The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Nada Gordon + Lydia Unsworth, March 29, 2026!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the sixteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents: 
The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:

Nada Gordon (Brooklyn NY)
+
Lydia Unsworth (Manchester UK)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, March 29, 2026
3-4pm, Arts Court Black Box Studio
A FREE EVENT / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 24-30, 2026

Nada Gordon: [see a new interview here] I live in Brooklyn and work too hard and too much, teaching courses like “Tyranny and the Absurd” and “The Glamour of Language.” Actually, they are just comp, but isn’t that what all art is, actually? I have two Siberian cats. I make things besides poems: garments, baubles, toys. My Etsy shop is https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScentedRushes. I’ve published nine books and lots of chapbooks besides. My selected, The Sound Princess: Selected Poems 1985-2015 found its way into the world last year by way of SubPress. “The Sound Princess” is a literal translation from the Japanese of “Otohime,” the button you push in a toilet stall to make the sound of rushing water so that others don’t hear you pee. It does sound grand, doesn’t it? I was in the hysterico-transgressive poetry movement called Flarf in the 2000s. Before that, I lived in Japan for over a decade. Before Japan, I wrote a thesis on Bernadette Mayer’s work. I studied with Language Poets in Bay Area in the 80s. I was a hardcore punk after I was a flower child. As an actual child I sometimes wrote poems. I was born in Oakland in 1964.

Lydia Unsworth [see a new interview here] is a poet from Manchester, UK. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Place Writing in Manchester, looking at kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture. She has 6 poetry collections and 4 above / ground chapbooks, and has two new poetry collections coming out in 2026, Stay Awhile (April, Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and This Now Extends to My Daughter (May, Blue Diode Press).

some author activity: Tardi, Sawyer, Melancon, Gordon, Kemp + Naughton,

Mark Tardi writes on the late Larry Sawyer for the Poetry Foundation website; Jérôme Melancon appears in the Canadian Poets Series via Peripety and/or Tronies; a trio of videos of Nada Gordon reading in Manhattan, along with a short note, sit at the end of this substack post by Vladislav Davidzon; Penn Kemp has a series of poems for the late Barry Dempster now up at Public Reverie; and Katie Naughton has a poem up at Poetry Daily.

some author activity: Bell, Boyle, Reid, Betts, Gordon + Ross,

Wade Bell has new work up at Public Reverie; Frances Boyle has two poems in the latest issue of Pinhole Poetry, where Monty Reid also has new work; Gregory Betts appears in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; Nada Gordon is featured in the Spotlight series; and Stuart Ross has four poems up at Relegation Books.

some author activity: Gevirtz, Adams, mclennan, Gordon, Polyck-O'Neill, Schmaltz + Siklosi,

Susan Gevirtz is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Adrienne Adams has a poem up in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; rob mclennan has new work up at Gone Lawn; Nada Gordon's recent Segue Series reading with Kit Robinson is now up on YouTube; and Julia Polyck-O'Neill has a new poem up at NewPoetry, as does Eric Schmaltz, and Kate Siklosi!

De Villo Sloan reviews Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) at Asemic Front 2

De Villo Sloan was good enough to provide a first review of Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) over at Asemic Front 2. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As they write:

COPIUM by Nada Gordon
Ottawa, Canada: above/ground press, August 2025
24 pages; stapled

Review by De Villo Sloan

rob mclennan has added another literary gem to the list of recent chapbooks issued by above/ground press in Ottawa, Canada, with the publication of COPIUM by Nada Gordon.

COPIUM is a single lyric poem composed of elegant tercets that encode opulent imagery like ornate beadwork. Through associations, wordplay, unexpected juxtapositions, and explorations of poetic discourse, Gordon creates a unique and engaging record of what in Modernity is known as “the stream of consciousness.”

Her narrative melds objective and subjective realities; she skillfully provides multiple perspectives on daily life. The book includes images by Gordon in collaboration with MidJourney AI.

COPIUM succeeds on its Flarfy juxtapositions, irony, popcult references, and occasional absurdist incoherence. She has developed a postavant poetic line that extends Modernist fragmentation into new realms, which I believe is an accomplishment of great significance.

Nada Gordon has a rare ability to create poetic forms that permit (if they do not encourage) multiple but equally illuminating interpretations. In COPIUM, I unexpectedly found a lyric poem of outstanding beauty and insight. The third and fourth stanzas of the poem provide a good example of how its self-reflexivity contributes to the poem’s genesis:

    Peacock fanning out…
    swans entwining necks
    as co-beings

    feathering extremities
    like kelp, flowers, hands
    in a diamond brain (brine) of lost time.

For me, the pleasure of reading COPIUM is found in its self-reflective reverie, (consciously) aesthetic escapism, and its meta-poetical commentary. Gordon gives me the sublime experience of decayed opulence described to perfection with imagery by Charles Baudelaire in The Flowers of Evil. I find myself returning to the text for the pleasure of its aesthetic decadence for the same reasons I return to Baudelaire and Poe. 

COPIUM is also a fascinating compendium of English language nouns and adjectives that are useful in both scientific and artistic discourse. Here is an example from COPIUM by Nada Gordon showing her use of particulars:

           Caves of gems, and a pomegranate gem
           as a giant war demon.
           Mendelssohn infuses a dark city

           With the idea of ‘charging’
           (being recharged) –
           rogue elephants

           the tusk, the tree
           the metals, the mortals,
           breath and gourds and reeds.

           what are:

           ‘words’ ‘texts’ ‘friends’
           ‘membranes’ ‘borders’ ‘organs’

           countries’ ‘Jews’ ‘food’
           animals’ ‘cities’ ‘books’
           ‘cells’ ‘Gaza’ ‘gauze’

Paradoxically, however, looking beyond traces of conceptual writing, Gordon’s lyric is built on the solid foundation of, “No ideas but in things.” In fact, a close linguistic analysis of the various catalogs woven into COPIUM would likely produce interesting results.

A worldview present in Gordon’s writing is that language is an inevitable intermediary in human communication, expression and – of course - poetry. COPIUM is a lush sea of imagery and a (sometimes) mechanistic interrogation of language. Nada Gordon often approaches the edge of meaning: the same terrain as asemic writers. She brings COPIUM into the realm of visual and concrete poetry:

    Owls
    Opals
    Opossums

    and a lunar pOnd
    the loss of pherOmOne pOwer
    in the OdORless digital world

    The letter O:
    Just lOOk at it!
    Ketamina LOy.

Nada Gordon's COPIUM is a multi-faceted composition that invites readers to engage with the text often, revealing multiple perspectives and interpretations. She is one of our most important poetic voices. above/ground press has done extraordinary work producing this edition. If you only purchase one chapbook in 2025, order COPIUM by Nada Gordon. 

new from above/ground press: Copium, by Nada Gordon

COPIUM
…or…The Audacity of Dope
Nada Gordon
$6

Slithery white fox whips through
a meadow of cartoon peonies…
bioluminescent pepperland.
 
Golden dragonfly
zipping above
a rushing channel.
 
Grassy meadow:
lupine, golden mustard, tiger lilies
and cognition fanning out.
  
Peacock fanning out…
swans entwining necks
as co-beings
 
feathering extremities
like kelp, flowers, hands
in a diamond brain (brine) of lost time.

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

images by the author in collaboration with MidJourney AI.

Nada Gordon consists of a head, neck, torso, two arms and two legs. Since reaching adulthood, her body has consisted of close to 100 trillion cells, the basic unit of life. These cells are organised biologically to form her whole body. She is the author of Folly, V. Imp, Are Not Our Lowing Heifers Sleeker than Night-Swollen Mushrooms?, foriegnn bodie, Swoon, Scented Rushes, Vile Lilt, The Sound Princess (Selected Poems 1985-2015), and Emotional Support Peacock. The initiatory sentence of her blog at https://thesoundprincess.com/ reads: “The impulse to decorate is, as always, very strong.”.

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