some author activity: Inniss, Carpenter, Lea, benedict, Solomon + Flemmer,

Scott Inniss has new work in the Spotlight series; J.R. Carpenter is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; N.W. Lea is interviewed via the above/ground press substack; alex benedict has a new essay on d.a. levy over at Cleveland Review of Books; Misha Solomon is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series; and Kyle Flemmer is interviewed over at the podcast On Creative Writing.

new from above/ground press: Certain Forces, by N.W. Lea

Certain Forces
N.W. Lea
$6

Field Triptych


1. 

Shadows lever grass.
The soil is in trouble with ease.
My feet peregrinate
in the suddenly foreign 
autumn blocks.


2.

Frost. Every light is an event,
every event pins light.
We are always convulsing.
There is nothing profound
about the in-groups, 
the corded coteries.


3.

Especially,
when she tilts her head,
slushy with wonder.
Her excellent mind
not tyrannized.
Her skin twinned
with the silent, 
real earth.

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

cover image by N.W. Lea; portrait of the author by Zofia Lea

Born in Whitehorse, Yukon, N.W. Lea grew up on the West Island of Montreal and in and around Ottawa, including Lanark County and the Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry Tricounty. He currently lives with his wife and two children in Whitehorse. He has been quietly publishing his Surrrealist/Romantic brand of compact, mystical, sad sack poetry for close to two decades. Please find his trade books at invisiblepublishing.com and his chapbooks at abovegroundpress.blogspot.com. When he is not writing, he is parenting, brooding or riding mountain bikes.

This is Lea’s seventh above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014), Nervous System (2018), Five Mothers (2019), Less Dream (2021) and Natural Man (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

new from above/ground press: Natural Man, by N.W. Lea

Natural Man
N.W. Lea
$5

Poem to Genevieve

Midnight sun shines on your mother’s face,
a sweet supernal glow, a show of real force.
You’re getting caught up in aromatic thoughts,
in your humour’s sense; I can see you
with a cool Marian grin,
unperturbed by the bittersweet burden of earth
and her strange strained world

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

N.W. Lea lives with his family in Whitehorse, Yukon. Find his books at invisiblepublishing.com.

This is Lea’s sixth above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014), Nervous System (2018), Five Mothers (2019) and Less Dream (2021).

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: Graf, Mody, Lea, Pirie, Armantrout, Anstee, Dyckman + mclennan (plus Pakdel launch info!

Adele Graf has a poem on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Monica Mody, and N.W. Lea ; Pearl Pirie continues her mini-interviews and write-ups, featuring Rae Armantrout and Cameron Anstee; Susanne Dyckman has new poems online via Conjunctions; rob mclennan has a new poem up for Steven Heighton (1961-2022) ; and Saba Pakdel launches her forthcoming above/ground press title in Vancouver on May 14th!

Bryce Warnes reviews N.W. Lea's Less Dream (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for N.W. Lea's Less Dream (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

NW Lea | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple-bound, 12 pages | Purchase

Among his work’s themes, Lea has named encounters with the Real. One way he gets there: the double take, the second guess. “Void” opens with a list of struckthrough images, proclaims “I’m putting an end / to these twittering lists,” then finds egress from the world of surfaces via birds in a tree, “little adorable portals.” “You could murder every witless thing / in you. Every wishing thing,” proclaims “Murder Ballad,” flexing a knack for the near-homophonic reaching back to 2006’s light years (above/ground). Lea bends language until hairline cracks appear, letting the light shine through—and he’s been doing so for years. Less Dream is only the latest entry in a singular, numinous body of work.

new from above/ground press: Less Dream, by N.W. Lea

Less Dream
N.W. Lea
$5

Driver


No essential sentences
for this, um, essence.

Drove through the night,
harmonies barking.

I’ve always been afraid of,
or to, sleep. I’ve always

had to pay those attention tariffs,
had to wrestle specters.

The meaner memes.
No...no decentralizing force here.

No blowout combing twilight,
my eye’s lights. Drove

into new days, just a mess

of essences.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

N.W. Lea is a poet living in Whitehorse, Yukon (also, his birthplace) with his supernal partner and their wild and beautiful daughter. Find his books at invisiblepublishing.com.

This is Lea’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014), Nervous System (2018) and Five Mothers (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

Amanda Earl reviews chapbooks by Irwin, Lea, Baus, Dean and Kasimor,

beloved above/ground press author Amanda Earl was good enough to provide first reviews for a small handful of above/ground press titles, including Marilyn Irwin's the day the moon went away (2019), N.W. Lea's Five Mothers (2019), Eric Baus' Euphorbia (2020) and Lessa Dean's The Desert of Itabira (2020), as well as a second review (after John C. Goodman discussed such over at Otoliths) of Mary Kasimor's disrobing iris (2019), among some other titles discussed, in her "a few notes on some recent chapbooks" over at her blog. Thank you! You can see her original review here. As she writes:

Marilyn Irwin – the day the moon went away (above/ground press, August, 2019)

I am a fan and a dear friend of Marilyn’s so it comes as no surprise that I enjoyed this chapbook, from the snail on the cover to its reappearance in a poem, to the poems on not having a baby. there’s a sweet sadness to the work, mixed with a practicality about life and a concern for the environment. there’s concern. I have several favourites in the collection, but I’m particularly fond of “hum,” which begins “the first definition/of suicide/begins/with monks/robes/indistinguishable/from/skin cinder”—an unusual and memorable image. I want a book by Marilyn soon please, publishers. and so should you.

N.W. Lea - Five Mothers (above/ground press, October 2019)

I am a big fan of Lea’s writing. It’s contemplative, unusual and minimal. There is humour, playfulness, unique and powerful imagery and a consistency of tone throughout the chapbook.

Mary Kasimor - disrobing iris (above/ground press, November 2019)

I began reading these poems and then got so excited by the incantatory and exquisite imagery and sound play that I had to read them aloud. the poem “dropped stiches” stayed with me long after I read it the first time. This is a symphony of melancholy and grief, rebellion. I loved them.

Eric Baus – Euphorbia (above/ground press, January 2020)

i enjoyed these microscopic observations and musings of/on nature. These are powerful prose poems that delighted and fascinated me. The only thing I didn’t like was the font, which could have been Futura or Arial, I’m guessing but probably wrong, and what appears to be boldface for the entire collection. It is the opposite of the work for me. It is shouty and brash. That’s not what I’m reading. I’m reading softer, more subtle and delicate observations and musings.

Here are two of the poems that resonated greatly with me:

Pattern Anguish

Hawks glide above other hawks to kill escaping sky, a faraway star burning their faces.
Hum, Hurts

So the rosin, as the rain was, flowered its watts, precipitates a leaf, has been one, exhausts the teeth of animal speech, a siren under wool, hums, hurts.

Lessa Dean – the Desert of Itabira (above/ground press, January 2020)

This is an excerpt from a novella in verse entitled Manuelzimbo; a found poetry project based on the work of Elizabeth Bishop. I can’t wait to read the entire novella. The excerpt is mesmerizing. It evokes the desert paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe for me, extremely visual and startling: “We are taken to a red temple/a woman in a cloak of bones/greets us in a language/none of us know”.

I am in love with the dark imagery of this work: “The dynasty of violence threads our sleep/leaves bruises each night we shower ourselves/in superstitious rituals drink snake blood/   leave on the drowned green light”

This work also evokes the haunting imagery of the poetry of Sandra Ridley. I envisage a collaboration between Dean and Ridley. I think it would be wing-swept and haunting.

new from above/ground press: Five Mothers, by N.W. Lea

Five Mothers
N.W. Lea
$5

Five Mothers


1.

Distinctions: she hates every one.
A fate worse than life.
A fate-worm, then laugh.


2.

I wandered under mammoth trees,
under a super moon. To me, though,
it was just a supper moon.


3.

O, how I love supper,
with its numbing little kisses.


4.

Nothing heals...
not even the drunk of a bath.


5.

Contained
and venerated, this
private hell.

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

N.W. Lea is the author of two collections of poetry, Everything is Movies (Chaudiere, 2007) and Understander (Chaudiere, 2015) which was a finalist for the Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry; as well as a number of chapbooks, including more recently, Nervous System (above/ground, 2018). He currently makes his home in Whitehorse, Yukon with his parter and their baby girl.

This is Lea’s fourth above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006), Present! (2014) and Nervous System (2018).

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

Amanda Earl reviews six (further) 2017 titles: N.W. Lea’s Nervous System, Jason Christie’s random_lines = random.choice, natalie hanna’s dark ecologies, rob mclennan’s It’s still winter, Marilyn Irwin’s north and Faizal Deen’s Open Island

Following her first two group reviews posted here and here, the esteemed and muchly generous poet, editor, publisher and reviewer (and above/ground press author) Amanda Earl continues her reviews of 2017 above/ground press items, providing a first review of N.W. Lea’s Nervous System, a first review of Jason Christie’s random_lines = random.choice, a first review of natalie hanna’s dark ecologies, a first review of rob mclennan’s It’s still winter, a second review of Marilyn Irwin’s north (after Ryan Pratt's review at the ottawa poetry newsletter) and a first review of Faizal Deen’s Open Island. Thanks so much! You can see Amanda's full review here.

The Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta : a report,

Last night was our annual Peter F. Yacht Club Christmas party/reading/regatta, once again in our usual space in Parkdale Market's Carleton Tavern [see last year's report here], held as the "office Christmas party" for our informal writer's grouping.

The evening held a myriad of short readings by PFYC regulars and even an irregular, including Anita Dolman, Christine McNair, D.S. Stymiest, Faizal Deen, Amanda Earl, Chris Johnson, Roland Prevost, Frances Boyle and rob mclennan (with absences by Jason Christie, Chris Turnbull, natalie hanna, James Moran, Cameron Anstee, Vivian Vavassis and Claire Farley, all of whom were sorely missed), with an unexpected appearance by new father N.W. Lea (we had a copy of his most recent above/ground press title handy, so managed to convince him to read), and Nova Scotia poet E. Alex Pierce, who gave a short reading as well. Apparently Pierce was in Ottawa for part of the holidays, and Basma Kavanagh sent her an email and told her to get herself down to the tavern, because of all the poets that would be there!

[above, from top: N.W. Lea reading; N.W. Lea listening as Anita Dolman reads; E. Alex Pierce; D.S. Stymiest] Reading to a healthy crowd of friends new and old, the audience included Jennifer Pederson, Grant Wilkins, Janice Tokar, Monty Reid, Josh Massey, Stephen Brockwell, Charles Earl, jwcurry, Marilyn Irwin and Chris Jennings, among others. And we even helped train a new waitress to our shenanigans.

[above: Roland Prevost; crowd scene including Josh Massey; post-reading w jwcurry, Faizal Deen + D.S. Stymiest] Christine and I made a point of reading from works-in-progress (as well as a poem I wrote the day after our prior PFYC Christmas gathering), her from a series of poetry and prose sections on her experience with preaclampsia, and myself a short story in-progress, one of the three I've been actively working on over the past few months. It was good to hear pretty much the entire group reading from new or recent work, from recently-polished poems to completely unfinished works, including a longer piece by Faizal Deen we're hoping will soon make it into an above/ground press chapbook (a section of the same work appeared in the tenth issue of Amanda Earl's experiment-o).

[Monty Reid and Chris Johnston, listening] And yes, I made cookies (lemon icebox and sugar) and everyone loved them. And Frances made cookies also, which were also loved.

new from above/ground press: Nervous System, by N.W. Lea

Nervous System

by N.W. Lea

$4

Here,

within the mood,

night wrestles itself

to the known

ground.

I’m amazed

at my doubts: stomachal.

Ginger is a nonstarter ...

there’ll be no solace tonight

for the wordy.

The yes-spectrum

is broad, yes,

but totally dependent

upon ignition.

One argues

that everything is second

-hand, a pedestrian

bargain. Rummage

in the pitch

toque.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press

November 2017

a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

N.W. Lea’s second book of poems, Understander (Chaudiere Books, 2015) was a finalist for the 2016 Archibald Lampman Award for Poetry. He currently lives and writes in Eastern Ontario with his partner, their newborn baby girl, and two cats.

This is Lea’s third above/ground press chapbook, after light years (2006) and Present! (2014).

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: mclennan, Hawkins, Lea + Robinson,

rob mclennan has a poem, originally posted in the print edition of Literary Review of Canada, now online as part of their newly-revised website; an article on legendary Ottawa poet William Hawkins now lives online at Apartment 613, as does an article on N.W. Lea (the artist formerly known as Nicholas Lea); and Elizabeth Robinson is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

some author activity: beaulieu, Anstee, Lea, Tokar, Cooley + Press,

derek beaulieu (pictured) is named the first artist in residence in the 124-year history of Calgary's Lougheed House, from May 1 to June 30, 2015; Cameron Anstee is profiled over at Apt 613; N.W. Lea is interviewed over at the Chaudiere Books blog; Janice Tokar has a new poem posted on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of Poetry Month; and Dennis Cooley and K.I. Press write on Turnstone Press for the CV2 blog.

some author activity: Abel, Hajnoczky, Markotić, Schmaltz, eckhoff, Lea, beaulieu + Reid,

Jordan Abel, Helen Hajnoczky, Nicole Markotić, Eric Schmaltz and kevin mcpherson eckhoff each have new work in The Capilano Review webfolio #11, co-edited by Brook Houglum and Daniel Zomparelli; N.W. Lea has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at dusie; an article on derek beaulieu appeared in the University of Calgary's U Today; and a new interview with Monty Reid on VERSeFest is now online.

some author activity: Earl, Pirie, Prevost, McCann, Lea, McNair, Bolster + Gordon,

Amanda Earl writes about some of the successes of the members of her former writing group -- Pearl Pirie, Roland Prevost, Marcus McCann, Nicholas Lea, Christine McNair and Sandra Ridley -- over at her enormously clever blog; Cosmonauts has added, as their podcast #2, Stephanie Bolster discussing poetry and literature; Pearl Pirie has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and Noah Eli Gordon has a new poem up at ink node.

Amanda Earl reviews Sarah Rosenthal's Estelle Morning Star (2014), Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014), N.W. Lea's Present! (2014), Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014), Eric Baus' THE RAIN OF THE ICE (2014) and Rachel Moritz' Many forms in water (2014)

Amanda Earl was good enough to review Sarah Rosenthal's Estelle Morning Star (2014), Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014), N.W. Lea's Present! (2014), Camille Martin's Sugar Beach (2014), Eric Baus' THE RAIN OF THE ICE (2014) and Rachel Moritz' Many forms in water (2014) as a group post on a variety of above/ground press in 2014 so far over at her enormously clever blog (might this be a time to remind you about the 2015 subscriptions?). Thanks, Amanda! See her original post here, and all of the titles she mentioned are still available (so far). And, for those keeping track, there are three previous reviews of Martin's chapbook here and here and here, a previous review of Baus' chapbook here, a previous review of Lea's chapbook here, and two previous group reviews that include Lea and Thomas here and even here.

hunting for the dark: above/ground press...2014 so far...

on an unseasonably rainy & cold night in mid-August I had an appetite for the above. I wanted to look in less obvious places. I have a stack of above/ground press chapbooks published in 2014, since i am a subscriber…i was curious to see if any of the authors had a penchant for the Gothic, etc. what i found primarily was an overriding tone of anxiety concerning the monotony of 21st century existence. seems scary enough to me...

Sarah Rosenthal’s "Estelle Morning Star" fits the bill nicely with descriptions of women carrying “dying dead things” “emaciated/mangled/animals” I love her turns of phrase & odd juxtapositions, a sense of the macabre amongst business like celebration: “hard core birds in the / ballroom throw themselves/at convention windows/clatter to the table      their/colours running out.” she paints a vivid picture. Estelle wears mary janes.

Hugh Thomas gives us absurd portraits of anxious composers pursued by fierce demons in "Albanian Suite."“When I was with you, the ravens/and milktrucks made such music.” a fun use of black & white. in “Epithalamion” there are bite-marked necks, the monotony of waiting. “It misunderstands today’s poetry/overgrown with wildflowers to forget these sojourners.”  “Poetry is a pagoda, built of friendly embracings, like a square dance complicating society” … a ticket to days of radishes/and saliva” not to discount the beauty in these poems. it’s there between ice-cold moments: “Time, you murderous sun fills my lungs with honey,” there’s something sweetly chilling about that image. & another from “Selfportrait Unwilling to Sit”: “a tramcar apocalypse/on the move/dragging behind dissonance, divine regret.” there’s something Gothic about that image. & in “Metropolitan”: “The two sicknesses frequent in this epoch are heat and isolation.” Thomas’ poems alternate between the tiniest, spot on observations to elaborate, absurd images. I have to say, this is one of my favourite chapbooks this year so far. some of the poems are translations.

In "Present!" N.W. Lea opens with a gangster with rubber extendable arms holding someone up like a baby. an absurd image & not without its horrifying effect…followed later in the next poem in the sequence by “the swans of hurt/burn circles in the snow” there’s lots here about the terror of mundanity, of the burbs…even a littered cough candy is menacing: “a pale pink/half-sucked lozenge/on the pavement/glinting//plus us//have to contend with the teeth of the neighbourhood” you are “snug in your death-sweater.” there are “great swarms/of dusk-bats” "Present!" is a sequence of estrangement.

there are some menacing animals & a kind of helplessness, a monotony in Camille Martin’s "Sugar Beach:" “A leap of leopards under a crescent moon/happens without us, but we’re there/just the same.” “Newfangleness” Sharpshooters are juxtaposed with picnics in “Blind Engine.” In “No Such Identical Horses,” Martin writes, “I was counting on my favourite superstition/to endow the mirage with authority.” There are rotted leaves, wormy fruit, a beast stampeding down a trail, “the chitinous exoskeleton of a locust” & in the title poem a feeling of wasted extravagance in an image of a rusty tanker scooping “mounds of raw sugar.”  “Machine in the Ghost” evokes a cemetery scene. The poems in this chapbook are sound & image collages.

Eric Baus gives us fanciful nightmares of octopi with burned tentacles, ghosts, insects in “The Rain of Ice.” I loved how imaginative & unusual these prose poems were.

In “Many forms in water,” Rachel Moritz gives us white coffins, bitter flowers, gathering storms, “the ribbon of heat rising past digits black in air.” In “The finished forms in the sand record movement that has ceased,” this is a particularly grotesque image: “I carried her through the woods, slept in waterlogged leaves with her body on my chest.” This poem & the others manage to create a tone of melancholy, grief, poignant emotions. I’m quite enamoured of these poems, especially imagery like “How we carried the bell down irrevocable stairs, passed our sentence of doubt and kept moving.” in “Flowing water encounters a widely submerged outside.”

National Poetry Month: Earl, McElroy, Dolman, McCann, Douglas, Irwin, Pirie, Lea, mclennan + Hajnoczky

In case you missed it, the Chaudiere Books blog featured a number of new works by above/ground press authors for National Poetry Month this year, including Amanda Earl, Gil McElroy, Anita Dolman, Marcus McCann, Rhonda Douglas, Marilyn Irwin, Pearl Pirie, derek beaulieu, Roland Prevost, N.W. Lea, rob mclennan and Helen Hajnoczky, as well as whole bunch of others.

Rebecca Anne Banks reviews rob mclennan's from Hark: a journal (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014)

Rebecca Anne Banks was good enough to post a review of rob mclennan's from Hark: a journal (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014) over at Subterranean Blue Poetry. Thanks, Rebecca! This makes the second review of from Hark: a journal, after Jack Goodall's review over at the Flat Singles Press blog, and the second review of Present! after Ryan Pratt's review over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry
Title of Book: from Hark: a journal
Author: Rob McLennan
Publisher: above/ground press
Date of Publication: 2014
Page Count: 13

from Hark: a journal is a fantastical Chapbook of poetry, some of the poems have been published previously in Canadian Literature (Vancouver, British Columbia) and at www.abovegroundpress.blogspot.com. Rob McLennan is a Canadian Poetry icon, editor, publisher, poet he operates above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, ottawater, The Garneau Review, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics and posts everything poetry on robmclennan.blogspot.com. He is the celebrated author of more than 20 books of poetry.

This was one of a number of Chapbooks sent to me from above/ground press and of all the tomes, this Writer was captivated. In the Chapbook is an introduction that describes the history of the series of poems. The poems were written when Rob’s relationship with Christine was new, they later married. They wrote postcards and letters to each other in their dance of courtship.

“These were small, secret missives, slipped into luggage, pockets or purses before trips, to be deliberately discovered later. On a Greyhound Bus, I reached into my jacket pocket to find three new postcards; halfway between Ottawa and Toronto, little gifts she’d tucked away without my knowledge. Christine’s notes to me were usually composed on postcards she’d picked up years earlier, and written as though from not only the postcard’s point-of-origin, but that time as well, dated months or even years before we’d met . . . I was fascinated by the idea of letters written from foreign geographical and temporal places, sketched out as short postcard pieces.”

The title of the Chapbook is taken from a comic strip by Kate Beaton, “Hark, a vagrant” and at the time he was reading an anthology “Crosscut Universe: Writing on Writing from France” translated and edited by Norma Cole. Four quotes from this book are included in the Chapbook.

The short poetic prose pieces composed by poet Mclennan are titled with a city and a date, reaching various and esoteric global climes and the dates going as far back as 1422, introducing the idea of landscape and history or the temporal. Each poetry vignette includes elements of the essence of the city, perhaps events in the city at that time and weaves in the idea of romance (global and personal) and its antithesis of war, the push and pull of here not here, home not home and violence, the war economy N.A., as someone who has been on a journey and perhaps is traveling:

“London, 1820

In a measure of circling. This is an actual letter. The poem, I should say. Response is so simple. Words point out sediment. Rising moon, the Thames are a-changing. Sooting deep, thick industrial smog. Touch, but more muscular. Victoria, princess. A tower, a namesake. This unknown, hiatus. In what available field. The lives of the past. Leave poets be. Betray to her an abacus.”

The poetry reads like a butterfly entranced by the flame of a candle, as if he is reading the missives from his wife and writing responses weaving, weaving:

“Toronto, 1837

When talks, are we writing it. A roughhousing passage. To summarize: elegy, bonfire, speech. King’s Tavern, old hat. She rinses a teacup, sews stitch to the blade. Call out your anguish, astonishment. The currency inherent in blasphemous buildings. Hairsplitting. I am no further thickness. Forever is quite a long time. The body is present.”

And:

“Tokyo, 1868

Edo, a meaning. Open, her soft voice. Each fold of the city, prefecture. When I claim I am present.. Rails of meaning, undamaged. A blossom, a wonderful scribe. Eaten. This death, microscopic. Sending best wishes. What can you tell me. Illuminate, earth and white powder. The mind meditates, fishing. A castle of wonders. I hold two family portraits. A resident plum.”

In cinematic, the Chapbook could be blown up into a book with coloured postcards of the places in the titles of the poems. As if the Oracle in the time of Spring the poetry is enigmatic and definitive captivating romance in history and within the overconstructed politics of the times. from Hark: a journal, a brilliant read from Rob McLennan.

Byline: Subterranean Blue Poetry
Title of Book: Present!
Author: N.W. Lea
Publisher: above/ground press
Date of Publication: 2014
Page Count: 11

Present! is a fascinating truth-telling of love/life N.A. Written by N.W. Lea who resides in Ottawa, Canada, he has published a book of poetry Everything is Movies, this is his third published Chapbook.

Present! reveals and revels the love diaspora N.A. Written in a post-modern narrative style, the poetry writes as if coming in on the middle of a story/conversation and also ends as if leaving in the middle of a story/conversation. It is a secret dialogue, telling a story without telling a story and secret wordplay, playing with the use of language.

“we were culture-born

then we were enculturated

then we were inculcated

then, indoctrinated

initiated

in’d”

The theme of love is entangled, as if someone lost in the miasma of where is my love affair heart?

“the swans of hurt
burn circles in the snow”

and

“I wonder toward
your darker travails
part your mirth
like legs

what religious tissue!
how

estranging beneath the gawking satellites”

and

“your bunched sun-
dress lays somewhere
between cyberspace
and the mixed orchard”

The theme of parted loves, perhaps serial lovers is mixed with the last throws of the industrial society and coming into the cyberspace of the New Age, using surreal images of technology. Perhaps a reflection of the disembodiement of the “sex as service machine” phenomena feeding the economy, breaking with the love Spiritus and the Holy Spirit.

“there is circuitry
behind the basement wall

this I know …..

so we bash the veneer
with our amped up bodies

and start tearing out
the wires and chips

we’re blurring
but so
so glad”

“and all our appliances
grow real hearts”

with elements of activism and truthtelling

“what an honour
it is to be killed

incrementally

by your government’s
masters!”

A rich post-modern impression of a love/death story in poetry, some dark soma of the night. In the words and music of the Poet Leonard Cohen, “Everybody knows”. Present! a great read from N.W. Lea.

some author activity: Martin, Lea, Barwin, Schmaltz, Reed + Jones,

Part seven of Camille Martin's Robert Zend essay focuses on the late Toronto poet bpNichol; profile on N.W. Lea now online at Open Book: Ontario; Gary Barwin wrote on Eric Schmaltz's typewriter poems for Paul Dutton, his recent chapbook, last summer (I'm just finding out about this now, myself) for Jacket2; Marthe Reed responds to Jennifer K. Dick's "what is YOUR fragment"; and D.G. Jones has a new poem posted as part of the Tuesday poem series.

Ryan Pratt reviews Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014)

Ryan Pratt was good enough to review Hugh Thomas' Albanian Suite (2014) and N.W. Lea's Present! (2014) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks, Ryan!