some author activity: Earl, mclennan, McCann + lopes,

Amanda Earl has a new poem up at h&; rob mclennan has posted a new poem on his blog; Marcus McCann writes on Stan Persky for Plenitude magazine; and damian lopes is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: panpiped panacea / панацея, ten poems by Yuri Izdryk, trans. Roman Ivashkiv and Erín Moure

panpiped panacea / панацея, ten poems by Yuri Izdryk
translated from the Ukrainian by Roman Ivashkiv and Erín Moure
$4

synopsis

to close this world like a book half-read
where the author clings to a cumbersome plot
where hordes of heroes are sold at a discount
where the heroes’ sorrow is elevated to the imperative
where each page resembles all its predecessors
where all that’s precious is buried in footnotes
or is buried in a flower bookmarking the middle
or in someone’s grey notes left in the margins
to close this trash to slam it shut throw it in a heap
or deep in the river — let the current take it
to save only the flower shrivelled and shortlived
to have faith in it… — to rewrite everything


синопсис
закрити цей світ немов недочитану книжку
де автор незграбно тримає сюжет і мотив
де гори героїв розпродуються зі знижкою
де горе героїв возведено в імператив
де кожна сторінка нагадує всі попередні
де все найцінніше приховане в коментарях
чи в висохлій квітці закладеній десь посередині
чи в сірих помітках чужих на пожовклих полях
закрити цей мотлох затраснути кинути в пічку
чи в річку глибоку – хай течія геть віднесе
залишити квітку присохлу і недовговічну
повірити в неї і.. – переписати усе

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

The translators wish to thank Yuri Izdryk for his continued support of their translation project, and The Malahat Review, who first published “synopsis” in their International Translation Issue, 2014.

Yuri Izdryk (born Kalush, Ukraine, 1962) is a writer, musician, and visual and performance artist, best known outside Ukraine for his novel Wozzeck, translated into English by Marko Pavlyshyn and published in 2006 in Edmonton. His latest collections of poetry, Ю (Yu—a mischievous play on a woman’s name, the first letter of his name, and the English pronoun) and Ab Out, are part of an extraordinarily prolific burst that began with Izdryk publishing new poems online, almost daily, in his blog.

Roman Ivashkiv, originally from Lviv, Ukraine, is a translation theorist, translator, and teacher of Ukrainian, Russian, and EAL, currently Lecturer and Language Program Coordinator in the Dept of Slavic Languages and Literatures at U Illinois. He holds a PhD in Modern Languages and Cultural Studies from U of A. His interests include translation studies, comparative literature, and Slavic postmodernism; he was an active member of Erín Moure’s non-credit poetry translation seminar at U of A in 2013-2014.

Erín Moure was U of A 2013-2014 writer-in-residence. Her latest works are a translation of Chus Pato’s biopoetics Secession, published in one volume with her own Insecession (BookThug, 2014) and Kapusta (Anansi, 2015), a play-poem-text and cabaret dealing with the Holocaust in Ukraine, but set behind a grandmother’s stove in Grande Prairie, AB, twenty years later. Moure’s selected poems, Planetary Noise, edited by Shannon Maguire, will appear in 2017 from Wesleyan University Press.

Translators’ Note — by Roman Ivashkiv: Izdryk’s poetry intertwines existential contemplations about love, identity, nature, and even God, all shrouded in an indefatigable play with language that encompasses incessant punning rhymes, Joycean multilingual puns, ludic shifts of tone and register, and scintillating intertextual games. In creating a sophisticated semantic soundscape where sound drives meaning, Izdryk impishly reinvigorates the rhyming tradition in Ukrainian poetry, which only recently leaned towards free verse. Largely letting go of Izdryk’s rhymes, we worked with his zany rhythms to capture his play with both modernity and tradition. To a Canadian reader, the poems evoke styles of hip-hop, jazz, or rap.

[produced, in part, for a series of events at the University of Alberta, March 3-5, 2016, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their writer-in-residence program]

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: Earl, Moritz, Smith + Gunnars,

Amanda Earl has a new poem up at The Steel Chisel; Rachel Moritz is interviewed over at Speaking of Marvels; Pete Smith is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Kristjana Gunnars is interviewed as part of a series of interview with former writers-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

new from above/ground press: the vitamins of an alphabet, by Sean Braune

the vitamins of an alphabet
Sean Braune
$4

grope blend hilarity envelop –

an empty spinach

nest of grouper waste

I thought the blindness was the morrow

but your exposé is sorry, marry me:

exposes every hallmark

of a holiday mirror.

The abyss is looking and I like its

figment: perhaps one can                  

            admit peradventure     –

gleam, the

fruit

 

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

Sean Braune’s theoretical work has been published in Postmodern Culture, Journal of Modern Literature, Canadian Literature, symplokē, and elsewhere. His poetry has appeared in ditch, The Puritan, Rampike, and Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere. For the past three years he has been invited to speak at the graduate level at Yale University on the topic of avant-garde visual poetry. His dissertation focuses on retheorizing the semiotic sign in response to new materialist philosophies.

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: beaulieu, Pirie, Reed + Best,

derek beaulieu and his work are written up in Metro Magazine, and beaulieu is referenced as part of the Calgary Mayor's annual Poetry Challenge; Pearl Pirie wrote on the work of Gustave Morin for the Brick Books' Celebration of Canadian Poetry; Marthe Reed has some new poems up at Entropy; and Ashley-Elizabeth Best has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

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

new from above/ground press: snake charmers : a cycle of twenty poems, by Kristjana Gunnars

snake charmers : a cycle of twenty poems
Kristjana Gunnars
$4

liturgy of hours


a life where every moment has an Office
a duty just for this small measure of time

the placing of an olive-green bowl next
to another olive-green bowl, next to another

zigzagging along a blank acacia-wood table
bells of brass hanging on their strings of jute

legs carved like sawblades, rusted brown

at this moment I will remove the veil
from its pegs on the blind-arched wall

at this moment I will observe the lacework
its intricate anonymity, its seeing disguise

just then I will pour water from the rain-drum
pour into each and every green clay bowl

I will talk about purity and movement
I will say there is no obstruction or barricade

no grid or wall or smoke or misleading words

nothing you can put up to hold me in
       because the hour branches out like a rose

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

Kristjana Gunnars is a painter and writer, author of several books of poetry, short fiction and anti-fiction. She is Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta, and now works out of her studio in B.C. Her web connection is: kristjanagunnars.com

[produced, in part, for a series of events at the University of Alberta, March 3-5, 2016, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of their writer-in-residence program]

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