new from above/ground press: avoice be heard, by Jérôme Melançon

avoice be heard
Jérôme Melançon
$6

bp leaves 
no doubt

no doubt
sounds more alive than paper

in through between bo
dy parts bodies bo
th sets of eyes voices

locational 
definational

def
ying any ki
nd of mixing it so
unds like it so
unds like so
unds so
unding

nothing pure or empty
time is no
t mine here i am ca
ugh
t in his
have to wai
t for him his wai
ling his wa
ndering re
petit
ive in
cant   (at)
ing

self distorting

wait as he stretches sounds

*

These sections of the poem “speechletting” are a response to bpNichol’s recorded sound poems. It disassembles, reflects upon, and reincorporates elements of Nichol’s poems, at least as I heard them. Many are available on the bpNichol Digital Archive (bpnichol.ca). The image that appears on the cover is a still of a video that can be found online titled “My concern...” My thanks to Gregory Betts and the team at the bpNichol Digital Archive for giving us that endlessly generous arrangement of alphabets. And to rob mclennan for the continuing support. And to my family for sitting through me listening to these sound poems and working out new ones at the kitchen table.

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

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His fourth collection, Prairial·es, is now out with Prise de parole. Let us not forget his three chapbooks with above/ground press: Bridges Under the Water (2023), Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022), and Coup (2020), his occasional translations, and his book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has also edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that sometimes have to do with some of this. He is on various social media under variations of @lethejerome, notably at bsky.social.

This is his fourth chapbook with above/ground press.

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: Armantrout, Browne, Turner, Stebner, Dean, Barwin, Nichol + Heroux,

Rae Armantrout discusses two poems from her latest collection with Laynie Browne, Julia Bloch and Al Fireis as part of PoemTalk #207 at Jacket2; Michael Turner has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, as does Kevin Stebner, and even Leesa Dean; Gary Barwin has posted new music over at bandcamp, "I before H: music after bpNichol"; and Jason Heroux has a new poem up at unbroken.

some author activity: Flowers, Mc Donnell, Strang, Rogal, Carr + Nichol,

Neil Flowers has a new poem up at The Typescript; Conor Mc Donnell has a poem and statement up at the Spotlight series; Catriona Strang has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem' series; Stan Rogal has two new poems up at The Pi Review; Julie Carr has new work up at Antiphony; and a 1984 episode of the TVO program Canadian Literature is on YouTube, featuring the late Toronto poet bpNichol.

new from above/ground press: In Which Archibald Lampman / Translates Arthur Rimbaud, by Grant Wilkins

Grant Wilkins
In Which Archibald Lampman / Translates Arthur Rimbaud
$5

Morning

Matin means morning     or sometimes, wakening sky     when night’s dying shadows     and old superstitions     meet the stirring of the sun     writing hope in blood and gold     above the marble quays and laurel woods     like warm breath     on silence

Le Temps s’écoulera means Time shall flow     or sometimes, the world marches on     when the hallucination of words     empties and refills     the drawing rooms and schools     and the woodyards of our youth     with the woeful felicity     of a quaint morning melodrama     or a high sovereign creed

Le chant des cieux means the song of the heavens     or sometimes, the lament of the winds      for though the city bells are singing     in their hollow towers     echoing endless Ave Marias        I can still hear the Goddess whispering     broken in grief and dim old age     dying slowly away      like mist in the morning

Rêver et attendre means to dream and to wait     or sometimes, somehow, my spirit is asleep     when the pale broken sun     that lured our youth     and disordered our minds     is beaten smooth to gleaming silver     we will finally be free     to drink the alchemy of the Word     in a long Circean draught

L’aube d’été means summer dawn     or sometimes, morning summons      when the sun breaks dull red     and the outer verges of my sleep     slowly vanish      to the sound of sparrows and fresh light     as I stir in the morning     and weep in mourning     for the antiquity of your wisdom

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Grant Wilkins is a printer, papermaker and occasional poet from Ottawa who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he likes ink, metal, paper, letters, sounds and words, and combinations thereof.

This is Wilkins’ second above/ground press chapbook, after Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology (2022).

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

new from above/ground press: Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology, by Grant Wilkins

Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology
Grant Wilkins
$5

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

This poem was created by a loose diastic reading-through of Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology (Coach House Press, 1982).

Grant Wilkins is a printer, papermaker and occasional poet from Ottawa who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he likes ink, metal, paper, letters, sounds and words, and combinations thereof. A second above/ground press title is forthcoming.

above/ground press reprinted bpNichol's KON 66 & 67 (for jiri valoch in January 2002 and THE TRUE EVENTUAL STORY OF BILLY THE KID, with an afterward by carl peters, in December 2005.

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

❡ Call for submissions to the 2019 bpNichol Chapbook Award ❡

from the Meet the Presses website:

The bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry in English published in chapbook form within Canada. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. The author receives $4,000 and the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective.

Chapbooks should be not less than 10 pages and not more than 48 pages. The chapbooks must have been published between January 1st and December 31st of the previous year (2018), and the poet must be Canadian.

Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of eligible chapbooks. Translations into English from other languages are eligible.

Submissions must be sent by Canada Post or courier (and not hand-delivered to a Meet The Presses collective member) and include a completed submission form or accurate facsimile (download the bpNichol Award Submission Form 2019), a brief C.V. of the author, including address, telephone number, and email address. Publisher contact information (contact person, mailing address, email address, and telephone contact) must also be included. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

The opening date for receipt of submissions is Feb. 1, 2019, and they will be accepted until May 31, 2019. If submission confirmation has not been received by email by June 30, 2019, please send a query to Beth Follett at: feralgrl[at]interlog[dot]com.

Send submissions to:
Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award
113 Bond Street, St John’s NL A1C 1T6

*

Chapbooks written by members of the Meet the Presses collective are ineligible for the award. Authors of chapbooks published by members of the collective remain eligible for the award.

Concrete Poetry exhibition at the Secret Handshake Gallery, Toronto:

Concrete is Porous
Act 1: Visual

An exhibition of concrete poetry.

November 3, 2018 to February 23, 2019
Opening reception November 3, 2:30pm to 6:30pm
The Secret Handshake Gallery
170a Baldwin Street
Toronto, Ontario

Featuring works by a variety of above/ground authors and non-authors, including bill bissett, dani spinosa, kate siklosi, eric schmaltz, derek beaulieu, michèle prevost, adeena karasick, david tin mouth, w mark sutherland, steve mccaffery, peggy lefler, mark laliberte, bpnichol, karl bekker, jim andrews, gary barwin, gustave morin, chad juriansz, paul dutton, michael e casteels, barbara caruso, amanda earl, jwcurry, judith copithorne, grant wilkins, hart broudy and daniel f bradley!

A Soundival of Sorts : Jennifer Baker + others

Rhombus 19 presents "A Soundival of Sorts." April 1, 8 pm, The Happy Goat Coffee Company, 35 Laurel St., Ottawa. An evening of sound poetry, experimental verse, and poetry theatre. Original compositions, plus works by Hugo Ball, Kurt Schwitters, Christian Bök, Caroline Bergvall, bpNichol, The Four Horsemen, Sesame Street, Michael Ondaatje, and others. Performed by students and faculty of UOttawa's Department of English. For more information, check out the Facebook link.

some author activity: Trivedi, Kaminski, Abel, Earl + Nichol,

Amish Trivedi has published the chapbook-length sequence "21 Permutations" on his website; Megan Kaminski is interviewed over at Noemi Press; Jordan Abel is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Amanda Earl's essay, "Breaking the Narrative to Open Up the Poem," is now online at AngelHousePress; and the bpNichol online archive is alive again, with a mound of material newly available!

some author activity: Dyckman, beaulieu, Betts + Armantrout,

Audio of Susanne Dyckman--along with Joseph Noble, Tiff Dresden, Todd Melicker and Steven Seidenberg, among others--reading as part of the memorial for the late Colleen Lookingbill that occurred in May, 2014 in California is now online; derek beaulieu has visual poems featured on digital billboards around Calgary; Gregory Betts receives the Chancellor's Chair for Research Excellence over at Brock University for a variety of projects on and around bpNichol; and PoemTalk #81, in which Rae Armantrout, Laynie Browne, Kerry Sherin Wright and Al Filreis discuss two short poems by Fanny Howe is now online at Jacket2.

above/ground press author Jason Christie's Government (2013) on the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award‏ shortlist!

Congratulations to new Ottawa resident Jason Christie for making the shortlist to the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award! Thrilled to see, also, two other above/ground press authors--Christine McNair and Phil Hall--on the shortlist for further titles. Congratulations, all!

This is above/ground press' third and third annual appearance on the bpNichol Chapbook Award shortlist, after Fenn Stewart's An OK Organ Man (2012) made last year's list, and Hugh Thomas' Opening the Dictionary (2011) and Elizabeth Rainer and Michael Blouin's let lie/ (2012) were shortlisted the previous year.

Looking forward to this year's Meet the Presses (our first appearance at such) to hear the winner! The press release for such is below:

Meet the Presses Announces bpNichol Chapbook Award shortlist and Doubling of Award Purse

TORONTO (10 October 2014) — Meet The Presses announced today that, beginning this year, the prize purse of the bpNichol Chapbook Award will double from $2,000 to $4,000, thanks to the generosity of its Anonymous Donor. Meet the Presses is a volunteer collective that organizes public events showcasing books and chapbooks, magazines, recordings and broadsides produced by independent publishers of fiction, poetry and creative non-fiction,

This year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award shortlist consists of six poetry titles:

Government: Jason Christie (above/ground)

Life Savings: Mat Laporte (Odourless)

pleasantries and other misdemeanours: Christine McNair (Apt. 9)

a fist made and then unmade: matt robinson (Gaspereau)

Oilywood: Christine Leclerc (Nomados)

X: Phil Hall (Thee Hellbox)

The winner of this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award will be announced at Meet the Presses’ fifth Indie Literary Market, on Saturday November 22, at the Tranzac Club in Toronto. The Market is an invitational event focused exclusively on things literary. It provides an opportunity for the public to meet independent literary publishers and purchase publications that may not be readily available (or available at all) in bookstores and other commercial outlets. The collective came together in the spirit of the original Meet the Presses events begun 29 years ago in Toronto by Stuart Ross and Nick Power.

*

The bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry published in chapbook form. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. This year’s judges are Kevin McPherson Eckhoff and Sandra Ridley. The author now receives $4,000 and, thanks to the largesse of writers Brian Dedora and Jim Smith, the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective.

For more information, write meetthepresses@gmail.com or phone 709.738.6702.

Meet the Presses

Gary Barwin, Paul Dutton, Ally Fleming, Beth Follett, Hazel Millar, Leigh Nash, Nicholas Power, Stuart Ross, Eric Schmaltz and Jess Taylor.

[Founding Members Emeritus: Maria Erskine, Maggie Helwig]

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.

Call for submissions to the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award!

Meet the Presses has announced their call for submissions for the annual bpNichol Chapbook Award. As they write in today's release:

Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of a chapbook of poetry in English published in Canada.

Chapbooks should be not less than 10 pages and not more than 48 pages. The chapbooks must have been published between January 1st and December 31st of the previous year (2013), and the poet must be Canadian.

Submissions must be sent by Canada Post or courier (and not hand-delivered to a Meet The Presses collective member) and include a brief C.V. of the author, including address, telephone number, and email address. Publisher contact information (contact person, mailing address, e-mail address, telephone contact) must also be included. Incomplete submissions will not be considered.

The closing date for the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award is March 31, 2014. Submissions must be received by this date. If submission confirmation has not been received by e-mail by April 30, 2014, please send a query to Beth Follett at: feralgrl@interlog.com.

Send submissions to:

Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award
113 Bond Street, St John's NL A1C 1T6

Please visit the Meet The Presses website for more information: www.meetthepresses.wordpress.com

Call for Submissions: The bpNichol Chapbook Award 2013

ANNOUNCING: The bpNichol Chapbook Award 2013

“Small press is the guardian of literary culture and free speech.” – bpNichol

The bpNichol Chapbook Award recognizes excellence in Canadian poetry published in chapbook form. The prize is awarded to a poetry chapbook judged to be the best submitted. The author receives $2,000 and the publisher receives $500. Awarded continuously since 1986, the bpNichol Chapbook Award is currently administered by the Meet the Presses collective.

-- Interested authors or publishers should submit three copies of a chapbook of poetry in English published in Canada in 2012.
-- Chapbooks must contain no fewer than 10 pages and no more than 48 pages.
-- Submissions must include a brief CV of the author, plus the address, telephone number, and email address of both the author and publisher.
-- Send to: Meet the Presses / bpNichol Chapbook Award, 6249-2100 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON M6S 5A5
-- The closing date for submissions to the 2013 competition is July 1, 2013. (Submissions must be received by this date.)
-- The winner will be announced at the Meet the Presses Indie Literary Market in fall 2013.

The cash prize to the publisher is generously donated by writers Jim Smith and Brian Dedora. All chapbooks submitted will be archived at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.

Please check the link here, or email Meet The Presses for more information: meetthepresses@gmail.com.

*

Meet the Presses is a Toronto-based collective devoted to promoting micro, small and independent literary presses. This collective has come together in the spirit of the original Meet the Presses event launched in Toronto in the mid-1980s by Nicholas Power and Stuart Ross. Meet the Presses organizes a variety of curated public events, all focussing on independent publishers of fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction. Meet the Presses – an unfunded and non-profit collective – is comprised of Gary Barwin, Lucy Cappiello, Paul Dutton, Ally Fleming, Beth Follett, Hazel Millar, Leigh Nash, Nicholas Power, and Stuart Ross.

Chapbooks written by members of the Meet the Presses collective are ineligible for the award. Authors of chapbooks published by members of the collective remain eligible for the award.

some author activity: Robertson, Pirie, Hancock, mclennan, Martin, hastain + Nichol,

Are you ready for spring yet? Until then, there's a new interview with Lisa Robertson at The Rusty Toque; Pearl Pirie has a new essay up at Canadian Poetries, and a new poem over at Poem in Which; Pirie was also good enough to post a photo of Brecken Hancock from her recent appearance in the open set at The TREE Reading Series; Camille Martin gets reviewed over at Bookslut; j/j hastain participates in The Next Big Thing self-interview series; and the online archive for the late Toronto poet bpNichol has been extensively updated.