above/ground press as part of the Riverbed Year-End Fundraiser!

above/ground press has donated a whole stack of chapbook titles for the sake of a fundraiser that Riverbed Reading Series, an Ottawa-based multidisciplinary performance series, is currently running. Here's the list of above/ground press titles offered, by some of the poets that have read as part of their fine series:

Shane Rhodes, It’s Here / All the Beauty / I Told You About (2024); Chris Johnson, Gravenhurst, a failed record of a roadtrip in haibun (2019); Claudia Coutu Radmore, camera obscura (2019); Chris Johnson, some of the raccoon poems (2022); Report from the Anstee Society. Vol. 1 No. 1. (2022); Grant Wilkins, Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology (2022); AJ Dolman, Scalpel, tea and shot glass (2004); Cameron Anstee, Regarding Renewal (2012); Cameron Anstee, Frank St. (2010); Mahaila Smith, Enter the Hyperreal (2024); Grant Wilkins, In Which Archibald Lampman / Translates Arthur Rimbaud (2023). So many things! They're holding their in-person event this Sunday, so why not take a look? Otherwise, there are ways to catch their fundraiser online, as well. Here's the email that Riverbed sent out, earlier today:

Riverbed Year-End Fundraiser
Sunday, March 2, 2025 from 1-3pm at Club SAW
in-person event only
featuring the launch of a limited edition commemorative five-year anniversary chapbook, silent auction with donations from local businesses and community organizations, special performances from co-founders Ellen Chang-Richardson and nina jane drystek, and a poetry karaoke open mic.

Commemorative chapbooks will be for sale at the event in a limited run of 30 copies. Payment via cash or e-transfer to riverbedreadingseries@gmail.com.

Donations from Evil Llama and Friends, Luck and Lavender Studio, Perfect Books Ottawa, Victoire Boutique, Beechwood Pottery Studio, Ottawa International Writers Festival, Versefest, Lindsay Meyers RMT, Curtis Perry Photography, Art House Café, Manahil Bandukwala Art, and more.

If people cannot attend in-person, they can make a donation to support Riverbed online: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-riverbed-reading-series-S6

some author activity: Berlatsky, Downs, Henning, Kemp-Gee, Miller + Barwin,

forthcoming author Noah Berlatsky has some nice things to say about above/ground press; Buck Downs has a poem in The New York Times Magazine, as selected by Anne Boyer; Barbara Henning has new poems up at Mom Egg Review; Meghan Kemp-Gee's ONE MORE YEAR: The Ultimate Graphic Novel kickstarter is now live; David Miller is interviewed at ArtWay; and Gary Barwin won an award!

ANNOUNCING: the above/ground press 30th anniversary fundraiser

Across the thirty years-to-date of my poetry chapbook publisher above/ground press (b. July 9, 1993) I’ve worked hard to engage with numerous threads of literary activity, from multiple elements of poetic form (prose poems, long poems, visual poems, lyric forms, etcetera) to different geographies and communities, and a whole slew of individual writers across North American and beyond in their ongoing works. Centred in the Ottawa literary community, above/ground press publishes single-author poetry chapbooks as well as a handful of ongoing journals (Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], GUEST [a journal of guest editors] and The Peter F. Yacht Club), and has published chapbook debuts alongside works by award-winning authors and produced works in translation and collaborative efforts, running the gamut between wildly experimental works and more traditional forms. Last year, above/ground press started producing a series of festschrifts, celebrating the works of individual poets from across North America, attempting to find a spark of positive throughout the weight of the Covid-era.

The very nature of chapbook publishing is both ephemeral and immediate, and able to take a particular kind of risk that almost refuses anything commercial. Unfortunately, of course, publishing is an expensive enterprise, and subscriptions alone provide far less than half of publishing costs. I’ve long resisted increasing my subscription rates, precisely due to not wishing to outprice anyone who wishes to engage with the work.

While the pandemic years managed with roughly the same amount of annual above/ground press subscribers overall, the press saw severely reduced individual sales, as well as wiping out in-person readings and small press fair possibilities (from the ottawa small press book fair to Toronto’s Meet the Presses), so there hasn’t been the same ability to replenish the financial coffers to feed back into production. My personal Public Lending Rights and Access Copyright monies have also fed directly into the press, but it still hasn’t been enough to not worry about how one might keep the lights on. Given the enormous backlist the press holds, much of which is still in print (although half of the titles I’m listing include some of the final copies), I thought this might be an opportunity to offer a series of curated packages of titles, many of which highlight a variety of threads the press has deliberately attended.

Fully aware that chapbook publishing, especially poetry chapbook publishing, is inherently a not-for-profit enterprise, I’d like to keep moving forward, otherwise I might have to seriously reassess how best to keep publishing, if at all.

The opening salvo of available perks have been posted, and I’m aiming to announce further perks over the following weeks, including more bundles (a second Brooklyn Poets bundle, for example), as well as bundles featuring the work of Amanda Earl, Derek Beaulieu and Ken Norris. There will probably be others, naturally.

The goals for this fundraiser are to keep going. See the link to the campaign here.

above/ground press contributes to the filling Station fundraiser

above/ground press has donated a whole MOUND of chapbooks to the filling Station magazine fundraiser! [there have been a number of fundraisers lately; did you see this one for Canthius?] Check the link here to bid on this magnificent collection (some of which are extremely rare), or even here for other items in their fabulous auction! The nineteen titles included in the above/ground press package are by Calgary poets, both former and current, produced by above/ground press over the past two decades. Most of these items are still available through the press, but a couple of them only through the recent "backlist/rarities" list.

The Appetites of Tiny Hands
Natalee Caple
1997

MY CITY IS ANCIENT AND FAMOUS
Julia Williams
2004

[Dear Fred]
derek beaulieu
2004

A, You're Adorable
George Bowering as "Ellen Field"
2004

"Calcite Gours 1-19," STANZAS #38
derek beaulieu
2004

Adolesce
ryan fitzpatrick
2005

The writing that should enter into conversation
Natalie Simpson
2005

& look there goes a sparrow transplanting soul [3 eclogues]
Emily Carr
2009

Further to Our Conversation
Robert Kroetsch
2011

@BillMurray in Purgatorio
nathan dueck
2013

Cursed Objects
Jason Christie
2014

Braking and Blather
Emily Ursuliak
2014

transcend transcribe transfigure transform transgress
derek beaulieu
2014

dealingwithit.gif
ryan fitzpatrick
2015

The Charm
Jason Christie
2015

Ins & Outs
Nicole Markotić
2015

10 Poems
Christian Bök
2016

ERASURE: a short story
Braydon Beaulieu
2016

REFRAMING PAUL CADMUS
John Barton
2016