new from above/ground press: 1962 - 2018, by Tim Atkins

1962 - 2018
Tim Atkins
$5

Poem 217

This

poetry

which is

written

to effect

change

in the world

usually printed in

editions of

less than

500 &

read

only by poets

Oh how I love it

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
for the sake of the author’s participation in KANADA KONCRETE, verbi-voco-visual poetries in the multimedia age conference at the University of Ottawa, May 4-6, 2018.
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Tim Atkins has been a member of the summer faculty at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University, and a member of Carla Harryman’s Poets’ Theatre in San Francisco. He is the author of many books, including On Fathers < On Daughtyrs (Boiler House Press), Atkins Collected Petrarch (a Times Literary Supplement book of the year), Koto Y Yo (both from Crater Press), 25 Sonnets (The Figures), Petrarch (Book Thug), and Horace (O Books). He is currently developing an MFA at the University of Roehampton with a focus on radical, experimental, LGBTQ, and BAME poetics and practice.

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

new from above/ground press: Signs of Our Discontent, by Arnold McBay and Gregory Betts

Signs of Our Discontent
Arnold McBay and Gregory Betts
$5

The Texture of our Solitudes

In a period of significant cultural flux, change means displacement as much as advancement. Marshall McLuhan notes that once a technology gets displaced, it becomes a source of art for the next technology. Rust-belted St. Catharines, Ontario bears the trace of many such displacements, evident in the ghost advertisements that haunt the sides of downtown buildings, promoting stores and products that no longer exist; failed claims on some kind of happiness. The relentless optimism of all advertising, with their promise of contentment by a simple purchase, presages a darker discontent of a life without those new goods or a life always bereft of the next new thing. In this way, the fetish value of goods in capitalism signals a discomfort with the cultural landscape that is always on the edge of euphoria and despair. Our project stands back from the relentless optimism of advertising and technological advancement by looking at these ‘Signs of Our Discontent’, by taking displaced technologies and products as this projective content. The texts in this book are stored inside defunct, displaced bulbs, and will be hung around the city as reflective echoes. Thus, an incandescent light bulb (lit up by LEDs, of course) is filled with a sheet of birch bark (the oldest form of local printing) decorated with slogans built from the ghost advertisements in the downtown. The electric age meets the Mad Men of a lost corporate world bent on a global pillage. These signs of our discontent, tossed like so many bottled messages against hope, are a series of LetraSet aphorisms for such atomistic times.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
for the sake of the authors’ participation in KANADA KONCRETE, verbi-voco-visual poetries in the multimedia age conference at the University of Ottawa, May 4-6, 2018
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Arnold McBay is a mixed-media artist working in drawing, sculpture and installation. He teaches studio courses at Brock University and has led art workshops in public art galleries and high schools across Ontario. Gregory Betts is a poet and professor who works on experimental language and literature, and has published many books of various kinds. Together, they have performed sound poetry and improvisational music as Slanger (a duo), the Shiteaters (a four-piece group, previously featured at In the Soil), and, more recently, as TZT (a 5 or 6 piece outfit).

This is Gregory Betts’ fourth above/ground press title, after The Cult of David Thompson (2005), The Curse of Canada (2008) and Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin (2014). He also appeared in the four poet anthology READ YORK (2004).

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

new from above/ground press: The Book of Mark, by Amanda Earl

The Book of Mark
Amanda Earl
$5

The Vispo Bible: Mark

Each piece represents one chapter from the Book of Mark, New Testament. The text is taken from BibleGateway.com, King James Version. The Vispo Bible is a life’s work to translate every chapter, every book of the Bible into visual poetry. As of time of printing, Amanda has completed from the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Esther and, from the New Testament: Jude, Revelation and Mark. The work began in June, 2015.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
for the sake of the author’s participation in KANADA KONCRETE, verbi-voco-visual poetries in the multimedia age conference at the University of Ottawa, May 4-6, 2018
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Amanda Earl’s visual poetry has been exhibited in Canada, Brazil and Russia, and published in the last vispo: anthology: visual poetry 1998-2008 (Fantagraphics, 2012), The Book of Esther, The Vispo Bible, (Puddles of Sky Press, 2017), Leviticus XII (Penteract Press, 2017), Revelation 20 from The Vispo Bible, (No Press, 2017), Of the Body, (Puddles of Sky Press, 2012), Bone Sapling, a collaboration with Gary Barwin, (AngelHousePress, 2014), a field guide to fanciful bugs, (avantacular press, 2010),  Montparnasse: this is visual poetry, (chapbook publisher, 2010) and in the magazines, untethered (2017) and dreamland (2016). Amanda's visual poetry also appears in online journals, Brave New Word, Angry Old Man, Ustanga, h&, Our Teeth, otoliths, tip of the knife,  ffooom, the new post literate, Logalia.com, DrunkenBoat, and the Bleed. Gary Barwin gave a lovely write up of Amanda's visual poetry on Jacket2, "What kind of [sic] sense is that?: Amanda Earl & the synaesthesia of reading" (June, 2013). For more vispo, please visit EleanorIncognito.blogspot.ca.

This is Earl’s sixth chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015) and Lady Lazarus Redux (2017).

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

new from above/ground press: tattered sails (after un coup de des), by Derek Beaulieu

Derek Beaulieu
tattered sails (after un coup de des)
$5

 

Notes:

“Tattered Sails” is a visual interpretation of Marcel Broodthaers’s response to Stephane Mallarme’s “Un coup de Dés jamais n'abolira le Hasard.” In 1969, Broodthaers published an edition in which he replaced all of the text in Mallarme’s poem with black bars the size and shape of the original’s writing. The resultant text highlights the radical layout of Mallarme’s poem, with reading across 2-page spreads, shifting type sizes and a shifting reading diction. Broodthaers’ version of “Un coup de Dés” elevates layout and structure to the level of writing itself; content becomes secondary to decisions of the tactile treatment of text.

With “Tattered Sails”, I have continued the tactile treatment of this poem by folding the double-sized pages of Broodthaers’ poem (suggesting the hang and fold of sails on the mast) , shifting Broodthaers’  bars in to the heaving beams and broken masts of a ship-wreck of meaning.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
for the sake of the author’s participation in KANADA KONCRETE, verbi-voco-visual poetries in the multimedia age conference at the University of Ottawa, May 4-6, 2018
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Derek Beaulieu is the author / editor of 20 collections of poetry, prose and criticism including two volumes of his selected work Please No More Poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu (2013) and Konzeptuelle Arbeiten (2017). His most recent volume of fiction, a, A Novel was published by Paris’s Jean Boîte Editions. Beaulieu has exhibited his visual work across Canada, the United States and Europe and has won multiple awards for his teaching and dedication to students. Derek Beaulieu was the 2014–2016 Poet Laureate of Calgary, Canada.

This is Beaulieu’s eighth above/ground press chapbook, after an issue of the long poem magazine STANZAS (“calcite gours 1-19,” issue no. 38), the interview chapbook ECONOMIES OF SCALE: rob mclennan interviews derek beaulieu on NO PRESS / derek beaulieu interviews rob mclennan on above/ground press (2012) and single-author chapbooks “A? any questions? (1998), [Dear Fred] (2004), HOW TO EDIT, Chapter A. (ALBERTA SERIES #8; 2008), transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress (2014) and a a novel: 1-20 (2017).

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

Robert Kroetsch Conference this weekend : Anstee, Baker, Cooley, Markotić, Hall etc

In case you weren't aware, the 2017 Canadian Literature Symposium at the University of Ottawa is this weekend: Robert Kroetsch: Essayist, Novelist, Poet. Running from April 27-30, 2017, presenters include a variety of above/ground press authors (and non-authors), including panelists, presenters and chairs Nicole Markotić, Jennifer Baker, Rudy Wiebe, David Eso, Cameron Anstee, Claire Farley, Dennis Cooley, Aritha van Herk, Robert Stacey, Phil Hall and others. I even have a couple copies left of Robert Kroetsch's above/ground press chapbook, as well as the memorial chapbook we put together for him, if such appeals. Apparently the public is more than welcome to attend, and you can see the full schedule for the conference here.

And: I took this photo of Robert Kroetsch during our shared University of Alberta Press on-campus book launch, April 2010.

some author activity: Young, Armantrout, Higdon, beaulieu + Hall,

Deanna Young has a new website to go along with her forthcoming trade poetry title; The Fiddlehead has a retrospective of the work of Rae Armantrout in their summer 2014 issue; Hailey Higdon's chapbook PACKING (Bloof Books) is now available for free download; derek beaulieu gets some good love from The Star Phoenix; and the University of Ottawa has announced a new undergrad poetry workshop with their fall writer-in-residence Phil Hall.

above/ground press authors Amanda Earl + Phil Hall at Layton Reloaded!

Layton Reloaded is an evening of poetry readings presented as part of Whatever Else: An Irving Layton Symposium, the 41st Annual Canadian Literature Symposium in the Department of English at the University of Ottawa. Full symposium information is available here: http://www.canlit-symposium.ca/index.html

Readings will be inspired by the work and life of Irving Layton. Come out and listen to creative reconstructions, reimaginings, and reloadings of Layton’s source material.

Lineup:

Amanda Earl
Amatoritsero Ede
Phil Hall
Seymour Mayne
Sandra Ridley
David Solway

Saturday, May 4, 2013 ; The Mercury Lounge, Ottawa
Doors at 8:00 ; Readings at 8:30 ; No cover

Cameron Anstee reads with David O'Meara and 2012 University of Ottawa writer-in-residence, André Alexis, Thursday, November 1st, 2012

From the University of Ottawa English Department website: 

The Department of English in conjunction with the Ottawa Art Gallery will be hosting a reading and reception featuring our 2012 writer-in-residence, André Alexis, as well as award-winning Ottawa poet David O’Meara and PhD student/small press publisher Cameron Anstee. Join us at the Ottawa Art Gallery, Arts Court, on Thursday November 1st at 7:30 pm.

Cameron Anstee has published two poetry chapbooks with above/ground press -- Frank St. (2010) and Regarding Renewal (2012) -- both of which are still available.