some author activity: Wessels, Barwin, Barton, Dennis, Rogal + mclennan,

Andrew Wessels has a new poem up in the Tuesday poem series at dusie; Gary Barwin has a new poem on the Chaudiere Books blog for #NationalPoetryMonth, as do John Barton and Michael Dennis; and both Stan Rogal and rob mclennan have work online in the new issue of QWERTY.

new from above/ground press: Catalogue d’Oiseaux, Toronto < — > Mainz-Kastel, by Aaron Tucker

Catalogue d’Oiseaux
Toronto — Mainz-Kastel
Aaron Tucker
$5

A Sunday afternoon, that morning, our Toronto bed

the cedar smoke from the neighbor Anishinaabe centre

mingles with late autumn rain pecking at the window

with the drums & chants from the ceremony next door

& the clouds bend to our sleep, make themselves soothing

our asleep waterhands over each other, like cirrus or silty dreams

our waking causes the rain to pause momentarily

& it resumes only when we kiss softly good morning, hold

you, soft sea mist, cajole us from our bed eventually

the promise of our favourite simple diner, Chew Chews

the runny yolks over potatoes, toast with strawberry jam

the server overexcited that Cher & Queen Latifah

film there next week, his hands clasped as he repeats

& we finish our breakfast, walk through Cabbagetown

under umbrellas, soft patter, watery dance steps

buy lattes from Jet Fuel, milky & vapoursteam, continue east

this neighbourhood named for the poverty of its Irish settlers

tailoring & lining their front yards with the large green brassica

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

This is Aaron Tucker’s third chapbook with above/ground press, following punchlines (2013) and apartments (2010). He is the author of the novel Y: Oppenheimer, Horseman of Los Alamos (Coach House Books) as well as two books of poetry, Irresponsible Mediums: The Chess Games of Marcel Duchamp (Bookthug Press) and punchlines (Mansfield Press), and two scholarly cinema studies monographs, Virtual Weaponry: The Militarized Internet in Hollywood War Films and Interfacing with the Internet in Popular Cinema (both published by Palgrave Macmillan).

His current collaborative project, Loss Sets, translates poems into sculptures which are then 3D printed (http://aarontucker.ca/3-d-poems/); he is also the co-creator of The ChessBard, an app that transforms chess games into poems (http://chesspoetry.com).

Currently, he is an uninvited guest on the Dish with One Spoon Territory, where he is a lecturer in the English department at Ryerson University (Toronto), teaching creative and academic writing. You can reach him atucker[at]ryerson[dot]ca

[Aaron Tucker launches this new chapbook alongside his novel in Ottawa as part of The Factory Reading Series on April 29, with co-readers Brecken Hancock, Christine McNair + rob mclennan]

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

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Sean Braune

This is the seventeenth in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of above/ground. See links to the whole series here.

On above/ground press as it turns 25

Poetry was supposed to be some kind of vanguard. Someone told me this at some point. I’m not sure who it was, but someone told me that. In an alleyway. A long time ago.

When one starts off “being” a poet or going to work at the poetry factory or whatever else, one expects some sort of linguistic subterfuge—to be in it and also a cause of it. Maybe. Ideally? Is this impulse the political in the poetic? Sometimes. I guess it depends.

Poetry is about community or should be and sometimes it isn’t, but the best presses and reading series create communities around them. They induce a sort of communal experience of support and creativity (or they should). Again, this can happen in the best of circumstances and against some of the more awful, patriarchal and misogynistic impulses of CanLit.

Here we all are, standing around the dumpster fire. My feet are cold. Actually, nothing is warming up. In light of all that is negative about CanLit nowadays, there are some bastions of “hope” or whatever in the abyss.

rob mclennan’s above/ground press is one of these bastions. He has fought tirelessly (and I use that word intentionally) to publish adventurous and exciting poetry without reprieve for 25 years.

above/ground was, for me, like some of the more exciting presses when I first got into Canadian poetry a decade ago: presses like BookThug and Coach House and Wolsak and Wynn, etc.; and some chapbook presses like derek beaulieu’s own 13-year-old no press or the wonderful (and far too short-lived) Ferno House Press. rob doesn’t stop though. He’s a poetry machine. And he’s fighting the good fight. And poets notice.

I like above/ground because it hasn’t lost being a bit under/ground and it maintains that most exciting aspect of poetry, which, for me, is finding some new, wonderful gem (of a poem, poetry book, or poet) on a shelf in a bookstore or hearing about an old poet or poem that I hadn’t known about or learning about some new work recently published. above/ground is a kind of laboratory of poetry that keeps pressing out fantastic poetry and it is, 25 years after its inception in 1993, a shining beacon in the darkness of the dumpster fire… 

Sean Braune’s first book of philosophy, Language Parasites: Of Phorontology, appeared in 2017 from Punctum Books. His poetry has appeared in The Puritan, Rampike, Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere. He is currently in the process of editing his first feature-length film called Nuptials.

Braune is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks, including the vitamins of an alphabet (2016) and The Cosmos (2018). A third is scheduled for release this fall.

some author activity: Robinson, Tucker, Saklikar + Trivedi,

Elizabeth Robinson writes on Ebbe Borregaard for the operating system; Aaron Tucker has a new poem on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month; Renée Sarojini Saklikar has new work posted by Canadian Literature; and Amish Trivedi's essay "Taylor Swift is a Barbarian, or: Stephanie Burt’s Defense of Poetry" is now online at Plume.

rob mclennan interviewed via Amanda Earl's Small Machine Talks podcast

Welcome to the Small Machine Talks Episode 30 in which we interview rob mclennan about the above/ground press 25th anniversary.

https://soundcloud.com/user-301339427/the-small-machine-talks-interview-with-rob-mclennan

For further interviews with rob mclennan, check out the links at his author page; for further audio/video of rob mclennan check out the links here.

new from above/ground press: Glosas for Tired Eyes Volume 2, by Dani Spinosa

Glosas for Tired Eyes Volume 2
Dani Spinosa
$5

Judith Copithorne

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

Dani Spinosa is a poet of digital and print media, an on-again-off-again precarious professor, the Managing Editor of the Electronic Literature Directory, and a co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press. Her first chapbook, Glosas for Tired Eyes, was published in 2017 with No Press and her first scholarly manuscript, Anarchists in the Academy: Machines and Free Readers in Experimental Poetry is forthcoming from University of Alberta Press (Spring 2018).

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: Caple, Earl, Press, Johnstone, Archer, + Saklikar,

Chaudiere Books' 5th annual National Poetry Month feature has begun, featuring new poems by above/ground press authors including Natalee Caple and Amanda Earl and K.I. Press; Matthew Johnstone has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at dusie; Sacha Archer is interviewed at Touch the Donkey; and Renée Sarojini Saklikar is interviewed by Read Local BC.