some author activity: Burdick, Nećakov, Schmaltz + Henning,

Alice Burdick has a new essay up at The New Quarterly; Lillian Nećakov is interviewed alongside Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag for the podcast Meat for Teacast; Eric Schmaltz is interviewed by Myra Bloom at ASAP Review; and Barbara Henning has new work up at Long News.

some author activity: Barwin + Nećakov, Harder, Ebbitt, Koss, Adams + Pirie,

Gary Barwin and Lillian Nećakov have work from a collaboration-in-progress over at talking about strawberries all of the time, where Shelly Harder also has new work, and Pearl Pirie has new work, and Katie Ebbitt is interviewed; Zane Koss has a poem on the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, ; Carrie Olivia Adams writes on her reading series, poetry, and biscuits over at LitHub; and Pearl Pirie has two new poems up at The Pi Review.

some author activity: Ross, Nećakov, Earl, Kemp-Gee, Crosby + Marlatt,

Stuart Ross has a new poem up at NewPoetry.ca; Lillian Nećakov has new work up at The Galway Review; Amanda Earl has a piece in the "poetry pause" series, via The League of Canadian Poets; Meghan Kemp-Gee has a poem in Paul Vermeersch’s “In the Third Sleep” series; Gregory Crosby is working an online workshop, "Speaking Through A Mask: Persona & Dramatic Monologue"; and did you see that forthcoming author Daphne Marlatt is receiving an honorary degree through the University of British Columbia this spring?

some author activity: Armantrout, Maloukis, Heroux, Cannon, Bolster + Nećakov,

Rae Armantrout has a new poem up at the London Review of Books; Rose Maloukis offers a list of what she's been reading lately over at The New Quarterly; Jason Heroux has work up in the Spotlight series; Frances Cannon is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Stephanie Bolster is included in the "Canadian Poets Series" via Peripety and/or Tronies; and Lillian Nećakov has a new poem up in Paul Vermeersch's "In the Third Sleep" series.

above/ground press author spotlights : substack : Trivedi, Houglum, Tierney, Christie, Gray, Reid, Unsworth, Ballard, O’Reilly, Ladouceur, Sikkema, Siklosi, Norris, Nećakov, Saklikar, Fagan, Earl + Downs,

Since building my above/ground press substack last spring, I've started posting a series of interviews with above/ground press authors (new platform, new project, after all), focusing on authors published through the press with a new/recent chapbook, as well as multiple publications with the press, to give each interview a bit more heft. Since May, I've posted interviews with Amish Trivedi, Brook Houglum, Orchid Tierney, Jason Christie, Steph Gray, Monty Reid, Lydia Unsworth, Micah Ballard, Nathanael O’Reilly, Ben Ladouceur, Michael Sikkema, Kate Siklosi, Ken Norris, Lillian Nećakov, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Cary Fagan, Amanda Earl and Buck Downs, with forthcoming interviews still to post with poets including russell carisse, Pearl Pirie, Guy Birchard, Jill Stengel, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, N.W. Lea and Gary Barwin, among others. Otherwise, I do post a round-up of new publications every two months or so, as well as a round-up of the weekly "author activity" posts, also every two months or so (but I didn't want the substack to simply be a replication of the blog, right?) Free to sign up! And lands as an email, direct to your in-box. Huzzah! And can you believe the press turns thirty-three years old this summer? Gadzooks!

new from above/ground press: The World is Beautiful, by Lillian Nećakov

The World is Beautiful 
Lillian Nećakov
$6

The World is Beautiful

David Hockney says the world is beautiful. I believe him, because I am an optimist, knowing the average weights of the organs of the human body, knowing, there is a kind of reincarnation, even after you tell them, you sometimes wished you were a boy. Knowing the brain, at 49 ½ oz. Avoir – one thousand, three hundred eighty-nine point 13 grams and a bit more - is generous enough to endure both imagination and crown through the acrobatics of feasts and funerals.

David Hockney’s heart equals 11 oz. His eyes are the word we use for the colour of water, he widens the Grand Canyon as easily as letting out a seam, says the world is beautiful and I believe him. Knowing that lungs {right 24 oz. left 21 oz.} are the colanders of time, cradling vestiges of scree from the mass of one breath {0.5-5 g} times a lifetime. Knowing that there are lakes drowning in the whimsical ether of a tourniquet-wielding junkie-planet, invisible and blue.

David Hockney believes me when I say the world is beautiful, knowing that every swimming pool is a small bit of heaven where you and Fred Astaire are always cheek to cheek, knowing that a body in motion stays in motion, knowing that the executioner never takes his finger off the trigger, not even when the kiss is slower than death. Knowing that Popeye clung to Olive Oyl behind the spinach cannery while the sun parched our lips raw. Knowing that night is coming, like a confession, dressed in raspberry, saw-toothed hot pants.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Lillian Nećakov is the author of many chapbooks, including, The Lake Contains and Emergency Room (Apt. 9 Press; shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award), as well as the full-length collections il virus (Anvil Press; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Hooligans (Mansfield Press), The Bone Broker (Mansfield Press), Hat Trick (Exile Editions), Polaroids (Coach House Books), The Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak and Wynn), Midnight Glossolalia, a collaborative poetry collection with Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag (Meat for Tea Press), Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin (Guernica Editions). She has also published in many print and online journals in Canada and the U.S. Lillian lives in Toronto.

This is Nećakov’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after 3¢ Pulp (2022).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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: Barwin, Nećakov, Cain, mclennan, Smith + Davis,

Gary Barwin and Lillian Nećakov have some collaborative work up in the Tuesday poem series; Book*hug Press features Stephen Cain as part of their National Poetry Month spotlight series; rob mclennan has a new poem on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month; Mahaila Smith is interviewed in the 12 or 20 questions series; and Jordan Davis is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Jay Miller reviews Lillian Nećakov's 3¢ Pulp (2022)

Montreal poet, translator and reviewer Jay Miller was good enough to provide the first review of Lillian Nećakov's 3¢ Pulp (2022) over at Bibelotages. Thanks so much! You can read Miller's original post here. As Miller writes:

Lillian Nećakov is a sharp-witted, empathetic, and really cool human being. Her Mansfield Press poems, Hooligans (2011), introduced me to Mos Def’s Mathematics in a time of my life when I was listening to everything I could get my hands on of conscious rap-inspired songwriters like k-os and Buck 65. It sort of blew my mind.

The majority of her work I am woefully unfamiliar with and today is my attempt to rectify that lack of familiarity by reviewing her 2022 above/ground chapbook 3¢ Pulp.

Funny enough, she might be the only Canadian writer I can think of who bears a diacritic on the C in her surname, so seeing the cent symbol in the title of a chapbook of hers sort of makes me think of that. Is it a little inside joke about being Nećakov, perhaps, or am I reading too much into it? It’s probably actually something relating to philately.

I believe I was around to witness the work-in-progress for her 2021 collection, il virus, published with Anvil Press under Stuart Ross’s imprint A Feed Dog Book. The poems were published on social media during the 2020 lockdown in Toronto and widely shared and discussed if I accurately recollect. I look forward to revisiting those poems in an actual review someday soon.

But for the time being, let’s dive into the chapbook at hand.

The cover design is her own, and the inside of the chap has a ferocious pink flyleaf, front and back.

The first poem is preceded by an epigraph by Diane di Prima, an American beat poet, which reads: My friend walks soft as a weaving on the wind..., a line from the third stanza of her poem “An Exercise in Love”.

The first poem opens with a vivid setting of the scene:

    When Birds Were Just Birds
    for those who were...

    1

    Remember that time we were just kids
    and so many of us were still alive
    and we watched Lawrence of Arabia naked
    in our small apartment on Isabella

It’s a poem about nostalgia and a kind of reminiscence in the form of an ode to her friends.

A beautiful line occurs several spaces below:

    and sometimes we’d remember old streets
    we lived on with brothers as subtle as lumberjacks
    and we sat up late listening to records
    on Steve’s old portable, a bottle holding
    down the vinyl so it wouldn’t skip
    we were Trotskyists and sometimes Partisans
    but only for a minute
    mostly we were poets in our tiny kitchen
    and Yonge street
    where voices and faces and the horizon
    all came and went like snow
    was enough

Then the poem concludes the next page over:

    and we were just kids
    and we never thought we’d end up
    we never thought we’d end up
    orphans

You couldn’t ask for a better closing line to an opening poem. Nećakov’s staying force, sense of dramatic build-up, and absolutely nailing the delivery is the same Nećakov I recall from all those years ago seeing her read at The Grad Club, where she read poems such as “Why?” and “Boneshaker” (the name of the bicycle on the cover of the Mansfield book, as well as of her former Toronto reading series).

More than empathetic, I have always found Nećakov to be sentimental. It’s a quality lost on most writers, I think. With the depth of her emotion and her undeterred ability to read the room with every poem and enunciate accordingly, it’s no surprise Boneshaker lasted as long as it did (2010-2020).

Jim Smith (a writer who knows the true meaning of love), said in response to Nećakov’s shuttering the series, “It was the very best, curated by the best, read at by the best, attended by the best! It will never be bested, and on behalf of the readers and the read-to, you are the best! Thank you for the incredible loving effort it was.” Smith and Nećakov go way back, of course (and I’m pretty sure is mentioned in the opening poem of this chap, “two friends named Jim”, in fact).

So that’s what this book is about, I sense. Three-cent, perhaps being a Canadianism for threepenny, speaks to Nećakov et co.’s Brechtian ambitions as young poets in Toronto in the seventies, etc. These are poems about friendship, celebrating what made every person unique, the grassroots atmosphere and intellectual era they shepherded into the 21st century, and so much more.

They are poems but could equally be considered tangible historical record for a period of time stretching two or three decades that has been abundantly documented yet haphazardly archived, that of the late 20th-century Toronto arts and culture, I mean; so many mementos and souvenirs in so many exhibits, documentaries and interviews, to which Nećakov has added a humbly sentimental slice of her own.

From the poem labelled simply “2” the next page over:

    Remember when birds were just birds
    and not a thousand ways to wish
    for the body to stop being broken
    and we cradled our books like dying girls
    because there were never enough words
    or skin to explain what we yet did not know
    and some of us got married
    and some of us got punched
    and we wandered the streets shadow to shadow
    under a softening sky
    while the oak trees creaked and moaned the blues
    all the way down Gloucester
    where we ate pizza and talked about god and
    sometimes Kurt Schwitters
    and we tallied up how much we owed Charlie
    at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library
    for all those damn books we kept buying
    and we wrote our childhood dogs into every ending
    and sometimes our thoughts were as scattered
    as grasshoppers
    and we borrowed jars from Carlo the waiter
    in an attempt to collect every last one of them
    and hurried home to listen to their divinity

Every poem begins with the word “Remember”, sorta how David W. McFadden used to do it, borrowing the technique from Georges Perec, but interestingly putting the verb in the imperative, absent the singular first-person subject pronoun. It’s an intimate invitation to revisit the past with her.

The fifth poem opens with this incredible hook: Remember how it was before we met our heroes / each day a museum, I can’t help but linger on the opening lines, only to speed through the rest of the poem and arrive at the end too soon to prevent heartache:

    and we remembered that one day we would sit Shiva
    one day the tether would break
    one day we’d remember how easily we forgot

This opening poem is 7 in total, in fact, but afterwards, the poems begin to have titles again instead of numbers but never shift in tone:

    Zero Sky
    for Gary Barwin

    Remember telegrams and long-distance operators and that time they asked
    Beckett if he had any new year’s resolutions and he said;
    resolutions colon zero stop period. And how I cut my hair and we drove to
    Hamilton in Shirley’s Reliant K for Beth and Gary’s wedding. [...]

This is Nećakov’s contribution to the Beat tradition, something that has always held a special place in readers’ hearts, I imagine. And she is true to the spirit of the letter, really. Toronto’s poetry scene really was a beat-like movement, in its own way, although the movement maybe transformed into an era as background characters gave space to the lead actors and the world stage lurched forward through time.

It is bittersweet to read Nećakov’s poems here, and realize simultaneously how fortunate we are to get this inspired series of anecdotes, with all the names and places sprinkled throughout like we know them as well as her, and she lets us, and how we will never have another generation of poets, so brilliant, so self-reliant, so unfettered, so raw, and so talented, ever again. For a book so brief and light to the touch, it nearly brings a tear to my eye just to hold it and read quietly in my apartment’s warm and cozy solitude of afternoon weekend silence

Villanelles
after Mark Laba

Remember Mark Laba standing in the crow-black, in the crow-black eyes of Goya, always, standing, in the front rooms of John and Peggy’s, above the tailor shop while the Queen car lured 5 am doorways into sleep, standing in the Harpo Marx grins of slaughterhouses, in the 24 hour Freshmart on Church street, standing, carving villanelles into Thursday’s corned beef while the rest of us dreamed punk jesus swinging from the power lines. Remember too, those beautiful boys in stilettos with painted mouths, standing, waiting on the crow-black hearts of monsters, standing, in the jerk-off alleys behind the butcher’s, standing on unsteady legs, like spooked colts. Remember walking north, then south, and always ending up just west of the darkness but east of the light. Remember how every book was a holy cross, a bus out of here an un-hexing, a long nights’ journey into the sun’s holler. Remember decades later, standing together in two different cities, standing, on the shores of permanent wartime, surrendering to all those poets humming in their crow-black coffins.

I read this poem and feel momentarily speechless. I don’t expect most people to relate. Even though, as a reviewer, I should probably at some point slip in a sales pitch for the author at hand, if you haven’t already read any Mark Laba, him and Nećakov are really the take-home points of this review here.

When you’re done reading, go find their works; you won’t regret it, and better yet, you’ll know why I can’t help but shut up and share this poem. It is so Mark Laba. What a prize. All these poems are so good, but this one especially speaks exactly to everything I was saying above. I guess we can just leave it at that.

And John is none other than jwcurry, who also captured the scan of the chap’s cover used in this review.

It’s like Stuart Ross said in his Book of Grief and Hamburgers; I’m paraphrasing: sometimes you catch yourself grieving in the past, present and future tense, and you don’t even know what for.

The number of poets Stuart has introduced me to, on paper and in person over the years, Lillian included, is simply too many to count. Coming from a completely separate generation myself, I know the poets they remember are beyond too many, and I think that’s why, when you stumble across a quiet little black-and-white chapbook such as 3¢ Pulp, hiding its hot pinkness right behind its grayscale cover, you begin to understand the ethos of the group.

It’s not a clique. You’re allowed in. It’s a generation we’re in the process of losing one-by-one, and only a poet like Nećakov could pin down exactly what that feels like and how to lay it down in poems for everyone to reminisce.

The next time I'm travelling and someone asks me what Canadian literature is, this is what I’m gonna tell them it’s all about. Lillian Nećakov is walking-living-breathing Canadian literature. Or, in a word, to quote Jim Smith: Lillian Nećakov is the best.

Lillian Nećakov and Karen Massey are Finalists for The Montreal International Poetry Prize!

In case you hadn't heard, Toronto poet Lillian Nećakov (3¢ Pulp) and Ottawa poet Karen Massey (bullet, Strange fits of beauty & light, SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE), both above/ground press authors, have poems included in the list of fifty-one finalists for this year's Montreal International Poetry Prize! Congratulations!

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.

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day three of five: Nećakov, Trivedi, Christie, Kelsey + Rebrec,

Furthering this week’s thread as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary as an adjunct to this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair, one might begin to ask: just how offsite is offsite? What does it mean, exactly? One suspects that, in the end, we might discover that the true meaning of #AWP was actually inside of us this whole time.

Lillian Nećakov is the author many chapbooks, including The Lake Contains and Emergency Room (Apt. 9 Press; shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award), as well as the full-length collections il virus (Anvil Press; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Hooligans (Mansfield Press), The Bone Broker (Mansfield Press), Hat Trick (Exile Editions), Polaroids (Coach House Books) and The Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak and Wynn). Her new book, Midnight Glossolalia, a collaborative poetry collection with Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag was published in February, 2023 (Meat for Tea Press). Her other new book, duck eats yeast, quacks, explodes; man loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin is forthcoming in May 2023 from Guernica Editions. She has also published in many print and online journals in Canada and the U.S. Lillian lives in Toronto.

Amish Trivedi is the author of three books, most recently FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press). He has poems in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. He has an MFA from Brown, a Ph.D. from Illinois State, and is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Delaware.

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: Glass Language Untitled Exaltation (excerpt) (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.

Laura Kelsey is a poet and performer living in Nanaimo, B.C., which is on Snuneymuxw First Nations Territory. Her poems have appeared in publications including the New Chief Tongue, the Carnegie Newsletter, Stone Pacific Zine and Sea & Cedar Magazine; and her debut chapbook west coast shorts was published by above/ground press in May 2022. Her four-song debut EP Hunting Season is out April 29.

Angela Rebrec lives and works on the unceeded, ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, scəw̓aθən, Stó:lō, and qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ peoples. Her most recent writing has appeared in Vallum, Prairie Fire, GRAIN, The Dalhousie Review, as well as the anthology Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions, 2020). Angela’s poetry films have been recognized at the Barcelona International Film Festival, FilmmakerLife Awards, and Santa Barbara International Shortfest, among others. Her 2020 collaboration with composer Mickie Wadsworth for ART SONG LAB has been included in NewMusicShelf’s Anthology of New Music for Trans & Nonbinary Voices, vol.1. Angela is active in her community supporting the arts by facilitating writing and expressive arts workshops for kids and adults of all age. She is the founding and current president of the Delta Literary Arts Society (DLAS).

HAL magazine, guest edited by Karl Jirgens : Bowering, Spinosa, Earl, Tucker, Davey, Hogg, Clarke, McCaffery, Betts, beaulieu, Rogal, Hall, Lynes, Nećakov, mclennan, Barwin, Arnott, Ross + Norris,

In case you haven't seen, above/ground press author Karl Jirgens guest-edited the fourteenth anniversary issue of Hamilton Arts and Letters, and included work by a whole ton of folk, including numerous (current and former) above/ground press authors! Why not check out the issue as a whole? Or check out the specific submissions by George Bowering, Dani Spinosa, Amanda Earl, Aaron Tucker, Frank Davey, Robert Hogg, George Elliott Clarke, Steve McCaffery, Gregory Betts, derek beaulieu, Stan Rogal, Phil Hall, Jeanette Lynes, Lillian Nećakov, rob mclennan, Gary Barwin, Joanne Arnott, Stuart Ross and Ken Norris! And there are bunches of others as well! So you really have to check out the issue as a whole, really.

new from above/ground press: 3¢ Pulp, by Lillian Nećakov

3¢ Pulp
Lillian Nećakov
$5

California Redwoods

Remember how we had to walk
all the way to Telegraph Hill
Union Square and Embarcadero
because the San Francisco Municipal Railway
was on furlough?
and we found ourselves on Russian Hill
each holding a copy of Imaginary Elegies
we had just bought at City Lights
and the ocean spread out below
like a giant hand and somewhere
in the distance, the crackling
of a transistor radio, Cielito Lindo
as the curious chemistry of hydrangea
spilled into the traffic
and for some reason we thought of
Myrna Loy and William Powell
and our oval-shaped syllables braided
into the technicolour blue spring
forming tiny soundwaves that would
later be played over KPFA Radio
on Doo Wop Delights and I would be
a Russian ballet dancer and Opal Nations
would declare checkmate in his tiny office
on Martin Luther King Jr Way in Berkley
and we would grow wild and we would
leave and the California redwoods
would remain in the twilight
of their unfathomable muteness.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Lillian Nećakov is the author of six books of poetry, numerous chapbooks, broadsides and leaflets. Her new book il virus was published in April 2021 by Anvil Press (A Feed Dog Book). In 2016, her chapbook The Lake Contains an Emergency Room was shortlisted for bpNichol chapbook award. During the 1980s she ran a micro press called “The Surrealist Poets Gardening Association” and sold her books on Toronto’s Yonge Street. She ran the Boneshaker Reading series from 2010-2020. She lives in Toronto and just might be working on a new book.

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: Reid, Hunter, mclennan, Nećakov + Brown,

Monty Reid has some new work posted online at IceFloe Press, and a poem-response to the #OttawaOccupation over at Train: a poetry journal; Carrie Hunter is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; rob mclennan's poem-response to the #OttawaOccupation is now up at his blog; Lillian Nećakov is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Simon Brown is interviewed via poetry mini interviews.

some author activity: Dreiblatt, Adams, mclennan, Nećakov, Novak + Hofmann,

Ian Dreiblatt responds as part of the "12 or 20 questions" interview series; Carrie Olivia Adams was recently interviewed by Zach Savich for Tupelo Quarterly; rob mclennan has posted a memorial poem on his blog for Phyllis Webb; forthcoming author Lillian Nećakov has a poem in the "poetry pause" via The League of Canadian Poets; JoAnna Novak has a piece in The New Yorker; and Ava Hofmann has some new work up at Territory.