some author activity: Konchan, Witek, van Vliet, Drescher, Oniță + Armantrout,

Virginia Konchan has a poem up at Sixth Finch; forthcoming author Terri Witek is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Robert van Vliet has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; the video of an October 2023 reading at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University by Julia Drescher and C. J. Martin is now online as part of the Poetry Center Digital Archive; Adriana Oniță has work in the Spotlight series; and Rae Armantrout has four new poems up at Plume.

new from above/ground press: “Almost Alive,” by Julia Drescher

“Almost Alive”
Julia Drescher
$5

If beginning exists it might be a rhythm

Lists, questions, organisms

“Beyond the surfaces of support”

This vulgar flower, that trashy nerve

Venting valvic & pinched

“Attracting men who become defensive”

Every monday late august a different century

In the dim light of morning a leaden prosody goes walking

It gathers its skirts & squats

With descriptive organs

A flowering muscle’s slow mountain

A discomposure in the shoulder

The jaw falls open

With an unfamiliar sense

It is acorn-shaped, it is brushing gradients

Slow curves & passing language

Time breeds surface & rhythm works

Weather like a gift gone wrong

Walking & wiping its face on the lawn

Where the body collapses, more or less

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

Julia Drescher has one full-length collection from Delete Press (OPEN EPIC, 2017) & chapbooks from Dancing Girl Press, Further Other Book Works, & ypolita. This is her third title from above/ground press, after BLATTA & Metastatic Flower (2020). She lives in Colorado.

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

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day two of five: MacEachern, Heroux, Vallières, Webb + Drescher,

Furthering yesterday’s post, as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. I mean, offsite means offsite, right?

Jessi MacEachern (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, as well as the chapbooks Television Poems, You Do Not Like Animal Sounds, and Ravishing the Sex into the Hold. Her new chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is forthcoming with above/ground press in 2023 and her new poetry collection Cut Side Down is forthcoming with Invisible in 2025. She is the 2022–24 reviewer of Poetics for Oxford University Press’s This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Bishop’s University.

Jason Heroux was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of four books of poetry: Memoirs of an Alias (2004); Emergency Hallelujah (2008); Natural Capital (2012) and Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines (2016). His recent books include a short fiction collection Survivors of the Hive (Radiant Press) and two poetry chapbooks: New and Selected Days (Origami Poems Project) and Something or Other (above/ground press).

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Grain, and Event, among other places. His chapbook Poor Rutebeuf, a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, just appeared through above/ground press. His first book of poems, Versus, is out with Véhicule Press.

Lindsey Webb is the author of the chapbooks House (Ghost Proposal, 2020) and Perfumer’s Organ (above/ground press, 2023). Her writings have appeared in Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and Lana Turner, among others. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she is a Steffensen Cannon fellow in the PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

Julia Drescher is the author of OPEN EPIC (Delete Press, 2017). Her above/ground chapbooks are BLATTA & Metastatic Flower (2020). She lives in Colorado.

some author activity: Johnson, Earl, Drescher, Kaplan + Novak,

Chris Johnson has a new poem up at The Pi Review; Amanda Earl has a visual poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; Julia Drescher has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and both Genevieve Kaplan and forthcoming author JoAnna Novak have work in the latest issue of Posit.

new from above/ground press: METASTATIC FLOWER, by Julia Drescher

METASTATIC FLOWER
Julia Drescher
$5


 
slow exposure flown frame splinter takes you in.

& tulip is a dog is part of a mouth a flower. come

posted from the clavicle dig in. i like your lips!

grid to gird incloser come awol. hammer bristles

inside the pine cone una corda sharp shell sharp

sweep barely. this petalling outmode bears earth

in some keys—speak to me like a woman

speaks. a belly rail plate music's damp

tone what erodes you—hole up in your house.



published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Julia Drescher is the author of Open Epic (Delete Press). She lives in Colorado where she co-edits the press Further Other Book Works with C.J. Martin.

This is Drescher’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after BLATTA (2020).

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: BLATTA, by Julia Drescher

BLATTA
Julia Drescher
$5

Did solitude ever exist?

Scrap metal from bombs exposed.

Punctuation hurts.


A passive tumbling instrument of.

Experiments in such, the grid's diffract by did.


The larynx of an animal throws at the illusion of a fixed position.

If you hiss you can pray to roaches against God.

Low trees. Have you gotten to the bottom of things? Waivering.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Julia Drescher is the author of Open Epic (Delete Press). She lives in Colorado where she co-edits the press Further Other Book Works with C.J. Martin. A second above/ground press title is forthcoming.

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