some author activity: mclennan, Tate, Kaminski, Hunter, Reed, Mavreas + Desbarats,

above/ground authors rob mclennan, Bronwen Tate, Megan Kaminski and Carrie Hunter etc participate in the dusie kollektiv 9, as a tribute to the late Marthe Reed, with new chapbooks in tribute to Reed now online as free pdfs via DUSIE 22; Billy Mavreas has new visual work up at Train : a poetry journal; and Michelle Desbarats has new work in the Glebe Report.

new from above/ground press: Somewhere in-between / cloud, by rob mclennan

Somewhere in-between / cloud
rob mclennan
$5

I was trying to write an elegy. Contrails. What is our relationship to the human body? A land we stand upon and spoil. Tales of villainy, richness. Darkness. The earth provides.




Colonizers
name

and rename.

No longer of being,
but belonging.

How, then,
to write?

Truth lies
in the destruction.

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

published in Ottawa by above/ground press, April 2019 as part of Dusie Kollektiv 9: “Somewhere in the Cloud and Inbetween”—A Tribute to Marthe Reed (1958-2018) as an unofficial/official element of this year’s New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 18-21, 2019. Much thanks to Susana Gardner for her ongoing support.

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, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collections How the alphabet was made (Spuyten Duyvil, 2018), A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2019). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics (ottawater.com/seventeenseconds), Touch the Donkey (touchthedonkey.blogspot.com) and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater (ottawater.com). He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

This is mclennan’s sixty-first above/ground press chapbook, following Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (2017). This chapbook, along with snow day, is part of the as-yet-unpublished manuscript, “snow day.”

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: Perry, Mavreas, Dreiblatt, Iijima, Reed + Gray,

forthcoming above/ground press author Paul Perry answers the "12 or 20 questions" interview; Billy Mavreas is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Ian Dreiblatt is now a columnist for The Believer; Brenda Iijima introduces the late Marthe Reed's Arc Hive via Tupelo Quarterly; and Evan Gray has a poem up in the Tuesday poem series via the Dusie blog.

some author activity: Eleftherion, Kaminski, Reed + Barwin,

Melissa Eleftherion has some new work in issue #20 of the online Pretty Owl Poetry, as well as two new poems up at Nomadic Coffee; an article on the University of Kansas website features Megan Kaminski and her latest above/ground press chapbook; Jacket2 posted a short piece remembering the late poet Marthe Reed; and Gary Barwin is interviewed for the first in a new series of podcasts hosted by Hamilton Review of Books, conducted/hosted by Krista Foss.

Greg Bem reviews Marthe Reed's coastal geometries (2018)

Our pal Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first review for the late (great) Marthe Reed's coastal geometries (2018) at Goodreads. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

This is a fantastic book. Not knowing much about Martha Reed, I found her poems in this collection to be stunning in their precision and their evocations. The quantity is just right. The constraint around the theme is just right as well. I'm grateful for having encountered this work.

Marthe Reed : d. April 10, 2018

American poet, editor, publisher and above/ground press author Marthe Reed died earlier today, after suffering a stroke yesterday. I'm rather stunned by it, as so many are (and thank you to Laura Mullen, who gave me a head's up). Condolences to Michael, and their two children. Here's a photo of Marthe with intern Rose, during our family visit to their house in Syracuse, just over a year ago. I'll write up a proper obit soon, on my own blog. But for now, there is this.

new from above/ground press: coastal geometries, by Marthe Reed

coastal geometries
Marthe Reed
$5

threnody

knowing how this will end
such an awkward alliance
an ache that is not pain
magnolia sweet

raising the levees again and again
shelling boiled peanuts
bowing a fiddle
getting there all along

amid the soak and flow
a good life
up and down the coast
barges and rigs

oilfields   
gambling on spring and summer
drilled that hole, toolpushing
and quit come trapping season

boat in the water
boat in the water

it gets away from you
this senseless        thrashing

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

Marthe Reed has published five books: Nights Reading (Lavender Ink, 2014); Pleth, with j hastain (Unlikely Books, 2013); (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books, 2013); Gaze (Black Radish Books, 2010); Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink, 2007). The author of six chapbooks, her collaborative chapbook thrown, text by j hastain with Reed’s collages, won the 2013 Smoking Glue Gun contest (2016). Her poetry has been published in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, Entropy, New Orleans Review, HOW2, Fairy Tale Review, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVOX, and The Offending Adam, among others. Reed lives in Syracuse, NY, and is co-publisher and managing editor for Black Radish Books. Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing in the Anthropocene, edited with Linda Russo, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press (August 2018).

This is Reed’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after After Swann (2013).

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 25th anniversary essay: Marthe Reed

This is the fourteenth 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.

Out of the blue, rob mclennan queries whether he could publish a second chap of mine with above / ground press. Let’s put out the work, see how it flies, comes his email. A constant current of activity out of Ottawa, asking, publishing, promoting: what are you up to, what’s new, what have you published, updating the above / ground blog for all of his many published poets, following their work, getting the word out. This is the singular joy of above / ground, of perhaps the most industrious publisher in the poetry business—the gifts of appreciation, of shared endeavor in poetry, of an open and generous spirit.

At above / ground, one finds oneself in-the-midst of an unfolding “conversation” with poets from across Canada, the United States, and beyond. New discoveries—from N.W. Lea, “everything is second-hand, a pedestrian/ bargain. Rummage// in the pitch/ toque” to Rachel Mindell, “Sometimes the only sane answer/ to a senseless world is paranoia./ New clothes, mascara. A wig maybe”; and familiar loves, Alice Notely’s new Undo, "The century or year or night one might bloom a miracle/ A night-blooming cereus white   this could heal you/ Or decorate the new abyss turn the year backwards”—all gathered in a single sweep through above /ground press. Twenty-five years along, rob’s chapbook press delight for its invitations, inclusions, and ambitious reach. How does rob do it all? Chapbooks of both poems and short essays, perfect-bound books, magazines, blogs, Dusie’s poem-a-week, a reading series, book reviews, at least two interview series. He gives us a sense of that creative tumult in his own new chap above / ground chap, snow day:

Anna Gurton-Wachter responds to my email. Monty Reid responds to my email. Nikki Sheppy responds to my email. Stephen Brockwell responds to my email. Neil Flowers responds to my email. Pearl Pirie responds to my email. David O’Meara responds to my email. Annick MacAskill responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email. Sarah Burgoyne responds to my email. Shazia Hafiz Ramji responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email. natalie hanna responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email. Christine McNair responds to my email.
 

Ian Williams responds to a photograph of my home office: “Don’t you feel perpetually overwhelmed?” 

“I saw the photo of your writing desk and wanted to close the door.”

rob’s query to me this time round came in the midst of finalizing a manuscript I had been working on for 10 years, as well as planning for a reading at the New Orleans poetry festival. Could he have the chap ready by then? Of course, he could and did, coastal geographies, an excerpt from my forthcoming Ark Hive: a memoir of South Louisiana (The Operating System, 2019)—bringing the work home to the ground which inspirited it. How lucky to find that email in my inbox, how lucky to be asked for work, how many pleasures and encounters along the way. Gifts and gratitude from/to all the poets, and, most of all, to that “hardest working man in po-biz”, rob mclennan.

Marthe Reed has published five books: Nights Reading (Lavender Ink, 2014); Pleth, with j hastain (Unlikely Books, 2013); (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books, 2013); Gaze (Black Radish Books, 2010); Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink, 2007). A sixth collection, ARK HIVE will be published by The Operating System (2019). The author of six chapbooks, her collaborative chapbook thrown, text by j hastain with Reed's collages, won the 2013 Smoking Glue Gun contest (2016). Her poetry has been published in BAX2014, New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, Entropy, New Orleans Review, Jacket2, Fairy Tale Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Volta, and The Offending Adam, among others. Desperation: A Glossary for Writing in the Anthropocene, co-edited with Linda Russo, will be published by Wesleyan University Press in 2018. Reed is co-publisher and managing editor for Black Radish Books and lives in Syracuse, NY.

Marthe Reed is the author of two above/ground press titles, including After Swann (2013), and coastal geometries, out later this month.

some author activity: Beaulieu, Price, Cook, Archer + Reed,

"At a Distance from One's Own Body: A Conversation with Derek Beaulieu and Katie L. Price" is now online at Hamilton Arts & Letters; Sarah Cook has a new essay on Anne Sexton over at many gendered mothers; forthcoming author Sacha Archer has some new work up at h&; and Marthe Reed is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

New Orleans Poetry Festival + Small Press Fair, April 20-23, 2017 : Smith, Iijima, Hunter, Reed + Poe, etc

above/ground press authors Jessica Smith (The Lover is Absent, 2017), Brenda Iijima (SWAMP/SWAMP, 2017), Carrie Hunter (Series out of Sequence, 2017), Marthe Reed (After Swann, 2013) and Deborah Poe (Keep, 2012) read along with a whole mound of other poets as part of this year's New Orleans Poetry Festival and Small Press Fair, April 20-23, 2017 in New Orleans, Louisiana. You can see their full schedule here.

dusie kollektiv #8, curated by rob mclennan, now online

The 8th “dusie kollektiv” is now online, with pdfs of a variety of chapbooks by multiple current and former above/ground press authors (among a long list of others).

above/ground press authors in the 8th kollektiv include: Gary Barwin, Joe Blades, Rob Budde, Jason Christie, Amanda Earl, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Hailey Higdon, Megan Kaminski, Marcus McCann, rob mclennan, Marthe Reed, Elizabeth Robinson, Jessica Smith and Chris Turnbull.

See the link here to read all sorts of dusie goodness from across North America (and occasionally beyond!).

some author activity: mclennan, Earl + Reed,

rob mclennan responds to Sachiko Murakami's questions as part of her "The Hardest Thing About Being A Writer" series; Amanda Earl is featured over at Drunken Boat, and has a new visual poem up at h&; and Marthe Reed interviews Laura Mullen over at Jacket2.

new from above/ground press: Odds Are, by lary timewell

Odds Are
lary timewell
$4

The distinction disappears but the things remain, as if history were

(history were) an afterimage. Aspirate the h out of it; a unit of eulogy,

one. Arbitrary, so long as we are consistent. Colloquial is not illiterate.

To follow a task greater than to lead. Resolute happiness counting

the beats in anomalous time, reading down the page in 4D. Reading con-

sonantal discontent, boring into the infernal meantime speakers re-

present. Choosing less before sufficient, we position an exit more glorious.

The day is done but (inserted) here to do over again, the work more ill-advised

& ungrammatical than ever. A re-arrangement that never signals defeat. In-

verted, the institution becomes parenthetical to process. When you think

about it too long, nonce-word. Greek stems, Latin advocatus diaboli. Instantly

plausible, pattern. Not precision & cogency, but cut & dried. Supposed,

the unspoken (heard) analogies themselves dispense sense. Writing is

exception-tested, & subsequent practice discriminates, attends based on market

value. That it must count for something fair seems unfair. Only the un-

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2016
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

lary timewell is a North Vancouver writer recently returned from 20 years in Fukushima. The co-founder and publisher of the late 1980s and early 90s Tsunami Editions, he has published a number of titles, including two chapbooks from Obvious Epiphanies. Some of his latest work from the expanding manuscript molecular hyperbole recently appeared in Make It True: Poetry from Cascadia, eds. Paul Nelson, George Stanley, Barry McKinnon and Nadine Maestas (Lantzville, BC: Leaf Press, 2015).

This is his second chapbook with above/ground press, after tones employed as loss (2013).

Produced, in part, as a handout at The New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 15-17, 2016. Much thanks to Marthe Reed for her help and support. http://www.lavenderink.org/poetryfest/schedule/

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

some author activity: beaulieu, Pirie, Reed + Best,

derek beaulieu and his work are written up in Metro Magazine, and beaulieu is referenced as part of the Calgary Mayor's annual Poetry Challenge; Pearl Pirie wrote on the work of Gustave Morin for the Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry; Marthe Reed has some new poems up at Entropy; and Ashley-Elizabeth Best has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

Best American Experimental Writing 2014 : Armantrout, Greenstreet, Kronovet, Maguire, Reed + Robinson,

The first edition of the annual Best American Experimental Writing, guest edited by Cole Swensen, is now available from Omnidawn Publishing! It includes work by seventy-nine different contributors, including above/ground press authors Rae Armantrout, Kate Greenstreet, Jennifer Kronovet, Shannon Maguire, Marthe Reed and Elizabeth Robinson. Congrats to all!

some author activity: Robertson, Smith, hastain, Reed + Armantrout,

Lisa Roberton's "Essay on Origins" is included in the new issue of The Rusty Toque; Jessica Smith has a new poem up at Open Letters Monthly; j/j hastain has new work in issue #8 of summer stock; Megan Burns interviews Marthe Reed over at The Conversant; and Rae Armantrout has four new poems up at Jacket2.

DUSIE #17 : Reed, Kaminksi, Poe, Prevost, Sand, Reid, Shapira, Simpson,

Dusie #17, lovingly guest-edited by Marthe Reed, features a slew of work by above/ground press authors, including Megan Kaminski, Deborah Poe, Roland Prevost, Kaia Sand, Monty Reid, Kate Shapira, Natalie Simpson and Reed herself, as well as a host of others.

some author activity: Reed, Prevost, Pirie, Irwin + beaulieu,

Marthe Reed has a new poem up at TRUCK; Roland Prevost and Pearl Pirie read today at 2pm in Kemptville, Ontario; Marilyn Irwin has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series at dusie; and derek beaulieu is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

Scott Bryson reviews Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) in Broken Pencil #65

Scott Bryson was good enough to review Marthe Reed's After Swann (2013) and Rosmarie Waldrop's Otherwise Smooth (2013) (both of which are still available) in Broken Pencil #65. Thanks, Scott!

This is actually the second review of After Swann, after Ryan Pratt was good enough to review such, and the third for Otherwise Smooth, following reviews by Ryan Pratt and Pearl Pirie.

We might not agree with Bryson's take on these works (apparently he's never heard of "constraint-driven poetry" before), but very much appreciate his attention. But the poetry chapbook reviews in Broken Pencil always make me wonder: if the reviewers don't seem to really understand poetry at all (there seems a tone of dismissal in much of Bryson's comments on the work in these chapbooks), why do they bother to write reviews?

After Swann
Marthe Reed

The words and phrases that constitute this series of poems were culled and collaged from Swann's Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time series of novels. Repurposing text from what Encyclopedia Britannica describes as "one of the supreme achievements of modern fiction," is never a bad way to start a poetry collection.
    The way Marthe Reed -- New York resident and chapbook publisher -- uses that text, however, may appear peculiar at first glance. She makes no attempt to vary the style of the verse she presents in After Swann; each entry consists of 10-12 three-line stanzas, and lines rarely go on for more than four words. These restrictions are more an indication of a singular vision, than a lack of creativity; she refers to her verse as "constraint-driven poetry" -- a style in which the author voluntarily applies limitations or rules, in an effort to spark inspiration.
    As a result of the succinct nature of Reed's lines, the segments of an individual poem never completely coalesce into a definable event. From time to time, you're awarded a brief flash of comprehension. A vague scene forms, then quickly fades into the next: "she suggested / my dress wasn't ready / some excuse // charming / she would jump in / and hold him in her arms." After Swann, in this way, pays homage to a crucial element of Proust's Swann's Way: involuntary memory -- when a particular cue evokes an unexpected recollection of a past event.
    A decent chunk of this, thematically, appears to deal with femininity and the tribulations and desires at play in the lives of women, 100 (or more) years ago. Those who've read Swann's Way will likely see more substance in this than those who haven't


Otherwise Smooth
Rosmarie Waldrop

The tone of a written work has likely never been set as quickly as it is in the first sentence of this collection: "How daily my life."
    Otherwise Smooth, an assemblage of nine prose fragments, rarely strays from that initial promise of despondency. There are tangible losses -- "a sister's death, a friend's," and the resulting funerals -- but Rosmarie Waldrop is more interested in the passing of what could be called the now-component of time, or what she describes as "the immediate between the ticks of the watch." Events and chances constantly evade her grasp; everything is instantly history: "A cosmic storm slips between my fingers... only once it's past I latch on."
    Language and cognition are to blame for the loss of immediate perception, Waldrop suggests: "Only once we've said 'I' with all that follows do we become aware of pure experience... But then it's already over... pronouns do not refer to anything in space and time except the utterance that contains them." This clearly isn't cheery material, but a nugget of hope does creep in to lighten the closing paragraph: "And yet. Already so many pear trees blossom."
    Otherwise Smooth reads as a complete cycle, with no loose ends, and Waldrop stays loyal to her theme throughout. It tends to wallow into heady territory, but always manages a tactful balance between poetic language and comprehensibility.

some author activity: Reed, mclennan, Moritz, Quartermain + Hall,

Marthe Reed's "Drawing Louisiana" essay is posted as part of the "On Writing" series on the ottawa poetry newsletter; rob mclennan has two new poems up at Konundrum Engine Literary Review; Rachel Moritz has some new poems up at La Vague Journal; Meredith Quartermain has a new piece up as part of the "Tuesday poem" at the dusie blog; and Phil Hall had a poem on Forget Magazine for Canada Day.