etc. what i found primarily was an overriding tone of anxiety concerning the monotony of 21st century existence. seems scary enough to me...

Sarah Rosenthal’s "Estelle Morning Star" fits the bill nicely with descriptions of women carrying “dying dead things” “emaciated/mangled/animals” I love her turns of phrase & odd juxtapositions, a sense of the macabre amongst business like celebration: “hard core birds in the / ballroom throw themselves/at convention windows/clatter to the table      their/colours running out.” she paints a vivid picture. Estelle wears mary janes.

Hugh Thomas gives us absurd portraits of anxious composers pursued by fierce demons in "Albanian Suite."“When I was with you, the ravens/and milktrucks made such music.” a fun use of black & white. in “Epithalamion” there are bite-marked necks, the monotony of waiting. “It misunderstands today’s poetry/overgrown with wildflowers to forget these sojourners.”  “Poetry is a pagoda, built of friendly embracings, like a square dance complicating society” … a ticket to days of radishes/and saliva” not to discount the beauty in these poems. it’s there between ice-cold moments: “Time, you murderous sun fills my lungs with honey,” there’s something sweetly chilling about that image. & another from “Selfportrait Unwilling to Sit”: “a tramcar apocalypse/on the move/dragging behind dissonance, divine regret.” there’s something Gothic about that image. & in “Metropolitan”: “The two sicknesses frequent in this epoch are heat and isolation.” Thomas’ poems alternate between the tiniest, spot on observations to elaborate, absurd images. I have to say, this is one of my favourite chapbooks this year so far. some of the poems are translations.

In "Present!" N.W. Lea opens with a gangster with rubber extendable arms holding someone up like a baby. an absurd image & not without its horrifying effect…followed later in the next poem in the sequence by “the swans of hurt/burn circles in the snow” there’s lots here about the terror of mundanity, of the burbs…even a littered cough candy is menacing: “a pale pink/half-sucked lozenge/on the pavement/glinting//plus us//have to contend with the teeth of the neighbourhood” you are “snug in your death-sweater.” there are “great swarms/of dusk-bats” "Present!" is a sequence of estrangement.

there are some menacing animals & a kind of helplessness, a monotony in Camille Martin’s "Sugar Beach:" “A leap of leopards under a crescent moon/happens without us, but we’re there/just the same.” “Newfangleness” Sharpshooters are juxtaposed with picnics in “Blind Engine.” In “No Such Identical Horses,” Martin writes, “I was counting on my favourite superstition/to endow the mirage with authority.” There are rotted leaves, wormy fruit, a beast stampeding down a trail, “the chitinous exoskeleton of a locust” & in the title poem a feeling of wasted extravagance in an image of a rusty tanker scooping “mounds of raw sugar.”  “Machine in the Ghost” evokes a cemetery scene. The poems in this chapbook are sound & image collages.

Eric Baus gives us fanciful nightmares of octopi with burned tentacles, ghosts, insects in “The Rain of Ice.” I loved how imaginative & unusual these prose poems were.

In “Many forms in water,” Rachel Moritz gives us white coffins, bitter flowers, gathering storms, “the ribbon of heat rising past digits black in air.” In “The finished forms in the sand record movement that has ceased,” this is a particularly grotesque image: “I carried her through the woods, slept in waterlogged leaves with her body on my chest.” This poem & the others manage to create a tone of melancholy, grief, poignant emotions. I’m quite enamoured of these poems, especially imagery like “How we carried the bell down irrevocable stairs, passed our sentence of doubt and kept moving.” in “Flowing water encounters a widely submerged outside.”

Edric Mesmer discusses (briefly) six recent above/ground press chapbooks;

Edric Mesmer was good enough to mention six recent above/ground press titles in the new issue of YELLOW FIELD (#nine; spring 2014): An Overture in the Key of F by Carrie Olivia Adams; The State of Which by Hailey Higdon; Sugar Beach by Camille Martin; from Hark: a journal by rob mclennan; Overheard While Hiding from the Sun: post-notebook poems by Kate Schapira; and Albanian Suite by Hugh Thomas). Thanks, Edric! There are two previous reviews of Adams' title here and here, a previous review of Higdon's title here, two previous reviews of Martin's title here and here, two previous reviews of mclennan's title here and here, and a previous review of Thomas' title here, and copies of all are very much available! Also, you can pick up a copy of the new issue of YELLOW FIELD through: yellowedenwaldfield [at] yahoo [dot] com or by writing to 1217 Delaware Avenue, Apt. 802, Buffalo, New York 14209. For those who haven’t been able to pick up an issue yet, I reprint such here:

6 more from above/ground press        2013-2014

I love a small press, what it can say through its poetics—in this case, chapbooks answering the call of a contemporary lea. Consider a cache of birds, a quintet of strings; but the trope may or mayn’t be limited to birdsong, string, or color-tone…Sometimes there’s a poem in which Buffalo poet emeritus Bill Sylvester writes: “pepper linen incense lobster / lutes viols and ambergris […] what a messy party that would be!” And so we messily hear a great party of Darwinian diversity: “The formalist of formant when our lips make the vowel, it I the act of giving somewhere shape” (An Overture in the Key of F by Carrie Olivia Adams); “I did some trying to voice the regional things –accents and whatnot / I even tried to find that series of hybridized creatures, part person / part place that exist in the park” (The State of Which by Hailey Higdon); “viewing creation / / from a precisely-gauged periphery, clock ticking” (Sugar Beach by Camille Martin); “A stone made out of stone. The dream of people you can’t know. Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, Bay. We know you, myth. What lifestyle will not allow” (from Hark: a journal by rob mclennan); “Anyone can submit / a video to the Free Me Library. Can find / purchase for brilliance, can be avenged sevenfold or / touched relevantly. All that can be shelved in me” (Overheard While Hiding from the Sun: post-notebook poems by Kate Schapira); “cadence address catch dreams / pays and agree, chlorate of poems, / empathic, the old epidemic / things themselves” (Albanian Suite by Hugh Thomas).

Ryan Pratt reviews Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014)

Ryan Pratt was good enough to review Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks, Ryan!

new from above/ground press: Albanian Suite, by Hugh Thomas

Albanian Suite

Hugh Thomas

$4

Triumph

What fraction I?  A delve of endlessness

in everything's great act.

One whirled among millions,

a first star like some last release.

Triumph at life, of other, triumph at finish til!

That moment ice-cold run its ardour,

hear night's deepest flood,

stand as mountain under sun.

Time changes, understands, controls;

you come with new ranks, a thousand lists to tie me.

Time, you murderous;

sun fills my lungs with honey,

says: the stars are going slower,

and nonetheless very quietly. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

January 2014

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Hugh Thomas is a poet and translator living in Fredericton, where he teaches mathematics at the University of New Brunswick. His most recent chapbook, Opening the Dictionary, published by above/ground press, was shortlisted for the 2012 bpNichol chapbook award. Franzlations, a collection of illustrated Kafka remixes, created with Gary Barwin and Craig Conley, was published by New Star Books in 2011.

This is his second chapbook with above/ground press, after Opening the Dictionary (2011).

[Hugh Thomas launches Albanian Suite on February 6, 2014 in Ottawa alongside m erskine and N.W. Lea as part of The Factory Reading Series]

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