above/ground press at the ottawa small press book fair!

We will once again be participating in the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair, which will be held on Saturday, November 7, 2015 at the Jack Purcell Community Centre with plenty of items we haven't even told you about yet! (why miss out? subscribe!) And Jason Christie even launches his new chapbook as part of The Factory Reading Series' pre-fair event on Friday!

Pearl Pirie reviews Roland Prevost's Culls (2015) and Amanda Earl's A Book of Saints (2015)

Pearl Pirie reviews Roland Prevost's Culls (2015) and Amanda Earl's A Book of Saints (2015) as part of her ongoing "95 Books" list. Thanks so much! You can see her entire post, from which these two reviews are excerpted, here.

161. Culls by Roland Prevost (above/ground, 2015)

A couple of my favorite poems by Prevost in here including Grounded to Airbourne. because I like the sense of refusal to accept a scene as prescripted. Even within the poem there’s a questioning of the interpretation,

[...] A dragonfly close-up,
my solitary index offered as a perch. Its seeming
friendliness, ad hoc, filled-in. As with all fictions.
Willing fools, we cram every blank with connection.

Ah, truth of how the brain connects and constructs. Rather than make a poem of pursuing one chain of interpretation, it cracks open wider. And how it is said with its pause and surge is gorgeous.

Later in Lenses at Both Ends the poem takes what is a common experience, to look out a lens from each end and takes it wider.

Those preposterous red blossoms
on the tallest branches, rest assured
don’t know your name either.

The position in the world, a little humble, a little absurd and called as such, which is not to say life is not loved or stoically dismissed as not really existing but human place in it is not the authority and master over all, but equal among trees and knowledges. It is a heartening point of view.

165. A Book of Saints by Amanda Earl (above/ground, 2015)

I keep saying, no, this is my favourite chapbook from Amanda Earl. This is a different subject and style and yet continuous with the intensity. Here a poem from there at the end of this episode of Literary Landscape. There’s a compassion, elegance, poignancy to the poems. There’s more blunt literal talk than some previous poems, less soundiness, but these still have attention to sound and do not come out shallow for their straightness. Complex and with an insistence on resilient strength. For example Feat of the Guardian Angels, October 2

Does she watch over me
or am I alone?
It’s hard to tell.
I’ve always had the
feeling that I am
protected, but I’ve never
known why. I find no comfort
in death, nor do I understand
those who do. My faith
is in the rocks that tumble
out of the sea after a storm.
In the tumult of the waves,
the raucous calling of the
crows in the dawn
blinded by sleep and
yet I stumble forward.

If you have waves and crows, a poem is apt to stumble me to irritable but somehow she surpasses the elements with the strength and fit of the whole.

some author activity: Graham, Ball, Best, MacLeod + eckhoff,

Lea Graham has four new poems up at milk magazine; Nelson Ball has a new poem up at One Sentence Poems; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has some new poems up at Glasgow Review of Books; and the audio of three poems from Kathryn MacLeod's mouthpiece (1996) are now online at Our Teeth, as read by kevin mcpherson eckhoff.

new from above/ground press: The Charm, Jason Christie

The Charm
Jason Christie
$4

we're no longer speaking

we are no longer speaking.

terms in which we might

continue speaking include:

a bundle of wool sweaters,

trees recently felled --

get specific they say,

and who, i say, is they,

they say i say, and so

we are no longer speaking

in terms that reflect

our disposable coffee

cups, plastic bottles, and

pink hair curlers, our dirty

diapers, curdled milk, and

mountains of cigarette

butts, our empty graves

with all that mud piled

beside, and our rotten

carrot mound, packages

and packages of blanched

almonds we never knew

what to do with, and

our GPS device, old

flip phone, VCR, and

cassette tapes, fruit

flies, Pac Man T-Shirts

we barely wore, down

we stumble as our words

catch in our throats and

we realize we're no longer

speaking to each other,

only to the virtual assistant

hanging on our every pause.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2015
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jason Christie lives in Ottawa with his wife and toddler. He is the author of Canada Post (Snare), i ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and a co-editor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury). He has two other recent chapbooks from above/ground press, which were both nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award: GOVERNMENT (2013), and Cursed Objects (2014). He is currently writing poetry about objects.

This is his fourth chapbook with above/ground press, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Government (2013) and Cursed Objects (2014) [currently shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award].

[Jason Christie will be launching The Charm as part of the pre-small press book fair reading at The Carleton Tavern on Friday, November 6, 2015, alongside Catina Noble, Michael e. Casteels, Claire Farley and Christian McPherson]

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

The Peter F. Yacht Club : a profile,

A short profile I put together on The Peter F. Yacht Club is now online at Open Book: Ontario, with input from Laurie Anne Fuhr, Anita Dolman, Vivian Vavassis, Peter Norman, Amanda Earl, Peter Richardson, Wes Smiderle, Janice Tokar, Pearl Pirie, Cameron Anstee, Ben Ladouceur and Marilyn Irwin.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 6, 2015: Noble, Casteels, Farley, McPherson + Christie,

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

The Factory Reading Series
pre-small press book fair reading
featuring readings by:

Catina Noble (Ottawa)
Michael e. Casteels (Kingston)
Claire Farley (Ottawa)
Christian McPherson (Ottawa)
+ Jason Christie (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 6, 2015;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Jack Purcell Community Centre]

Catina Noble: I have over 150 publications including Poetry, Short Stories, Articles/Interviews and Photography. My publications include: In/Words, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Byline Magazine, The Mindful Word, Curious: The Tourist Guide, Woman’s World, Riverview Park Review, Mainstreeter, PEN, Canadian Newcomer Magazine, Verse Afire, Y Travel Blog, Mojito Mother, Short-Story Me, Baby Post, CultivateTO, The Charlatan and Prairie Journal. I have 3 chapbooks of poetry out: Odds & Ends (Nov. 2014), Clean Up In Aisle 4 (May 2014) and Pussyfoot (May 2013). My new book is Katzenjammer, a collection of eclectic poems (Twig Works).

Michael Casteels has self-published over a dozen chapbooks of poetry and artwork. His poetry has recently appeared in: Arc, Filling Station, and BafterC. In 2012 he was nominated for the emerging artist award in The Premier's Awards for Excellence in the Arts. He lives in Kingston, where he runs Puddles of Sky Press. He will be launching a new chapbook with Ottawa's Apt. 9 Press.

Claire Farley [pictured] is from Québec's Outaouais region. She is the co-founder and editor of Canthius, a feminist literary journal. She has writing forthcoming in some mark made, a limited edition publication considering hybrid, material literary practices.

Christian McPherson was born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1970.  He is the author of seven books, Saving Her, Cube Squared, My Life in Pictures, The Sun Has Forgotten Where I Live, The Cube People (shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Awards), Poems that swim from my brain like rats leaving a sinking ship, and Six Ways to Sunday (shortlisted for the 2008 ReLit Awards). He has a degree in philosophy from Carleton University and a computer programming diploma from Algonquin College. He is married to the beautiful Marty Carr. They have two kids, Molly and Henry. They all live together in Ottawa.

Jason Christie lives in Ottawa with his wife and toddler. He is the author of Canada Post (Snare), i ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and a co-editor of Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury). He has two other recent chapbooks from above/ground press, which were both nominated for the bpNichol Chapbook Award: GOVERNMENT (2013), and Cursed Objects (2014). He is currently writing poetry about objects. He will be launching his new chapbook, The Charm (above/ground press).

some author activity: mclennan, Kaminski, Irwin, Pirie, Trivedi, Smith + Bowering,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at OUR TEETH; Megan Kaminski has a new poem up at Matter; Marilyn Irwin interviews Pearl Pirie; Amish Trivedi and Jessica Smith discuss Coven Press over at Boog City; and George Bowering is interviewed by Daniel Zomparelli and Dina Del Bucchia over at The Tyee.