some author activity: Crosby, Witek, Chang-Richardson, Smith, Tucker, Holmes + Young,

Gregory Crosby is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, as is Terri Witek; Ellen Chang-Richardson is interviewed by Leila Marshy at All Lit Up; Pete Smith is in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; Aaron Tucker and Michael Holmes and Derek Beaulieu all have new work up at NewPoetry; and Geoffrey Young has new work in the Spotlight series.

new from above/ground press: DOWN WATER STREET, by Terri Witek

DOWN WATER STREET
Terri Witek
$6

Vessel 1


After river-gathering elsewhere, a vessel arrives, catches. The story may be different where you are, but this time it was dipped then dropped by a stoop-weary nun. Lucky you who found it anyway, wet glint in sand. Now take out the people. A shard meshed in a river god's hair slowly reaches the lap of a waiting cypress. Nicks until sap beads but stays. Now X the gods. River touches sea and can’t return.

I say this because my sister’s not tight with her neighbor, who thinks birds queue for my sister’s bird feeder on her very own clothesline and shit shit shit. My sister neither moves the feeder nor declines to let her dog dig while the neighbor hisses.

But of course the neighbor’s lover passes and the woman turns poorly. Tears do something to proximities and it should have come as no surprise though it did that the neighbor’s legs begin to weep. Only the backs, so she both feels and imagines drops dragging down to gold carpet. My sister starts dressing her neighbor’s wounds. Yellow serum, she says, a pattern of holes. And     , who is, as they say, terminal, helps my sister back to her feet after my sister dresses the last little red weeper near her neighbor’s heel

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

Terri Witek is the author of 8 previous full-length books of poems and many chapbooks: the most recent, Something’s Missing in This Museum, was published by Anhinga Press in 2023.  Exit Island was a Florida Book Award medalist; The Rape Kit was the Slope Editions Prize 2018 winner, judged by Dawn Lundy Martin. Martin calls The Rape Kit “ a grand success, the best we’ll get. Fresh, relevant, and heartbreaking” and “a fire in the throat of a culture that has no appropriate language for rape and its aftermath…”

Witek’s visual poetics work is featured in JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Gallery of Women’s Asemic Writing and Visual Poetry (2021) as well as in arts venues.  The poet’s collaborations with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have, since 2005, been shown nationally and internationally: in New York, Seoul, Miami, Lisbon, Valencia (Spain) and Rio de Janeiro. The duo have been represented by The Liminal gallery in Valencia: their most recent collaboration was featured at ARCO, Madrid (2023) where the Liminal won special jury mention. Since 2011, collaborations with new media artist Matt Roberts (mattroberts.com) often use augmented reality technology and have been featured in Matanza (Colombia), Lisbon, Glasgow, Vancouver, and Miami.  Recent collaborative work with poet Amaranth Borsuk loops the pandemic and the eco-crisis as a crisis of rain and smoke between worlds; that with weaver Paula Damm combines text/textile. Individual and collaborative work has been featured in a wide variety of text venues, including Fence, The Colorado Review, Hampden-Sydney Poetry Review, American Poetry Review, Poetry, Slate, Hudson Review, Lana Turner, The New Republic, and many other journals and anthologies.

With Cyriaco Lopes, Witek team-teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s low-residency MFA of the Americas; they also run The Fernando Pessoa Game as faculty in the summer Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. Witek holds the university’s Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing and is the recipient of both the McInery Award and the John Hague Award for teaching.  terriwitek.com

This is Witek’s second above/ground press title, after the collaborative W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT (2021), with Amaranth Borsuk.

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: Chang-Richardson,Witek, mclennan, Kaplan, Eleftherion, MacEachern, Moure + Houglum,

forthcoming author Ellen Chang-Richardson answers the '12 or 20 questions'; forthcoming author Terri Witek is featured in the spotlight series; rob mclennan is interviewed by JWT BookAdventures; Genevieve Kaplan has work in the latest Word for Word; Melissa Eleftherion reads for the DMQ Virtual Salon; Jessi MacEachern answers four questions for Erín Moure via YouTube; and did you see that Brook Houglum is the second in the new series of author spotlights over at the above/ground press substack?

some author activity: Sikkema, Robertson, Kolewe, Crosby, Shirley, Witek + mclennan,

Michael Sikkema has new work up at cul-de-sac of blood; did you know that Lisa Robertson has an occasional newsletter you can sign up for, as does R. Kolewe?; Gregory Crosby and Vik Shirley each have work up at talking about strawberries all of the time, as does forthcoming author Terri Witek; Chris Banks interviews rob mclennan for The Woodlot; and don't forget that above/ground press has that new substack you can sign up for, with extra-special other things to appear there.

some author activity: Konchan, Witek, van Vliet, Drescher, Oniță + Armantrout,

Virginia Konchan has a poem up at Sixth Finch; forthcoming author Terri Witek is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Robert van Vliet has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; the video of an October 2023 reading at the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University by Julia Drescher and C. J. Martin is now online as part of the Poetry Center Digital Archive; Adriana Oniță has work in the Spotlight series; and Rae Armantrout has four new poems up at Plume.

some author activity: Cantrell, McNair, Berlatsky + Witek

Walking the Wrack Line? by videographer-photographer Matt Roberts and poet Terri Witek. Photo by Rick de Yampert

Andrew Cantrell has new work up at Annulet; Christine McNair is interviewed alongside Elee Kraljii Gardiner for Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks podcast; Noah Berlatsky is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and forthcoming author Terri Witek is part of "Cuerpo-territorio: Reverberations of Belonging," an exhibit at Stetson University's Hand Art Center.

some author activity: Witek, Armantrout, Burdick, Dardis + Campos,

forthcoming author Terri Witek has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Rae Armantrout has five new poems up at The Brooklyn Rail; Alice Burdick has two new poems and a statement in the Spotlight series; forthcoming author Colin Dardis also has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; and Isabel Sobral Campos has new work up at Black Sun Lit.

some author activity: Witek, eckhoff, Kemp-Gee, Casteels + Archer,

forthcoming author Terri Witek has new work up at Michigan Quarterly Review; kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Kimberley Dyck collaboratively answer some questions on their collaborations at Touch the Donkey; forthcoming author Meghan Kemp-Gee has work in Columba Poetry; and both Michael e. Casteels and Sacha Archer have new visual work up at utsanga.

some author activity: Witek, Smith, mclennan, Hyland + Flemmer,

Terri Witek and Jessica Smith (among many, many others) participate in this year's edition of The New Orleans Poetry Festival, April 13-16, 2023 ; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Olney magazine; MC Hyland and Brian Teare participate in a reading and conversation at NYU via The Organism for Poetic Research on April 6; and Kyle Flemmer has a new poem up at The Pi Review

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day one of five: Witek/Lopes, Robinson, Melançon, Unrau + Chernoff,

As part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. While I’ve never actually attended myself (being unaffiliated with any organization that might assist with funds to attend such a thing), it does seem like a pretty cool destination. An Ottawa one would be cool; should they just host an Ottawa one? Until then, I suppose, something like this might have to suffice.

US poet Terri Witek (terriwitek.com) and Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have collaborated since 2005--their works together include museum and gallery shows, performance and site-specific projects featured internationally in New York, Seoul, Miami, Crete, Manchester, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, and Valencia. Witek holds the Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing at Stetson University in Florida, and Lopes is an art professor at CUNY John Jay in New York City. Together they teach Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson’s low-residency MFA of the Americas. Their collaborative projects are represented by the liminal (Valencia Spain).

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His most recent chapbook is with above/ground press, Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022, after 2020’s Coup), and his most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on Twitter mostly, and sometimeson Instagram, both at @lethejerome.

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent publication is Without Form from The Blasted Tree and knife | fork | book. The Book of Benjamin is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in the fall of 2023. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.

Melanie Dennis Unrau is a poet of mixed European ancestry living on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg. A Research Affiliate and Visiting Fellow at the University of Manitoba, also a sessional instructor at the University of Winnipeg, Melanie studies oil poetry and the poetics of just transition. She is the author of the poetry collection Happiness Threads (Muses’ Company, 2013) and the poetry chapbook The Goose (above/ground, 2023), a co-editor of Seriality and Texts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat (Palgrave, 2014), and a former editor of The Goose journal and Geez magazine. Her forthcoming book “The Rough Poets: Petropoetics and the Tradition of Canadian Oil-Worker Poetry” is on contract with McGill-Queen's University Press. She is working on a poetry collection, “The Goose,” a literary-critical reading of “father of the tar sands” S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails. She recently co-edited a forthcoming issue of Canadian Literature journal on “Poetics and Extraction.” Melanie was a long-time participant in the Artist Mothers’ Collective at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art in Winnipeg; she loves collaborating with visual artists and poets. This reading was first prepared for the Late Winter Writers Online Residency at the Banff Centre in February 2023.

MLA Chernoff is a poet, performance artist, meme enthusiast, and recovering academic. Their debut full-length poetry collection, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], was released by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2021. MLA is also the author of several chapbooks, including delet this, TERSE THIRSTY, SCRIED FUNDAMENTS, and I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY). They hope you are having a real nice day xo xo

some author activity: Martin, Burdick, Earl, Notley + Witek,

Camille Martin has posted "My Evangeline (an illustrated personal essay)" over at her Rogue Embryo blog; Alice Burdick is featured on Catherine Owen's Ms. Lyric's Poetry Outlaws podcast; and Amanda Earl writes about above/ground press, Alice Notley and forthcoming author Terri Witek as part of her AngelHousePress Caring Imagination Crowd Funding Campaign.

new from above/ground press: W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT, by Terri Witek and Amaranth Borsuk

W / \ S H: INITIAL CONTACT
Terri Witek and Amaranth Borsuk
$5

For U U:

For years now I have wondered why some creatures of those who still grace our little spinners speak in more than one voice. Not like warning vs mating shout-outs. Not like the space btwn who cooks for who cooks 4 U. Some crawlers and sailors and fliers (I hesitate to name them, as I’ve been kicked out of several know-circles for proposing this) seem to keep =here’s what sticks painfully even as I spell it into the record tree= a tongue in each wing. But if one ever found these creatures and opened them up (poor things) they’d only see O / \ or another staggered and maybe unreadable trace.

While I’ve nixed weary years trying to prove the ongoingness of these odd biological code bites, a story our mothers tell, always at unpredictable moments, makes a flickering reverb. Double and unequal worlds, they say, one nearly waterless, smokey and fire-hemmed, one glittery and rain-beaten, long before the enfolding of our seeps. Women on these worlds built devices to reach each other, they say, touching our little heads from great heights. Or maybe not devices but “machines.” As our eyelids flutter, the story =start again= tells how 2 women of far and former worlds tried to touch by channeling fire/rain or maybe breath/spit into……into……...at this point our nonas trail off, vanish into other tasks. And if, as our small dreams kindle, we try to find these 2 ancestral message trails, we’ll only get more lost. We know this even as children.

Unsure why I am recounting this now, or + - exactly where it will find U U. I comb my own bicode for trails they may have left: the hurt and whistle that marks generations after an event. Their infiltration runs deep, and each of their tears tears a rivulet in my fold-organ. I feel more than I can say, but each day am surer we’re all marked this way by a period of distance and enclosure, burn and berm. These are all I have turned up, though certainly more will arise and spill over in time. Look in U U, too, and see what ripples dripdrp across your double opals, your split tongue. I’ll keep sinking on it and & what comes.

Yours,
Sakia

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

Acknowledgments

This poem was written during fire and storm over many years. The first seeds were dropped at Atlantic Center for the Arts during a residency led by Brenda Hillman, whose help and wisdom always encourage us toward the world's strangeness. This chapbook is dedicated to Brenda, who pointed us to birdsong, who showed us other, more possible worlds.

The poems that appear here as “Dear Citizen of No Rain” and “Dear Denizen of Skyshot” first appeared in Snail Trail issue 3 (2021). We are grateful to Woogee Bae, Aya Bram, and Katelyn Oppegard.

Deep thanks to rob mclennan for his tireless support and creation of poetic community.

Terri Witek is the author of 7 books of poetry: her newest collection is The Rattle Egg (2021). Recent work has been featured in two new international anthologies: JUDITH: Women Making Visual Poetry (2021), and in the WAAVe Global Anthology of women’s asemic writing and visual poetry (forthcoming). Her many collaborations with artists and writers have been featured in performances, museum shows, and gallery exhibitions. Witek teaches Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas with Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes, and their work together is represented by The Liminal in Valencia, Spain. terriwitek.com  

Amaranth Borsuk is a poet, scholar, and book artist working at the intersection of print and digital media. Her latest volume, The Book (MIT Press, 2018), is a concise introduction to the book’s changing technologies that bridges book history, artists’ books, and electronic literature. She has collaborated on installations, art bookmarklets, interactive works, and poems, and is the author, most recently, of the poetry collection Pomegranate Eater (Kore Press, 2016). Borsuk is Associate Professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at the University of Washington Bothell, where she also serves as Associate Director of the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics. amaranthborsuk.com

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