some author activity: Vitkauskas, van Vliet, Betts, Beaulieu, Kemp, Smith, Barwin + Jarvis,

did you know that Lina Ramona Vitkauskas has a substack? ; Robert van Vliet answers the "12 or 20 questions"; Gregory Betts is a guest on Richard Capener's Morgiana Podcast/substack, where I had clearly missed that Derek Beaulieu had also been a guest, as had Penn Kemp; some new Steven Ross Smith collaborations are now up at bandcamp; Gary Barwin has a new visual poem up at Asemana Magazine; and Jenna Jarvis has new work up at Discordia Review.

new from above/ground press: the suitcase poem, ed. Amanda Earl

the suitcase poem
Marie-Andrée Auclair * Gregory Betts * Jeff Blackman * Amanda Earl * Ellen Chang-Richardson * AJ Dolman * Doris Fiszer * Gwendolyn Guth * Jenna Jarvis * Chris Johnson * Tanis MacDonald * Roz Toner * MW
$5

Afterword
Since hearing about Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction on David Naimon’s Between the Covers podcast as part of the show’s “Crafting with Ursula” series, I have contemplated its potential for poem-making. The basic idea is that while stories in Western narrative are usually told from the point of view of a hero, centering conflict and violence, a lot goes missing in such a telling. Le Guin images stories as holding living beings, as a way to nurture and gather. I invited poets I know, first in Ottawa and then further afield, to take part in a collaborative poem about a suitcase to see what its contents might be and where we might go. I shared a Google document and invited people to add lines and words to the text. No one individual is the centre of this poem, the author of the story. In fact, there are many suitcases here, many containers. I love being part of this thriving and creative literary community. I thank all the contributors for taking this journey with me. Gratitude, as always, to rob mclennan for agreeing to publish the poem as an above/ground press chapbook.
~ Amanda Earl

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

In Lieu of Biographies, Suitcases

Before Marie-Andrée Auclair packs their suitcase, they ask: Who will we be there, could we be a better version of us? Are we ready for all kinds of weather? Readiness takes up space.  But there is always room to bring back intangibles. It was years before Gregory Betts owned a suitcase with wheels, great lugs of things heavy with resistance to travel. The sheer weight of them was the inertia against which all destinations, Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax, and all points in between, were measured. Was the sweat worth the burden? With elbows firmly locked against hips, and a damp brow, this was how he once set out into the world. Jeff Blackman's first suitcase had green stripes and two metal latches. He filled it with toys to take to his grandparents' house on the Mountain. Ellen Chang-Richardson found their favourite suitcase buried in a vintage shop in Covent Garden, London, England. They toted it around the world for years until its untimely demise. AJ Dolman's suitcase is currently filling with other people's memories as they move family members into care: a Delft candy dish, red leather pocket book of playing cards, Russian tea box, distinct treasures aching for new meaning, the outsized absence of everything declined. Amanda Earl used her first suitcase to run away from home. She packed dolls & dinky toys & hid w/ tiger lilies on the outside of the wrought iron & stone fence that divided the red brick house from Brock Road in Wilfrid, Ontario.  Doris Fiszer frequently dreams of an oversized suitcase that she is hurriedly packing with lint brushes, flip-flops, cooking utensils and purple hoodies. In these nocturnal adventures, she usually travels to bustling cities with her departed. Gwendolyn Guth's retro suitcase contains grains of sand from a former life. The grains remind her of an unimaginable shade of turquoise. They summon and they abandon. Snow continues to fall in rural Quebec and all is well. Jenna Jarvis has a habit of shoving her worldly possessions into a suitcase or two. Chris Johnson's favourite suitcase was bought at Goodwill, and was irreparably damaged by WestJet in 2012. Chris got $150 to purchase a replacement suitcase. Tanis MacDonald's suitcase is packed full of holes. Every time she travels, she brings back a little more nothing. Roz Toner stores all of their zines in a monogrammed suitcase. To be clear, they haven't a clue who A.E.M. is or was. MW had a blue suitcase that housed a unicorn that loved the dark and loved glow sticks. You could see the shine from the glow sticks even when the suitcase was completely shut like a mouth with nothing to say.

Amanda Earl is the author of ten chapbooks with above/ground press: Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022). She edited the first issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2018), and above/ground press produced Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 as a festschrift on her ongoing work in 2022.

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: Schapira, Deutch, Davis + Jarvis,

Kate Schapira reads "Questions and Practice For Your Origin Story" for Ours Poetica; Amanda Deutch has some new work up at GASHER; forthcoming author Jordan Davis has a new essay on Ted Berrigan up via The Poetry Foundation; and Jenna Jarvis is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.

Amanda Earl reviews four (more) 2018 titles: Jenna Jarvis' year of pulses, Jason Christie's glass language, Billy Mavreas' A Mercy of Signs and Stephen Brockwell's Immune to the Sacred

For the second year in a row, the esteemed and muchly generous poet, editor, publisher and reviewer (and above/ground press author) Amanda Earl provides further reviews of her favourite above/ground press titles of the past year (see her 2017 lists here, here and here; and the first part of her 2018 list here), providing a first review of Jenna Jarvis' year of pulses, a first review of Jason Christie's glass language, a second review of Billy Mavreas' A Mercy of Signs (after Greg Bem reviewed such over at Goodreads) and a first review of Stephen Brockwell's Immune to the Sacred. Thanks so much! And of course, all of these titles are still in print! Madness, really. You can see Amanda's full review here.

The Factory Reading Series: Jenna Jarvis chapbook launch w Ian Martin + Mia Morgan, July 26

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
above/ground press chapbook launch

for Jenna Jarvis' year of pulses
(before she leaves the country again)

with special guest-readers:

Ian Martin
+
Mia Morgan

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, July 26, 2018;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs), Ottawa

author biographies:

Jenna Jarvis has published poems in such places as Word and Colour, sea foam, and The Puritan. Her poem “syndical not synecdochal” secured an honourable mention for The Puritan's 2014 Thomas Morton Prize. In 2012, she won Bywords.ca’s John Newlove Award. year of pulses (above/ground press) is her third chapbook.

Ian Martin is, by and large, bi and large. His writing has appeared recently in Pretty Owl Poetry, In/Words, rout/e, and Absolutely Orbital. Ian has released 4 chapbooks, including PLACES TO HIDE (Coven Editions, 2018) and YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE TO KEEP THIS UP FOREVER (AngelHousePress, 2018). When he’s not writing, Ian is developing small video games and complaining online. [www.ian-martin.net]

Mia Morgan is the co-founder of Coven Editions, former editor of the Ottawa Arts Review, and former host of the Blue Mondays reading series. Her work has appeared in Bywords, Hussy, Battleaxe, In/Words and more. In her down time, she cooks and tends an ever-growing indoor jungle.

new from above/ground press: year of pulses, by Jenna Jarvis

year of pulses
Jenna Jarvis
$4

kantō

east of the barrier orleans
amalgamated on a fault line

my chest is plain but i’m no
landscape nor its dianthus

i don’t blame my spine for curving
away from my heart

or from what isn’t there
love or a proper metro system

in ottawa like diphenhydramine
against the spinning detour

the mall punks sulk at a deluge
they’re expected to crave

but rain binds them and clouds
of fresh smoke to the entrance

i vomit over an empty
stomach and bike rack

commuters ignore me politely
over horoscopes, the predictable

the earth deviates in slow time
proleptic and incarnate

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2018
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jenna Jarvis has published poems in such places as Word and Colour, sea foam, my (small press) writing day and The Puritan. Her poem “syndical not synecdochal” secured an honourable mention for the Puritan's 2014 Thomas Morton Prize. In 2012, she won Bywords.ca’s John Newlove Award. year of pulses is her third chapbook.

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

some author activity: Gurton-Wachter, Tucker, Braune + Jarvis,

Anna Gurton-Wachter has a new poem up at The Poetry Project; Aaron Tucker has a new poem up at Train : a poetry journal; Sean Braune is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and forthcoming author Jenna Jarvis has two new poems up at Canadian Writers Abroad.

some author activity: Cook, Earl, Jarvis, Bridgman + Iijima,

[the first park day of spring] Sarah Cook has a new essay, "Poet in Space," over at So To Speak; Amanda Earl is interviewed by Vanessa Shields for AngelHouse / DevilHousePress, and also has a poem and brief interview posted online at Canadian Literature; forthcoming author Jenna Jarvis has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Alyssa Bridgman; and Brenda Iijima writes on Roberto Harrison for The Operating System.

some author activity: Jarvis, MacLeod, Nilson + Coulton,

Forthcoming author Jenna Jarvis has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Kathryn MacLeod is interviewed by Róise Nic an Bheatha over at Queen Mob's Teahouse; Geoffrey Nilson has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series on the dusie blog; and Valerie Coulton's chapbook, along with the most recent issue of Touch the Donkey, receive a positive and quick mention over at Michael e. Casteel's Puddles of Sky blog.

The Factory Reading Series: Quartermain, jarvis + Reid, September 1, 2016

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:
The Factory Reading Series:

Meredith Quartermain (Vancouver)
jenna jarvis (Ottawa)
+ Monty Reid (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Thursday, September 1, 2016
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Meredith Quartermain’s [pictured] second novel, U Girl, will be published by Talonbooks Aug/Sept 2016. She is also the author of I, Bartleby: short stories; Recipes from the Red Planet (finalist for a BC Book Award (Fiction)); Nightmarker (finalist for a Vancouver Book Award); Rupert's Land: a novel; and Vancouver Walking (winner of a BC Book Award (Poetry)).

jenna jarvis is a poet and a barista. her writing has appeared in puritan magazine and keep this bag away from children, as well as in various zines and microblogs, including a recent above/ground press broadside.

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan, worked for many years in Alberta, BC and Quebec, and now lives in Ottawa.  His Meditatio Placentae was published by Brick Books in 2016.  Previous books include Garden (Chaudiere), The Luskville Reductions (Brick), and CrawlSpace (Anansi) as well as chapbooks such as Kissing Bug (Phafours), Moan Coach (above/ground) and Site Conditions (Apt 9).  His frequently-modified A Gran Zoo remains forthcoming from BuschekBooks and his current project, Intelligence, is nearing completion.  He has won Alberta’s Stephansson Award for Poetry on three occasions, the Lampman Award, two national magazine awards, and is a 3-time nominee for the Governor-General’s Award.  He is currently the Managing Editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and Festival Director at VerseFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.

"poem" broadside #338 : poem for z-­girl, by jenna jarvis

1. i wonder if girl is a gender distinct from woman, meaning, i wonder if this concept can transcend fatphobia, or a cultural distaste for post­pubescent, soft­enough female bodies

2. i understand, to the best of my ability, the implications of the story i’m telling, though i acknowledge that i don’t understand the implications of my corpus

3. on tumblr, i saw a scan of a black­and­white photograph. this is in itself the meaty part. it’s strange to see black­and­white film photography on social media during the long twenty­first century. photography developed on black­and­white film used to be my tool for tracing a line in the sand between me and the next generation. if your parents don’t have any black­and­white photos of you, then you’re young & stupid. now i think of it, i was drawing a line between whose parents could afford colour film and whose couldn’t

4. she’s carrying a skateboard with her left hand, she’s wearing a helmet & highwaisted jeans, or are they highwaisted shorts? is that a catcher’s mitt or a gardening glove? it’s on her right hand, obviously, because her skateboard is on her left. does she ride goofy? her kneepads have some sort of logo on them

i thought the pads were roses on her kneecaps

5. duono if it’s the 1970s or the 90s all night radio guitars strangle sleep­deprived we share circumstance not space homelike suburban aching

6. we should be so lucky, us unbound left­handed girls

poem for z-­girl

by jenna jarvis

produced for the ottawa small press book fair,

June 17-18, 2016

above/ground press broadside #338

jenna jarvis is a poet and a barista. her writing has appeared in puritan magazine and keep this bag away from children, as well as in various zines and microblogs.