some author activity: fitzpatrick, Smith, Mody, mclennan, Burdick, Aube + Solomon,

ryan fitzpatrick has work up at NewPoetry; Dale Martin Smith has a new piece up at Annulet; Monica Mody has two poems up at Art of the Commune; rob mclennan has some new work up at North of Oxford; Alice Burdick also has new work up at NewPoetry; Gwen Aube is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series; and Misha Solomon has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series.

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Nada Gordon + Lydia Unsworth, March 29, 2026!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the sixteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents: 
The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:

Nada Gordon (Brooklyn NY)
+
Lydia Unsworth (Manchester UK)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Sunday, March 29, 2026
3-4pm, Arts Court Black Box Studio
A FREE EVENT / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 24-30, 2026

Nada Gordon: [see a new interview here] I live in Brooklyn and work too hard and too much, teaching courses like “Tyranny and the Absurd” and “The Glamour of Language.” Actually, they are just comp, but isn’t that what all art is, actually? I have two Siberian cats. I make things besides poems: garments, baubles, toys. My Etsy shop is https://www.etsy.com/shop/ScentedRushes. I’ve published nine books and lots of chapbooks besides. My selected, The Sound Princess: Selected Poems 1985-2015 found its way into the world last year by way of SubPress. “The Sound Princess” is a literal translation from the Japanese of “Otohime,” the button you push in a toilet stall to make the sound of rushing water so that others don’t hear you pee. It does sound grand, doesn’t it? I was in the hysterico-transgressive poetry movement called Flarf in the 2000s. Before that, I lived in Japan for over a decade. Before Japan, I wrote a thesis on Bernadette Mayer’s work. I studied with Language Poets in Bay Area in the 80s. I was a hardcore punk after I was a flower child. As an actual child I sometimes wrote poems. I was born in Oakland in 1964.

Lydia Unsworth [see a new interview here] is a poet from Manchester, UK. Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies including Dreaming Awake: New Contemporary Prose Poetry from the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom. She is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Place Writing in Manchester, looking at kinship with disappearing post-industrial architecture. She has 6 poetry collections and 4 above / ground chapbooks, and has two new poetry collections coming out in 2026, Stay Awhile (April, Knives Forks and Spoons Press) and This Now Extends to My Daughter (May, Blue Diode Press).

some author activity: Barwin, Donato, Smiley, dueck, Mc Donnell + Boyle,

Gary Barwin is interviewed by Selena Mercuri as part of the substack Coffee Dates with Authors; Joseph Donato is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Conal Smiley has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; nathan dueck offers a lecture in Cranbrook, British Columbia on September 24 as part of COTR's Museia Lecture series, titled 'Jesus vs Superman'; Conor Mc Donnell is interviewed by Sheelagh Caygill for On Creative Writing; and Frances Boyle has a new poem online at Anacapa Review.

some author activity: mclennan, Robertson, Caporaso, Jirgens, van Vliet, Armantrout + Robinson,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Amsterdam Review, and is interviewed by Stan Rogal for periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics; Lisa Robertson is Vancouver Island University’s (VIU’s) Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet for 2024-25 and is giving the Ralph Gustafson Distinguished Poet lecture on October 24 from 7 to 8:30 pm on the Nanaimo campus; Angela Caporaso is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, where Karl Jirgens also has poems, and Robert van Vliet is also interviewed; Rae Armantrout has a poem up at the Poetry Foundation; and Elizabeth Robinson has new work up at Big Other.

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Amy Dennis + Natalie Eilbert, March 25, 2023!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the thirteenth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents: 

The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series; two talks/readings by:

Amy Dennis (Northern ON)
+
Natalie Eilbert (Green Bay WI)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Saturday, March 25, 2023
1-2pm at Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar St. Ottawa (simultaneously streamed online free!
$15 tickets / check link for info on tickets/passes: https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/versefest
as well as for the full schedule of readers and events!
March 18-26, 2023

In addition to publications in England and France, Amy Dennis' poetry has appeared in more than twenty Canadian literary publications, including CV2, Event, Queen's Quarterly, and Prairie Fire. Her poetry has been nominated for two National Magazine Awards and a Random House Creative Writing Award. She placed second in the UK’s National Bedford Open Poetry Competition. While completing her Ph.D in literature, she published THE COMPLEMENT AND ANTAGONIST OF BLACK (OR, THE DEFINITION OF ALL VISIBLE WAVELENGTHS) with above/ground press. In 2022, Mansfield Press published The Sleep Orchard, Dennis' collection of ekphrastic poems in response to the life and art of Arshile Gorky. Currently, she works as a learning facilitator and professor.
https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/performer/amydennis

Natalie Eilbert [pictured] is the author of three poetry collections, Overland (Copper Canyon Press, forthcoming 5/16/2023), Indictus (Noemi Press 2018), Swan Feast (Bloof Books 2015). A recipient of the National Endowment of the Arts in poetry, a former Jay C. and Ruth Halls Fellow at the Wisconsin Institute of Creative Writing, and winner of the George Bogin Memorial Award from Poetry Society of America, Eilbert lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where she is a statewide mental health reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
https://www.verseottawa.ca/en/performer/neilbert

both performers also have new work in the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club, produced specifically for this year’s festival!

some author activity: Abel, Armantrout, Scroggins + Robertson,

Jordan Abel delivers the 2022 Page Lecture at Queen's University, Kingston, on November 8; register for online or in-person here; Rae Armantrout has a new poem in The New Yorker, and three more in the London Review of Books; Mark Scroggins offers a new essay over at Hyperallergic; and Lisa Robertson offers an obituary for Issey Miyake (1938-2022) over at Artforum.

Some author activity: Boyle, Spinosa, Barwin + mclennan,

Frances Boyle is interviewed on the Big Little Books podcast, and has a new short story up at The /tƐmz/ Review; Dani Spinosa has a new visual poem up at Train : a poetry journal; Gary Barwin posts the text of a talk he recently gave as part of his writer-in-residence gig at Wilfrid Laurier University; and rob mclennan has a new poem upon his enormously clever blog.

some author activity: Notley, Bowering, Dennis, Robinson + McElroy,

Gil McElroy, sporting his brand new above/ground press t-shirt

Alice Notley's lecture on Allen Ginsberg, presented as the keynote at the Allen Ginsberg Symposium this past May at the St. Mark's Poetry Project in New York City, is now online; George Bowering has a new essay in the "On Writing" series, over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Michael Dennis is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Elizabeth Robinson has a new craft essay up at Brevity.

new from above/ground press: UNDO, by Alice Notley

Undo
Alice Notley
$5

see her poem MALORUM SANATIO over at LitHub here (included in the chapbook, but not reproduced here for the sake of line-length)

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

Alice Notley was born in Bisbee, Arizona in 1945 and grew up in Needles, California in the Mojave Desert.  She was educated in the Needles public schools, Barnard College, and The Writers Workshop, University of Iowa.  She has lived most extensively in Needles, in New York, and since 1992 in Paris, France.  She is the author of numerous books of poetry, and of essays and talks on poetry, and has edited and co-edited books by Ted Berrigan and Douglas Oliver.  She edited the magazine CHICAGO in the 70s and co-edited with Oliver the magazines SCARLET and Gare du Nord in the 90s.  She is the recipient of various prizes and awards,  including the Los Angeles Times Book Award (for Mysteries of Small Houses, which was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize), the Griffin Prize (for Disobedience), the Academy of American Poets’ Lenore Marshall Prize (for Grave of Light, Selected Poems 1970-2005), and the  Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize, a lifetime achievement award.  She is also a collagiste and cover artist.  above all she is a full-time poet, at this point an internationalist and haunter of Paris, remaining an American, an ex-New-Yorker, and a desert denizen.  Her most recent book is Certain Magical Acts, from Penguin.

[Alice Notley performs in Ottawa as part of the opening night of the 8th annual VERSeFest on Tuesday, March 20; she will also be delivering the 2017-18 Munro Beattie Lecture, “Remember Before You Were Born,” at Carleton University on Wednesday, March 21]

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: Archer, Drake, Flemmer, Beaulieu + Siklosi,

[a fraction of the above/ground press home archive] Sacha Archer has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day, as does Kristina Drake; Kyle Flemmer has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at dusie; "Housepress/no press at 20: a talk by Calgary poet and publisher Derek Beaulieu," which recently occurred at SFU, is now online at the SFU website; and forthcoming (spring) above/ground press author Kate Siklosi has a new essay (also) at my (small press) writing day.

Katie L. Price: Poetry & Practice: Perspectives on Medicine and Narrative WSU

above/ground press author Katie L. Price (author of the 2015 chapbooks Sickly and BRCA: Birth of a Patient) tomorrow afternoon at Washington State University!

"This may seem tangential to our class at first glance. However, Katie L. Price has a very interesting project to turn the information contained on her medical records into poetry. In formal terms, the project shows how restructuring information—from documentary form to poetic form—can alter its meaning in dramatic ways, even if the data stays the same. The process of making private health records public also resonates with what Frank Pasquale writes about health insurance scores. Rather than letting her medical history add up to a numeric identity assigned by some data broker, Price works to regain a kind of control over her health records. In the process, she works against narratives of private illness and private risk, showing instead how perceptions of health have very public consequences. Medical patients bear the brunt of those consequences, her poetry suggests, not commercial insurance services.

This event should help us imagine interesting new angles for the course material. Price’s poetry could become an interesting point of entry for a final project about individual reputation in the era of run-away data. Attend the talk and blog about it for extra-credit—brownie points if you ask a question about digital technology!"

The Factory Reading Series @ VERSeFest: Anne Boyer + Ben Ladouceur, March 19, 2016!

The Factory Reading Series
as part of the sixth annual VERSeFest poetry festival presents:

The Factory Reading Series Lecture Series, two talks and readings by:

Anne Boyer (Kansas City)
Ben Ladouceur (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Saturday, March 19, 2016
FREE ADMISSION!
1pm at Knox Presbyterian Church, 120 Lisgar St. Ottawa
check the VERSeFest link for the full schedule of events!
March 15-20, 2016

Anne Boyer is a poet and essayist whose 2015 book, Garments Against Women (Ahsahta Press), was described in the New York Times as "a sad, beautiful, passionate book that registers the political economy of literature and of life itself." She lives in Kansas City.
http://versefest.ca/year/2016/poet/?id=134

Ben Ladouceur received the Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2013. His poems have been featured in The Walrus, North American Review, Best Canadian Poetry, and other magazines and anthologies. His debut collection Otter came out through Coach House Books in 2015. He'll be completing a residency at the Al Purdy A-Frame in the autumn of 2016. He lives in Ottawa.
http://versefest.ca/year/2016/poet/?id=97

some author activity: eckhoff, Abel, dueck, Robertson + mclennan,

kevin mcpherson eckhoff has a new piece up at NewPoetry; Jordan Abel is interviewed over at the podcast Can't Lit; nathan dueck is interviewed over at The Town Crier; The 2015 Leslie Scalapino Lecture in Innovative Poetics, delivered by Lisa Robertson at UC Berkeley on April 24th 2015, is now online: "A Form of Sentences: Speaking with the Dead or Grammar is Not Abstract" (A talk on Leslie Scalapino's Defoe, and sentences generally); and rob mclennan has a new poem up at Monday Night Lit.

some author activity: Robertson, Reed, Landman, beaulieu, Martin,

Lisa Robertson now the 2013-2014 Allen Ginsberg Visiting Fellow at the Jack Kerouac School, and will be doing a lecture in Boulder, CO on Monday, February 10; Marthe Reed has a new poem posted as part of the dusie "Tuesday poem" series; Seth Landman will soon be leading a course on reading Moby Dick; derek beaulieu has a new collection of visual work out soon with les figues; and the fourth part of Camille Martin's essay on Robert Zend is now up on her blog.

some author activity: mcpherson eckhoff, Weaver, Markotić, Cooley, Reid, Bowering, Hall + mclennan,

kevin mcpherson eckhoff [pictured] was in Ottawa over the weekend, where he launched his new chapbook, and even posed for a number of other pictures; Douglas Barbour has been editing TRUCK over the month of October, and including various above/ground press authors, including Andy Weaver, Nicole Markotić, Dennis Cooley, Monty Reid + George Bowering; Phil Hall is doing a lecture at Queen's in November, as part of a series he's started; and I even have a new poem up at Halvard Johnston's On Barcelona.