some author activity: Houbolt, Earl, Campos, Cannon + Niespodziany,

Kyla Houbolt gets a spotlight with some new poems via the SHINE international poetry series; Amanda Earl is interviewed by Kathryn Mockler for Send My Love To Anyone; Earl is also offering poetry mentorships (with scholarships available); Isabel Sobral Campos is running an in-person workshop on Baudelaire, weekly across May, in Somerville MA; Frances Cannon has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Benjamin Niespodziany wrote on Chicago's Test Reading Series for Zona Motel.

some author activity: Saklikar, Eleftherion, Tierney, Cook, Campos, Niespodziany + Rogal,

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is interviewed by The British Columbia Review; Melissa Eleftherion, Orchid Tierney, Juliet Cook, Isabel Sobral Campos and Benjamin Niespodziany all have work up in the new issue of Action, Spectacle; and Stan Rogal has three poems up at The Temz Review.

some author activity: Heroux, Houbolt, Banks, Flemmer, Armantrout, Campos + Nilson,

Jason Heroux has some poems up at anti-heroin chic; Kyla Houbolt has a new poem up for National Poetry Month at the Chaudiere Books blog, as does forthcoming author Chris Banks and Kyle Flemmer; Rae Armantrout has a poem up in The New Yorker; Isabel Sobral Campos has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series, and do you know what Geoffrey Nilson has been up to?

some author activity: Witek, Armantrout, Burdick, Dardis + Campos,

forthcoming author Terri Witek has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Rae Armantrout has five new poems up at The Brooklyn Rail; Alice Burdick has two new poems and a statement in the Spotlight series; forthcoming author Colin Dardis also has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Isabel Sobral Campos has new work up at Black Sun Lit.

new from above/ground press: WAVE 1.0, by Isabel Sobral Campos

WAVE 1.0
Isabel Sobral Campos
$5

& read a biography of Amílcar Cabral

My mother writes her narratives

radiator heat, reflection at bay  

snow raptures windowpane

spinach patch swooning on winter burn

perhaps the nipple will be used

again, an aftermath I wake up

in a toll-breath of anxiety linking

time to loss as it remains evident

my furrowed brow when I look at her

thinking of time & timed processes

reproduction or repro

ducing what happened humble

assaying of facts, “mother land

or ancestral or lion’s land,”

one unravels the political

vision by unearthing a rock

from a building, Caxias, Peniche,

Tarrafal concentration camp

miscegenation by rape-contact

We know that stones speak

their actinic light rumbles

an ineffable shape unbeknownst

to urban colonials, lapidity 

of nightmares,^[1] a stone’s transudation

has a murmuring moan

then a brick in the sun, baked^[2]

seasonal layers, Atlantic fumes,

Finisterre ghosts on horseback

simmering western squalls

---

[1] “Cabral returned to Portuguese Guinea in 1952 to work has an agronomist. For two years he traveled extensively in the colony to conduct its first agricultural census. This gives him the opportunity to learn about the colonial realities experienced by the colonized. His seminal study on land use, crop cultivation, and, among other things, soil conditions, remains a work of reference.” Peter Karibe Mendy, Amílcar Cabral: A Nationalist and Pan-Africanist Revolutionary (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2019), 20.

[2] “The ‘Frigideira’ (frying pan), also known by prisoners as ‘extermination chamber’ or ‘torture chamber,’ was a place of punishment where prisoners were tortured, deprived of food and light, and subjected to temperatures as high as 50 to 60 degrees Celsius.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarrafal_concentration_camp

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

Isabel Sobral Campos is the author of How to Make Words of Rubble (Blue Figure Press, 2020), and Your Person Doesn’t Belong to You (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018). Other works include Material (No, Dear and Small Anchor Press, 2015), Autobiographical Ecology (above/ground press, 2019), and Sobriety Crystal (The Magnificent Field, 2021). Her poetry has appeared in the Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, and in the anthologies BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing and Poetics for the More-Than-Human World. A collaborative translation of Salette Tavares's LEX ICON is forthcoming in 2023 with Ugly Duckling Presse. She is the co-founder of the Sputnik & Fizzle publishing series.

This is Campos’ second above/ground press chapbook after Autobiographical Ecology (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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: mclennan, Campos, Mohammadi, Robinson + Saklikar,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Columba Poetry; Isabel Sobral Campos is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Khashayar Mohammadi has new work online at The Humber Literary Review; Elizabeth Robinson has three new poems up at Black Sun Lit; and Renée Sarojini Saklikar participates in the first episode of The League of Canadian Poets' Feminist Caucus in Conversation series 2022, alongside Heather Birrell and Phoebe Wang.

some author activity: Campos, Earl, mclennan, Cooley + Stuart,

Isabel Sobral Campos has some work in Folder magazine; Amanda Earl has contributed an experimental review to Carousel on Bahar Orang's debut; rob mclennan and Dennis Cooley read in the online 2Poets2 Tuesday Reading Series via Turnstone Press' YouTube channel; and Cecilia Stuart has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" at the dusie blog.

some author activity: Hamilton, Clayton, Barwin + Campos,

a video of Jane Eaton Hamilton reading for EVENT magazine's (Virtual) Fall Reading Series is now online ; Conyer Clayton has new work up (including audio) as part of the Decameron Writing Series; Gary Barwin has a "disaster fable" over at Watch Your Head; rob mclennan has a new poem from the "snow day" manuscript up at his blog; and Isabel Sobral Campos is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Jessica Thomas-Drake reviews Isabel Sobral Campos' Autobiographical Ecology (2019)

Jessica Drake-Thomas was good enough to provide the first review of Isabel Sobral Campos' Autobiographical Ecology (2019). Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. As Drake-Thomas writes:

“Notebook/is language peel, summary of misunderstanding in the wastebasket where/crumpled pages sleep,” the speaker says in Isabel Sobral Campos’s chapbook of poems, Autobiographical Ecology.

The book has the feel of reading a diary. It’s equal parts confessional and listing of observations, which evoke the chaos of life in the modern world.

“I have mused over my poverty as a writer. I have mused while taking my/ clothes off & slipping into a bathtub. I have thought of Sylva Plath in her/nightgown with a flashlight pointing at a word on a wall,// ‘Beware.'” References to Plath, Ashbery and Brainard are sprinkled throughout, situating the poet within the realms of confessional poetry, Postmodernism, and collage, which is exhibited throughout Autobiographical Ecology.

Each poem feels like a new entry, building upon the narrative of the confessional poet, writing in the notebook.

“Lemons, lemon peel, sweet potatoes (as if touching pearls) and avoiding mirrors especially in the/postpartum belly//”Oh there once was//:/a woman ‘//an animal ‘//a person ‘//inside an Ashbery poem'”

The entries reveal struggles with postpartum depression, how cataloging lists and observations and poetry brings a sense of order to the speaker. It’s how she begins to make sense of what’s happening to her and around her.

Sobral Campos’s poetry is teeming with raw emotion and particularly stunning images that are redolent with sensory details. I highly recommend Autobiographical Ecology, which is available through above/ground press.

some author activity: Robinson, Maloukis, Campos + Hogg,

Ben Robinson has some new work up at The /tƐmz/ Review; forthcoming author Rose Maloukis has an essay in the my (small press) writing day series; Isabel Sobral Campos is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" interview series; and Robert Hogg has three new poems (text and audio) up on the Pamenar Press website.

new from above/ground press: Autobiographical Ecology, by Isabel Sobral Campos

Autobiographical Ecology
Isabel Sobral Campos
$5

I set out to write a love letter and an account of a love affair: things done. things repaired. things enamored. the love affair, it turns out, could not be recounted. not because words failed to pervade in meaning. no. because the love affair was depleted of gravity. gravity gone, not even the ghost remained. thankfully there was Microsoft Word. the common feature of displacing text as if words unable to remain on the world’s surface (the page) were prevented from evaporating by the technical convenience of a processing operation. I didn’t attempt to make meaning out of this. meaning is the impossible here. the impossible is the love affair here. Microsoft Word understands about love. I find. Microsoft Word helps all lovers and recorders of love to blow back down words fleeing through space. blow. them. back. down. how you wonder? can something be blown back down? think of the hand touching the mouse dragging this word here and that one there. a phoneme and a morpheme too. not seeing the word(s). not attempting to make an arrangement pleasurable to the senses. not attempting to tap into the precision of events or experience. not following a visual shape that resembles a nice-looking organization of lines and spaces. just dragging up and down so short-circuiting gravity. some may call it revenge on atmospheric conditions. or a critique of attraction poles. I rather think it a sigh bubbling up from the intestines. one day I will write a love poem. with a curling frame of arabesques so hefty and unwieldy so capable of seducing gravity. I will forget about Microsoft’s wisdom then.

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

Isabel Sobral Campos is the author of Your Person Doesn’t Belong to You (Vegetarian Alcoholic Press, 2018), and the chapbooks Material (No, Dear/Small Anchor Press, 2015) and You Will Be Made of Stone (dancing girl press, 2018). Her poetry has appeared in Bone Bouquet, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. She is the co-founder of the Sputnik & Fizzle publishing series.

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

some author activity: Campos, Cortese, Earl, Mangold, fitzpatrick + Etherin,

forthcoming above/ground press author Isabel Sobral Campos has an essay up at my (small press) writing day; Franco Cortese has new poems and a statement as part of rob mclennan's Spotlight series; Amanda Earl has new work in talking about strawberries all of the time, as do Sarah Mangold and ryan fitzpatrick, where Anthony Etherin is also interviewed.