Daniel Barbiero reviews Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross' collaborative Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office (2026)

Daniel Barbiero was good enough to provide the first reviews of Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross' collaborative Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office (2026) via Arteidolia. Thanks so much! You can see the full review here, or below:

There’s a model of intertextuality that holds that every text has its double; in back of every text is another text, largely hidden but partly visible through the cracks in the first text, which in turn came into being as a response to the text secreted behind it. In many instances this second text goes unacknowledged, whether through absent-mindedness, anxious repression, or misdirection. Not so with Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross’s new chapbook Shooky Session 1: John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s Concordia Office, a collectively authored poetic sequence whose authors cheerfully acknowledge the text to which their own text responds.

To write their sequence, Camlot and Ross first chose a book from the library at the Montreal university where Camlot teaches, and then settled in at his office to write. The book they chose was John Ashbery’s As We Know. Next, they alternated between reading and writing: one would read aloud from the book to the other, who’d write while listening, and then they’d switch roles. What and how much to take from As We Know to incorporate into his own poem was up to the writer to decide.

Camlot and Ross selected a book by Ashbery as their point of departure on the strength of Ashbery’s style and the inscrutability of his meaning. Ashbery is a poet of indirection, rapidly changing topics, plain diction, and labyrinthine syntax; negotiating his particular brand of ambiguity by ear is liable to open up a broad field of meaning full of possibilities that can inspire a range of imaginative responses. And the collection’s longest poem, “Litany,” itself is structured as an interplay of two texts. It’s written in facing columns that mimic the counterpoint of two independent voices heard at once, which makes it a fitting forerunner of Camlot and Ross’s own variety of verbal counterpoint.

The chapbook is divided into two parts. Part I consists of a single, quasi-narrative poem, while Part II is made up of discrete sections that can be read as independent poems. (Each part presumably was written by one or the other of the two poets.)

Part I’s discontinuous through-line recalls something of Ashbery’s own constant jumbling and rearranging of subjects, but without his systematic evasion of reference. While the forward motion of the long poem is propelled by a sequence of events that make sense on a local level but refuse totalization into a cohesive account, the things and actions they include often come plainly into view, albeit in contexts that are themselves enigmatic. For example,

We blush before elaborately broken entablatures
of bird-dropped simultaneities,
while smoke lingers,
looms above some simple ornaments
symbolic of beginnings,
of lonesomenesses,
of roundnesses, and of slants,
of thinnesses and generalities,
privatenesses and all things,
of preludes, and of farness,
of wonderfulness and asphalt.

The setting is a smoke-enfolded, presumably classical architectural ruin, which apparently causes embarrassment to the speaker. (But why? We don’t know.). The building’s ornaments are “simple,” but once their meaning is unpacked they turn out to stand for a mounting inventory of airy abstractions that then comes thudding to an incongruous and sudden end on a hard, paved surface. We’re jolted from the realm of the Ideal to something very close to the literally concrete.

This quick-cut shift in register, which pulls the rug out from under the tentative footfalls of common sense, is supplemented by elaborate metaphors and similes whose meanings are the product of their very incongruity:

Artifice is a twist
gaping at a citadelic tree,
a thing lumbering into
the invisible garment huddling
in a bus shelter on the icy
edge of the globe, a kind of
togetherness that injures illusion.

[…] All we know is
existence is waiting for a cab, like a
woman with a baby carriage filled with
fever-stricken mechanisms
I shall never see

The poetry in Part II tends more toward the lyrical and reflective, as in this self-contained section:

Some very pretty views are ascertained.
At dusk, amidst fitful cedars,
an iota of remorse
reverberates against the nightingales.

So, I wander through each dirty street,
as fools rush into my interstices,
and as my holes dream impetuously,
Solemnly, of rich adhesions.

O Sun, I want to enjoy
your work, your shining,
and setting, and rising,
and turning everything around.

There’s a play of ambiguity here that keeps the tone evocative but undecidable. The light is dim and there’s a passing moment of regret, but there’s a suggestion of hope as well: the sun the poet wants to enjoy may just as easily be rising as setting, since “dusk” can describe either dawn or sundown, and nightingales can be heard at both times.

Sometimes Ashbery’s voice seems to come through on its own, as in this passage from Part II:

Did you ever stop to think
about that other blackened memory,
and whether it was omitted
from the agenda deliberately

or out of innocent oversight,
or perhaps because it was pre-ordained
to be omitted from the
minutes, and so had

also to be omitted from
the agenda, even though
that other blackened memory
was included, for whatever reason.

And that these memories bear little resemblance
to anything but blackened star-shaped flowers?

The subject here—the “blackened memory”–is elusive and defined only in terms of another memory that presumably came up earlier in a conversation we’re only coming to in medias res. What it is we don’t know, and how or why it would be on anyone’s agenda (and anyway, what kind of an agenda would include a blackened memory as a discussion item?) also is a mystery. And meanwhile the syntax takes several serpentine turns as the question, rhetorical or in earnest, unspools. It’s the kind of thing we’d expect to find in Ashbery.

To be sure, in reading Shooky Session 1 it might make for an amusing game to try to draw a direct line between Ashbery’s poetry and Camlot and Ross’s by looking for coincidences of imagery or diction. For example, Part I’s

You can find knowledge like that
flowin’ round the flowers.
In this poem, flowers
stand in for something else.
Flowers are code names
for wishes of different kinds.

may have jumped off from the titular image of Ashbery’s “Flowering Death,” while the “interstices” from Part II may be an echo of “the interstices of my desirings” from Ashbery’s right-hand voice in “Litany.” But such an exercise would be beside the point. In the end, Camlot and Ross’s intertextual relationship to As We Know doesn’t rest on simple appropriation or direct commentary, but rather on the less predictable, and more inventive, ground of inspiration. What they’ve written stands on its own, and provides pleasures of its own besides.

new from above/ground press: Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office, by Stuart Ross and Jason Camlot

Shooky Session 1 John Ashbery, As We Know 5 December 2022, Jason’s office
Jason Camlot and Stuart Ross
$6

Toasted church knowledge
is a snapdragon donkey gift,
if you think about it.
You can find knowledge like that
flowin’ round the flowers.
In this poem, flowers
stand in for something else.
Flowers are code names
for wishes of different kinds.
For wishes of lava ears,
and for wishes of rabbits 
having outbursts of thumping
Sex Music. Sex Music
refers to sex music
itself, not to the whole other thing,
but to the event of sex music itself, 
and to the event of sex music 
flowin’, thumpin’ and flowin’ 
into itself.
All this must be as
familiar to you as a pancake person
who comes to your house
purportedly for brunch
but truly to blow dust 
off the drum of living, 
and then to drag your complete luggage set
all the way to the pacific
airport, so it can soar
across the earthworks puddle.


AUTHORS’ NOTE ON THE TEXT

December 6, 2022. Stuart Ross has driven from Cobourg, Ontario, to visit Jason Camlot in Montreal. They have a lot to catch up on, so they go to the university library to select a book. In the PS 3000s they find the books of John Ashbery, whose work is usefully rich in diction and vocabulary, and appropriately incomprehensible. They decide to go with As We Know. In Jason’s departmental office they sit and alternate between reading to each other from As We Know and writing while listening to the other read. They have each used listening as a method of writing poetry for years, but until now they had never before collaborated on listening poetry into existence together. 

Listening poetry is a creative audile technique, a method that works to transform a particular way of listening to something—usually an already published literary text (but it can be anything, really)—into poems. The poems, in this case, were composed in two notebooks with Shooky, the popular KPop character from BT21, on the covers. (In the BT21 universe, Shooky is a mischievous little cookie who loves to pull pranks on his friends.) One of the Shooky books was large and one was small. For each session of listening poetry, Jason and Stuart would read to each other and write poems in one notebook, then do the same in the other notebook. The size of the book informed the size and nature of the poems that were listened into existence. They borrowed as much or as little as they chose from the source texts.

This chapbook presents the poems written during the first of seven listening poetry sessions that Stuart and Jason held between December 5, 2022, and December 18, 2024. It is “Shooky Session 1: John Ashbery, As We Know, 5 December 2022, Jason’s Office” from the larger manuscript THE SHOOKY SESSIONS (A Litany).

This chapbook is set in Goudy Old Style because CRT Electra was too expensive.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
June 2026
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jason Camlot is the author of five collections of poetry, including The Animal Library (DC Books, 2000), What The World Said (Mansfield, 2013), and, most recently, Vlarf (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2021). His critical works include Phonopoetics: The Making of Early Literary Recordings (Stanford, 2019) and the co-edited collections, Collection Thinking (Routledge, 2024), Unpacking the Personal Library (Wilfrid Laurier UP, 2023), CanLit Across Media (McGill-Queen’s UP, 2019), and a recent jumbo special issue of English Studies in Canada on “New Sonic Approaches in Literary Studies.” Jason is director of the SpokenWeb research network that focuses on the history of literary sound recordings and the digital preservation and presentation of collections of literary audio. He is Professor of English at Concordia University and President of the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE).

Stuart Ross has published 23 books of fiction, poetry, and memoir/personal essays, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky (Coach House Books, 2024), the memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers (ECW Press, 2022), and the story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub (Anvil Press, 2022). He has won the 2023 Trillium Book Award, the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, the 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, and the 2010 Relit Award for Short Fiction. Stuart teaches poetry at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and has been writer at residence at Queen’s University and University of Ottawa. He runs the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction under Guernica Editions and the Feed Dog Books imprint for surrealist poetry under Anvil Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

This is Ross’ fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after ESPESANTES (2018), NINETY TINY POEMS (2019), BIRD SNOW ON HARD TRACKS (2023) and AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories (2025). above/ground press also produced the festschrift Report from the Ross Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 in 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

Jon Cone : Omnibus review : above/ground press 2025 : Sandhu, Greene, Berlatsky, Ladouceur, Kelly, Reid, Ross, Sikkema + Browne,

Canadian expat poet [and above/ground press author] Jon Cone was good enough to provide a series of first reviews, short and sketched on an array of above/ground press titles from 2025: THE TEMPORARY SPACE OF A PLACENTA, by Mandy Sandhu (2025); EL REY MURCIÉLAGO // THE BAT KING, by Yaxkin Melchy Ramos, translated by Ryan Greene (2025); Spamtoum, by Noah Berlatsky (2025); The Last Man, by Ben Ladouceur (2025); More of How to Read the Bible, by J-T Kelly (2025); cuba A book: twentieth anniversary edition, by Monty Reid (2025); AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories, by Stuart Ross (2025); Just a Minute, Moon's Too Loud, by Michael Sikkema (2025); and Daily Self-Portrait Valentine, by Laynie Browne (2025). Thanks so much! You can see the original post here. Or read, below:

Here are some brief reviews of my favorite titles issued by Above/Ground Press during the year 2025. While I was not asked to write any of these reviews, I will state for the purpose of full disclosure that I was published by this press in 2025 and will appear as a co-author of another title in 2026. 

THE TEMPORARY SPACE OF A PLACENTA by Mandy Sandhu

This is a wonderful collection. Sandhu’s poems are characterized by their concision, allusiveness, a leaping of imagery and wit. The voice behind the poetry suggests great intelligence and familiarity with various poetic traditions. Reading Sandhu’s poems, I thought of Ted Berrigan’s Sonnets. Then reading her bio at the back of the chapbook I was pleased to note Sandhu listed Berrigan as influence. A superb collection.

EL REY MURCIÉLAGO THE BAT KING by 
Yaxkin Melchy Ramos [tr. Ryan Greene]

This work appears to combine various forms and traditions – Surrealism, Concrete (Visual) Poetry, Mythology, Science Fiction – and doubtless others – into a contemporary hybrid that veers between poetry and prose. If you ask your poetry to break down barriers, then this is a chapbook you’ll find rewarding. An added felicity: it is bilingual so you can compare English translation to Spanish original.  Experimental in the best sense.

SPAMTOUM by Noah Berlatsky

This title contains one long poem of 95 stanzas of four-lines each, the titular “Spamtoum”, and a final poem “Hi Noah”. ‘Spamtoum’ with its repeating lines expands the pantoum form. Because I enjoy form, I set out to trace the pattern, then gave up at a certain point because it dawned on me the pattern itself was incidental to the feverish language play taking place before me. Much like John Ashbery’s sestina “Farm Implements and Rutagagas in a Landscape”, Berlatsky’s unfurling of the pantoum is intended to be gloriously screwball. Spam is where language goes to die. Here it is rescued, given oxygen, and a second chance. If you enjoy poetry that delights in language, then “Spamtoum” is ideal reading. 

THE LAST MAN by Ben Ladouceur

Ben Ladouceur writes elegant, well-crafted poems. His poetic imagination is considerable; his evident care with line and stanza enviable. Thus it is impossible for me to read a poem by Ladouceur and not be impressed by both form and content, as if those aspects can ever be fully separated, because his writing achieves its results with apparent effortlessness. He is a poet in full control of his gifts for the poetic art. (Color me envious.)  A brilliant collection.

MORE OF HOW TO READ THE BIBLE by J-T Kelly

Kelly writes poems that deal with his religious life, much like Franz Wright did. And like Wright, Kelly often deals with the struggle to maintain it in today’s world. Like the best love poetry, religious poetry appeals to us because it yearns to go beyond the material world toward a transcendent one. A highlight for me is Kelly’s catalog of sacred names that ends on a culminating moment; another favorite is the prose poem “Morning Exercise”, which has the profound bearing of a meditation one might encounter, say, in the journals of Thomas Merton. A serious and fine example of the art. 

cuba A book by Monty Reid (twentieth anniversary edition)

This reissue contains a brief essay by Monty Reid that describers the circumstances that prompted the writing of the original poem. Reid wrote cuba A book after a period of not-writing, and it impresses by how assured it feels.  None of that hesitancy or searching around for line or voice: from the start it is all there. I suppose that really shouldn’t surprise me, but it does.  For those familiar with Reid’s work and those who would like a good place to start: recommended.

AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES by Stuart Ross

Stuart Ross is a poet who also writes a great deal of fiction. He’s a wonderful fiction writer. This small collection reminds me at times of Brautigan, at times of early Raymond Carver. (The Carver under the influence of Lish.) In his economy of language, Ross calls to mind another great Canadian short story writer: Norman Levine. The title story is a fine one; however, my personal favorite is “Meredith and Craig Sit in Their Kitchen and Play Stringed Instruments.” In that story you get an ending with a palpable sense of what music critic Greil Marcus called ‘that old weird America’ – a voice haunted, distant, haunting. An excellent collection.  

JUST A MINUTE, MOON’S TOO LOUD by Michael Sikkema

A concise poetry that pays homage to the natural world, the world encountered at the edge of a hike or in a moment of jeweled awareness. Sikkema surely enjoys the ancient Chinese masters, and I’d be surprised if he didn’t enjoy writers such as Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry. There’s humor here too, light, whimsical, lovely high seeming, as this complete poem demonstrates:

fav crow
ate my
rear view

When brevity is desired, let these poems answer the need. 

DAILY SELF-PORTRAIT VALENTINE by Laynie Browne

This chapbook, at first glance, is composed of lyrics that resemble those of Emily Dickinson. That is a misleading impression to have. As Browne tells us in an author’s note these poems grew out of “a year-long durational project” in which she “made a self-portrait every day for one year.” The resulting collection enacts a quest, one where memory accompanies Browne, as the outside world of obligation seems to call to the poet in the midst of her purposeful concentrations. These self-portraits are by necessity impressionistic. It is a collection that usefully demonstrates how poetry can come out of a daily practice.  

These are other fine titles can be found here  https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com

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: 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: Niespodziany, Jenks, Flowers, Ross + Kemp,

Benjamin Niespodziany offers "My Favorite Reads of 2025," and includes Tom Jenks' 2025 above/ground press title, Chimneys, which was nice; Neil Flowers has new work up at Public Reverie; Stuart Ross offers his New Year's Poem over at his blog; and Jennifer Wenn writes on a Penn Kemp title, forty years after it first appeared, at The Seaboard Review.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 21: Stuart Ross, Liam Burke + Amanda Earl,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:
Stuart Ross (Cobourg ON)
Liam Burke (Ottawa)
+ 
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 21, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

Stuart Ross has worked in the small press trenches of Canadian writing for 50 years. His new chapbook, The Thing About the Thing in Exile reprints a dozen poems that appeared in his first publication at age 16, plus a new essay. He has published over 20 books, most recently the poetry collection The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky, the Trillium Book Award–winning memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers, and the short story collection I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub. He has received the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, as well as the Harbourfront Festival Prize for his contributions to Canadian literature. Stuart runs the Feed Dog Book imprint for surrealist poetry at Anvil Press and the 1366 Books imprint for experimental fiction at Guernica Editions, and has been running his own Proper Tales Press since 1979. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Liam Burke (he/him/himbo) lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. He is the winner of the 2023 Diana Brebner Prize, and is most recently the author of status ailment (Anstruther, 2025) and the co-author of Orbital Cultivation with Manahil Bandukwala (Collusion, 2021) and machine dreams with natalie hanna (Collusion, 2021) which was shortlisted for the 2022 bpNichol Chapbook Award. He was shortlisted for the 2022 Austin Clarke Award for a collaborative poem with Manahil Bandukwala.

Amanda Earl [photo credit: Charles Earl] (she/her) writes, edits, reviews, publishes and makes mischief on the unceded territories of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. Earl is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Subscribe to her Substack, Amanda Thru the Looking Glass and buy limited edition gorgeousness from Creatively Yours, her forthcoming year-long whimsical collaborative creation with her husband, Charles Earl. Her latest chapbook, her eleventh with above/ground press, is SOCIALLY AWKWARD GHOST (2025). More info: AmandaEarl.com. Instagram: earlamanda.

some author activity: Smith, Unrau, Bell, Myers + Ross,

Steve Ross Smith has a new song up at bandcamp; Melanie Dennis Unrau is interviewed via the "12 or 20 questions" series; Wade Bell has new work up at Public Reverie; Peter Myers has new work up at noir sauna; and Stuart Ross is interviewed by Tali Voron-Leiderman for The Ampersand Review.

some author activity: Notley, Berlatsky, Betts, Ross + Chang-Richardson,

Joyelle McSweeney writes on the late Alice Notley, as does Nick Sturm; Noah Berlatsky writes his engagements with the New York School of Poets over at Splice Today; Gregory Betts is interviewed "on literary community and collaboration, and AI's influences on writing" over at Creative Writing; Eva H.D. reads a poem by Stuart Ross; and Ellen Chang-Richardson is in podcast conversation with Rachel Thompson at Lit Mag Love.

new from above/ground press: AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories, by Stuart Ross

AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories
Stuart Ross
$6

     Everyone watched from all over the world as Meredith and Craig sat in their kitchen, night after night after week after month playing songs by Harold Arlen and Irving Berlin and Fats Waller and Jimmie Rogers. People from Russia and Japan and Denmark and the Netherlands and Israel and Canada and Argentina watched them, and of course people from all over the United States, and meanwhile, Meredith and Craig sat in their kitchen in San Francisco and played their guitars and zithers and ukuleles and banjos and xylophones, and sometimes Meredith played her lips like she was playing a trombone.
     You’d have thought it was a real trombone, I’m telling you.
     There was also this: You could be sure that while you were watching them play and sing, you were not also getting the plague. In fact, you were having fun. You were part of a family, every night for hundreds of nights for about forty minutes every night.
     (“MEREDITH AND CRAIG SIT IN THEIR KITCHEN AND PLAY STRINGED INSTRUMENTS”)

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirtieth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
August 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover design by Stuart Ross

Cover art by Laurie Siblock

Stuart Ross has published three book-length story collections, Henry Kafka and Other Stories (The Mercury Press, 1997), Buying Cigarettes for the Dog (Freehand Books, 2009), and I Am Claude François and You Are a Bathtub (Anvil Press, 2022), as well as a bunch of poetry, novels, memoirs, and rants. He has won the Harbourfront Festival Prize, the Trillium Book Award, the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario, across the lake from Rochester, New York.

This is Ross’ fourth chapbook with above/ground press, after ESPESANTES (2018), NINETY TINY POEMS (2019) and BIRD SNOW ON HARD TRACKS (2023). above/ground press also produced the festschrift Report from the Ross Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 in 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: Graham, Barwin, Ross, Mellis, mclennan + Tierney,

Lea Graham has a poem up at The Fortnightly Review; Gary Barwin has a poem up at NewPoetry; Stuart Ross has new work up at The Glacier; Miranda Mellis writes on Robert (Bob) Glück for BOMB magazine; rob mclennan has a poem up at Poem Alone, two more up at Blood+Honey, and is interviewed by Mia Funk for The Creative Process; and Orchid Tierney is hosting a free, virtual zine workshop, “pedagogies for the planthroposcene!,” on August 8 at noon as part of Sarabande Books's ⚡ZINE LUNCH!⚡ series.

some author activity: McNair, mclennan, Norris, Sweeney, Munson, Novak + Ross,

Christine McNair is interviewed by Hollay Ghadery for the New Books Network podcast; rob mclennan has a new poem up at NewPoetry.ca, and an interview conducted by Victoria Cole for Horseshoe Literary Journal; Ken Norris has an excerpt of a memoir up at The Typescript; Heather Sweeney now has a substack; Jed Munson and JoAnna Novak have new work in DIAGRAM; and did you know that Stuart Ross' Proper Tales Press is now on Instagram?

some author activity: Robinson, Banks, Ross, Hall, mclennan, Weaver + Boyle,

Ben Robinson has some new poems up at the temz review; Chris Banks posts an essay over at The Woodlot, on how he still believes in National Poetry Month; Stuart Ross has a bunch of new poems up at Mercurius; Phil Hall is interviewed by rob mclennan for periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, as is Andy Weaver; and Frances Boyle has a new poem up at Concision.

some author activity: Boughn, Schapira, Levy, Ross, Clayton, Barton + The Peter F Yacht Club,

Michael Boughn has a YouTube channel, by the way, in which he's been posting a variety of reading videos, including himself and Victor Coleman, etcetera; Kate Schapira writes about the LA wildfires; John Levy has a poem for Stuart Ross up at International Times; Simon Brown has translated poems by Conyer Clayton into French for Revue Watts; John Barton has a new poem up  at Identity Theory; and a stranger recently sent me a photograph of this Peter F Yacht Club hat he picked up in Montreal, asking if know where the real yacht club might be. I have no idea! I would love to know,

some author activity: Radmore, Eleftherion, Niespodziany, Ross, mclennan + Armantrout,

Claudia Coutu Radmore has two new poems up at The Pi Review; Melissa Eleftherion has a new poem up at The Citron Review, and a further poem up at Verse Daily; Benjamin Niespodziany has begun a substack to post weekly poems and prompts every Sunday ; Stuart Ross has posted his annual poem for New Year's; a further section of rob mclennan's work-in-progress "the green notebook" is online at Community Mausoleum, and he has posted a couple of videos reading short stories via substack; and Rae Armantrout has two new poems and commentary up at Plume.

some author activity: Archer, mclennan, Caporaso, Pirie, Niespodziany, Straumsvåg + Ross,

Sacha Archer has posted a new concrete (poetry/fiction) audiobook to bandcamp; rob mclennan's fourteenth annual 'best of' Canadian poetry titles has landed via dusie, and has a new section of "the green notebook" posted at The Typescript; Angela Caporaso's above/ground press title has landed on the Asemic Front 2 Top Ten Vispo Faves of 2024 list; Pearl Pirie offers her "Self-audit and Best of" list of 2024; Benjamin Niespodziany has three new poems up at The Pi Review; Dag T. Straumsvåg has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and a video of Stuart Ross reading at Carthage College as part of their Visiting Writers Series, Kenosha WI, October 8, 2024 is now online.

new from above/ground press: The Peter F Yacht Club #34 : 2024 Holiday Special,

The Peter F Yacht Club #34
2024 Holiday Special
lovingly hand-crafted, folded, stapled, edited and carried around in bags of envelopes by rob mclennan,
$6

With new writing by a host of Peter F Yacht Club regulars and irregulars, including Frances Boyle, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Jason Christie, David Currie, Michelle Desbarats, AJ Dolman, nina jane drystek, Amanda Earl, Laura Farina, ryan fitzpatrick, Cara Goodwin, Chris Johnson, Margo LaPierre, IAN MARTIN, Karen Massey, rob mclennan, James K. Moran, Pearl Pirie, Colin Quin, Monty Reid, Joan Rivard, Stuart Ross and Grant Wilkins!

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 27, 2024 ; as the final above/ground press item of 2024!
[launching tonight at our annual holiday reading/regatta! you should come out!]
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

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: Donato, Robinson, Ross, mclennan, Inniss + Boyle,

Joseph Donato has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; Ben Robinson answers the '12 or 20 questions' interview; Stuart Ross has new poems in the new issue of Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, as does rob mclennan, who also has a piece up at Still Point; Scott Inniss had some work up at Still Point a while back, also; and Frances Boyle has a poem online at The New Quarterly,

some author activity: Grayhurst, Niespodziany, Ross, Beaulieu + Novak,

Irma Kurti interviews Allison Grayhurst for Alessandria Today; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at havehashad; Stuart Ross has posted his annual birthday poem; Richard Capener posted a podcast interview with Derek Beaulieu via his substack; and JoAnna Novak has a poem up at Literary Hub.

Poetry at the Avant-Garde (Ottawa, June 1st): Jessi MacEachern, Stuart Ross, & William Vallières

Join us at the Avant-Garde Bar to see Stuart Ross (Cobourg), Jessi MacEachern (Montréal), and William Vallières (Montréal) read from their new poetry chapbooks from above/ground press.
Hosted by Bardia Sinaee.

Thursday, June 1, 2023 : Avant-Garde Bar, 135 Besserer Street, Ottawa
Event starts at 7:30pm.
Admission is free.
Chapbooks will be available for sale.
See the Eventbrite link here

About the readers:

Jessi MacEachern is a poet who lives in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal where she teaches English literature. She is the author of A Number of Stunning Attacks. Her chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is her second chapbook with above/ground press.

Stuart Ross, winner of the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize, is the author of over twenty full-length books of poetry, fiction, and essays. Bird Snow on Hard Tracks is his third above/ground press chapbook. Stuart’s work has been translated into French, Norwegian, Slovene, Russian, Spanish, and Estonian. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Event, Grain, and Plenitude. His first book of poetry, Versus (2019), is out with Véhicule Press. His chapbook, Poor Rutebeuf (2023), a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, is out now with above/ground press.

Event banner artwork by Barbara Caruso.