new from above/ground press: poem | image | self, by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

poem | image | self
(after Adrian Piper and Lucy Lippard’s Catalysis)
Julia Polyck-O'Neill
$5

I hold monologues with myself


a meditation on what it means to practice
in 2019 what it means to be a body when bodies
are public when bodies are anti-monuments—when
the self is reshaped according to a framework of

autonomy

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Julia Polyck-O’Neill is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. Her writing has been published in B.C. Studies, Feminist Spaces, Tripwire, Touch the Donkey, Fermenting Feminisms (a project of the Laboratory for Aesthetics and Ecology, curated by Lauren Fournier), The Avant Canada Anthology (WLU Press, 2019), and other places. She recently co-edited a special issue of Canadian Literature with Gregory Betts, “Concepts of Vancouver: Poetics, Arts, Media.” She currently lives in Toronto, where she is completing her SSHRC-funded PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Brock University).

This is Polyck-O’Neill’s third above/ground press title, after femme (2016) and Everything will be taken away (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

new from above/ground press: Dust of the Wren: poems and translations, by Gary Barwin

Dust of the Wren
poems and translations
Gary Barwin
$5

Five Translations about Death
after Bill Knott

1.
when I was young, I used my head
this is my sentence
I have no head.

2.
I breathe
a babyful of air
connect to all other babies

3.
open your mouth
wanderer
do not forget
death
to floss

4.
yes, hello—
your power
mysterious in the middle of waving

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

The author of twenty-two books of poetry and fiction, Gary Barwin is a writer, musician and multimedia artist from Hamilton, Ontario and the author of the nationally bestselling novel, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House) which won the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Jewish Literary Award and was a finalist for the Governor-General’s Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His poetry includes No TV for Woodpeckers (poetry; Wolsak & Wynn, 2018), many chapbooks some with his own serif of nottingham editions, and, forthcoming, A Cemetery for Holes, a poetry collaboration with Tom Prime (Gordon Hill Press, 2019), Muttertongue (book/recording with Lillian Allen and Gregory Betts (Book*hug, 2019) and For It is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe: New and Selected Poems, ed. Alessandro Porco (Wolsak and Wynn, 2019.) A new novel,  Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted will appear from Random House in 2021. garybarwin.com

This is Barwins’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001), Seedpod, Microfiche (2013) and the collaborative PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Alice Burdick; 2018) and gravitynipplemilk anthroposcenesters (with Tom Prime; 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

new from above/ground press: 1956, by Kate Siklosi

1956
Kate Siklosi
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kate Siklosi is a Toronto writer, scholar, and business witch. Her most recent work includes two pamphlets: She Bites (Happy Monks Press, 2019) and fragile armies (Penteract Press, 2018) as well as three chapbooks: po po poems (above/ground press, 2018), may day (no press, 2018), and coup (The Blasted Tree, 2018). She is the co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a neat little feminist experimental poetry small press.

This is Kate Siklosi’s second above/ground press title, after po po poems (above/ground press, 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

new from above/ground press: har sawlya, by Mairéad Byrne

har sawlya
Mairéad Byrne
$5

1.           fwee shivy outsa

fwee shoey outsa

shall b’ug garridjj

imask muh gheena

air il-lawn mara;

eh shool cush clodda

modjin iss traw knowna

o loo-un

guh sahrun

here ig balyev.

fwee shivee outsa

shall b’ug garridj

imask muh gheena;

oh craaaw cree

o woortch agna

o wegness guick

och ann tronn toch

here ig baljiv

published in Ottawa by above/ground press for the sake of the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Mairéad Byrne’s most recent publication is In & Out (Smithereens Press 2019), and poems in the Chicago Review Online, Poetry Ireland Review, Smithereens, Icarus, StepAway, Past Simple, and Decals of Desire. Her poetry collections include Famosa na sua cabeça (Dobra Editorial 2015), You Have to Laugh: New & Selected Poems (Barrow Street 2013), The Best of (What’s Left of) Heaven (Publishing Genius 2010), SOS Poetry (/ubu Editions 2007), Talk Poetry (Miami University Press 2007), and Nelson & The Huruburu Bird (Wild Honey Press 2003). She emigrated from Ireland in 1994, earned a PhD in Theory & Cultural Studies from Purdue University, and works as a Professor of Poetry & Poetics at Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island. She is a co-curator of Policromia, an annual international festival of poetry and translation across the arts in Siena.

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

new from above/ground press: running commentary along the bottom of the tapestry, by Kimberly Campanello

running commentary along the bottom of the tapestry
Kimberly Campanello
$5

they didn’t expect


hedges steeples the time it takes
to cut away the chutes purpling
lips down the promenade past
nations stepping forward fire
blocking fire important speech
looped in a darkened room
hardy sightseers in rainproof
jackets everlasting bunkers
farmers or farmers wives or
farmers children blown
up mundane tasks running
commentary along the bottom
of the tapestry build up
of bodies where do we go
when we die the lovers
eating their crêpes her
outrageously classy flowers
their rolling cigarettes like sex

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image: The Fall and Redemption of Man:  The Embrace of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Gate, 1515. Albrecht Altdorfer (German, c. 1480-1538). Woodcut; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of The Print Club of Cleveland 1932.330.5

Kimberly Campanello’s poetry books include Consent, Strange Country and Imagines (both on the sheela-na-gig stone carvings), and Hymn to Kālī (her version of the Karpūrādi-stotra). Her poems have appeared most recently in Banshee, Blackbox Manifold, para·text, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, and in Laudanum Publishing’s Chapbook Anthology Volume Two. MOTHERBABYHOME, 796 poems on the St Mary’s Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, Ireland, is out with zimZalla Avant Objects in April 2019. In 2018, Kimberly joined the University of Leeds and the University of Leeds Poetry Centre as Programme Leader for Creative Writing. She lives in York, UK. www.kimberlycampanello.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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: Tag & Run: Canto One, by Stephen Cain

Tag & Run: Canto One
Stephen Cain
$4

1.

No! I am not Madame Cezanne
Nor was meant to be

Those wine bottles in your neighbour’s garden
Have they begun to sprout?

The Art of Work in the Age
Of Mechanical Oppression

A future right turn
Overwhelm your comfort zone

A lyric in flight

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover image by Cyan Cain (ca. 2007)

Stephen Cain is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently False Friends (Book*hug, 2017). Tag & Run: Canto One is his fourth chapbook from above/ground, following Zoom (2013), Hijinks: A Sequence from Double Helix (with Jay MillAr, 2003) and Circa Diem (1997). He lives in Toronto where he teaches Canadian and avant-garde literature at York University.

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

new from above/ground press: COLLECTIONS-14, by Kyle Kinaschuk

COLLECTIONS-14
Kyle Kinaschuk
$5

[collection-009]

& once more through a wounded sonnet blows
a little room for breath now swollen late
although each line i pluck is broken, parched,
bruised.
& you’re july summer dead at 26 
the boilermaker with the face tattoo
who i got used to seeing at sunrise 
exhaling those leaden calgary months
our ritual silent ash inventories
after loss blossomed to a dull litany.
there’s nothing monumental about it
the slow, ordinary life of mourning, but 
i apostrophize dead friends now because i’m not capable—
the white towel beneath my father’s jaw.  

when you have washed the face,
close the mouth
before the body starts to stiffen.
if the mouth will not stay shut,
place a rolled-up towel or washcloth under the chin.
if this does not provide enough support
to keep the mouth closed,
use a light-weight, smooth fabric scarf.
place the middle of the scarf at the top of the head,
wrapping each end around the side of the face,
under the chin and up to the top of the head
where it can be gently tied.
these supports will become unnecessary
in a few hours and can be removed.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover Photo by Clarke Kinaschuk 2013

Kyle Kinaschuk is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where he researches the politics and form of lament in contemporary poetry situated within Canada. His poetry has appeared in journals such as The Capilano Review, filling Station, PRISM international, The Puritan, Hart House Review, Poetry is Dead, and FreeFall Magazine.

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

new from above/ground press: The Ghosts of Barnacullia, by Paul Perry

The Ghosts of Barnacullia
Paul Perry
$5

To a Ghost

We sit in the room. We talk. It is my life you describe.
You say it is your own. Tell me again how it was.

The rain is lashing. Your handwriting uneven.

The other details you maintain are unimportant.

Talk about the moonlight then. In your childhood. It was thin as blood.

It was never there.

So sleep – whose kiss is this on your hot forehead?
Whose kiss?
So sleep –

There is a noise from downstairs. Imagine your mother baking.
It is not her. Or your father singing.

It is not him.

Downstairs, while you sleep or try to sleep, is something else.

It matters what you call it.

It matters that you can. So speak to me again of your life.
It is mine as well.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover image: Bláithín de Poire

Paul Perry is the author of 5 full length collections of poetry including Gunpowder Valentine: New and Selected Poems, and two pamphlets of poetry. A recent recipient of the Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship, and co-author to 4 Karen Perry best-sellers, including the Penguin published The Innocent Sleep. He is Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at UCD. 

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

new from above/ground press: For a Poetry of Blot, by Gregory Betts

For a Poetry of Blot
Gregory Betts
$4

Ink the beginning

was pure

        all was o

then came the pen

   pushing the mess

 into runes

     ruses

    us

we born in that alphablot

linked in a march of

morphing letters

  like connections

every word a nepotism

a conjugation of primal ink

writing is erasure

until the line of I returns to

its perfect dot

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
in part for the author’s participation in the TEXT/SOUND/PERFORMANCE: Making in Canadian Space conference at University College Dublin, Ireland, April 25-27, 2019.
https://textsoundperformance.wordpress.com/
April 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Gregory Betts is the author of seven books of poetry, including If Language and The Others Raisd in Me. He has written Avant-Garde Canadian Literature: The Early Manifestations and is co-editor (with Christian Bök) of Avant Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries. He is the Craig Dobbin Professor of Canadian Studies at University College Dublin, where he lives with his family.

This is Gregory Betts’ fifth above/ground press title, after The Cult of David Thompson (2005), The Curse of Canada (2008), Who Let the Mice in Brion Gysin (2014) and Signs of Our Discontent (with Arnold McBay, 2018). He also appeared in the four poet anthology READ YORK (2004).

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

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

above/ground press at Kanada Koncrete, Loud Mouths: Anstee, Atkins, Beaulieu, Betts, Davey, Earl, Spinosa, etc

A cavalcade of above/ground press authors (including Cameron Anstee, Tim Atkins, Derek Beaulieu, Gregory Betts, Frank Davey, Amanda Earl and Dani Spinosa) will be performing Saturday, May 5, 2018 at 8pm at LOUD MOUTHS, an evening of short poetic performances by participants of Kanada Koncrete: Material Poetries in the Digital Age, this year's annual University of Ottawa Literature Symposium. The event will be free! Held at the Happy Goat Coffee Co., 35 Laurel Street, Ottawa.

See the Facebook event here.

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.

new from above/ground press: a a novel 1-20, by Derek Beaulieu

a a novel 1-20
Derek Beaulieu
$5

Published in the autumn of 1968, Andy Warhol’s a a novel consists solely of the transcribed conversations of factory denizen Ondine (Robert Olivo). Ondine’s amphetamine-addled conversations were captured on audiotape as he haunted the factory, hailed cabs to late-night parties and traded gossip with Warhol and his coterie. The tapes were quickly transcribed by a quartet of stenography students (including The Velvet Underground’s Moe Tucker); rife with typographic errors, censored sections—and a chorus of voices—the 451 pages of transcriptions became, unedited, “a new kind of pop artefact.”

Warhol’s a a novel favours faithful transcription over plot, chance over predicted composition, and a novel’s ideas over its actual content. Building upon my previous novels flatland: a romance of many dimensions (2005) and Local Colour (2008), my a a novel, an erasure-based translative response to Warhol’s controversial masterpiece. On each page of Warhol’s original, I erase all of the text leaving only the punctuation marks and onomatopoeic words. Theodor Adorno, in his essay “Punctuation Marks” argues that punctuation marks are the “traffic signals” of literature and that there is “no element in which language resembles music more than in the punctuation marks.”

The resultant text is a novelistic ballet mécanique; an orchestration of the traffic signals and street noise of the 1960’s New York City, an eruption of traffic and tires, overheard music and construction noise. a a novel mines writing for the musicality of the urban environment, the complex of non-narrative sounds embedded within our conversations.

a a novel is forthcoming from Jean Boite Editions, Summer 2017.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2017
for his participation in the Universities Canada – Converge 2017 conference, Feb 6-7, 2017, at the Shaw Convention Centre, Ottawa.
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Derek Beaulieu is the author of the collections of poetry with wax, fractal economies, chains, silence, ascender / descender, kern, frogments from the frag pool (co-written with Gary Barwin) and Please no more poetry: the poetry of derek beaulieu (Ed. Kit Dobson). He has also written 4 collections of conceptual fiction: a a novel, flatland, Local Colour and How To Write (Nominated for the W.O. Mitchell Award). He is the author of two collections of essays: Seen of the Crime and The Unbearable Contact with Poets. Beaulieu co-edited bill bissett’s RUSH: what fuckan theory (with Gregory Betts), Writing Surfaces: fiction of John Riddell (with Lori Emerson) and The Calgary Renaissance (with rob mclennan). He is the publisher of the acclaimed no press and is the visual poetry editor at UBUWeb. Beaulieu has exhibited his work across Canada, the United States and Europe and is an award-winning instructor. Derek Beaulieu was the 2014–2016 Poet Laureate of Calgary, Canada.

This is derek beaulieu’s seventh 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) and transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress (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

new from above/ground press: Femme, by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

Femme
Julia Polyck-O’Neill
$4

Undervalue/Dark (after Sylvia Plath, “ELM: For Ruth Fainlight”)

I know the bottom . . .

It is what you fear.

                                   I do not fear it: I have been there.

put your money where your mouth is

put your mouth where your money is

your money is.

your mouth is.

                                  (I am terrified by this dark thing/

That sleeps in me)

         & at this point I think life writing is the better solution.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2016
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Produced, in part, for distribution as part of the Festival of Readers and The Concept of Vancouver conference in St. Catharines, Ontario, October 13-15, 2016. Thanks much to Gregory and Lisa Betts for their help and support. http://www.festivalofreaders.com

Julia Polyck-O’Neill is an artist, curator, critic, and writer. She lives in St Catharines, Ontario, where she runs the award-winning Border Blur Reading Series. She is a doctoral candidate in Brock University’s Interdisciplinary Humanities program, where she is completing a SSHRC-funded interdisciplinary and comparative critical study of contemporary conceptualist literature and art in Vancouver. She also teaches in visual culture in the department of Visual Arts at the Marilyn I. Walker School.

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