The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 22: Alexander, Siklosi, Rogal, Martin, Geddes + Bandukwala,

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

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

David Alexander (Toronto)
Kate Siklosi (Toronto)
Stan Rogal (Toronto)
Ian Martin (Ottawa)
Bruce Geddes (Toronto)
+ Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 22, 2018;
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]

David Alexander is the author of After the Hatching Oven, new from Nightwood Editions. His poems have appeared in Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, The Puritan, subTerrain, The Humber Literary Review, the Literary Review of Canada and many other fine journals and magazines. David volunteers as a reader for The Puritan and works in Toronto's nonprofit sector.

Kate Siklosi lives, writes, and thinks in Toronto. She is the author of three chapbooks, po po poems (above/ground press, 2018), may day (no press, 2018), and coup (The Blasted Tree, 2018). Her poetry has also been featured in ditch, magazine, Dusie, NoD Magazine, 3:AM Magazine, and 2018's nationalpoetrymonth.ca. She is the cofounding editor of Gap Riot Press, a neat little feminist experimental poetry chapbook press.

Stan Rogal lives and writes in Toronto. He is the author of 23 books, including 12 poetry collections. He is left-handed and has never owned a cell phone, placing him among the less than 8% of the North American population. Is this final fact either interesting, meaningful or relevant? No, which is precisely why he mentions it. Rogal is the author of four above/ground press chapbooks, including In Search of the Emerald City (1997), “THE CELEBRITY RAG: Opá” (STANZAS #44, March 2006), All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2004), and muscle memory (2018).

Ian Martin [pictured] 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]

Bruce Geddes's fiction has appeared in The New Quarterly, Great Lakes Review and The Hart House Review, and he has written two books for Lonely Planet and worked as a producer for the CBC. With a MA in Latin American Literature, he’s a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. Bruce lives and works in Toronto and his new novel, The Higher the Monkey Climbs was just published by NON Publishing in Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter @olbrucie

Manahil Bandukwala is a poet and artist currently living in Ottawa. She is an editor for In/Words Magazine & Press, run out of Carleton University. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming in The Puritan, Room Magazine, Ricepaper, ottawater, Bywords.ca, In/Words and Coven Editions, among others. She’s currently completing her undergrad in English at Carleton University. Follow her on Instagram @bandukwali, or on Twitter @manaaaahil for photos of her art and news on her upcoming projects. She is launching a new chapbook through natalie hanna's battleaxe.

David W. McFadden : October 11, 1940 – June 6, 2018

Condolences to his family, and his extensive network of friends, publishers and admirers. We shall miss him.

some author activity: Downs, Coulton, Sharp + Syersak,

Buck Downs has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day; Valerie Coulton is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; forthcoming author Travis Sharp has a new essay in the "On Writing" series at the ottawa poetry newsletter; and Jake Syersak also has a new essay up at my (small press) writing day.

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Kristina Drake

This is the nineteenth 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.

I first met rob when I was a Creative Writing student at Concordia. I was a couple of months pregnant but not yet showing; rob was giving a poetry reading and my professor had encouraged the class to attend. The reading was held in a nondescript meeting room at Concordia. There were lines of chairs facing a podium, and there was rob, a very poet-looking poet with long hair, reading from his book of poems. It all seemed such a marvelous accomplishment – that I was there, a creative writing student, and that such things as poets publishing books existed. rob seemed to be “one of our own” – not one of the distant writers I’d read and studied. This perception helped me imagine that going from “here” to “there” was, indeed, possible. This thing rob was doing was something people did, something that could be done, that perhaps I could do.

I was a little star-struck, and so it’s not surprising that this experience made quite an impression on me. What is surprising, perhaps, is that it still seems significant to me today. The sense of collegiality, of camaraderie that I felt at this first introduction to rob and the above/ground press was energizing. rob made poetry and the idea of being a poet legitimate, tangible and attainable.  I remember this reading in relation to my pregnancy because, of course, events become connected in these ways in one’s memory, but also because that baby is now a young adult, and it seems to me that rob has nurtured the above/ground press and its community in the same way one raises a child.

Not long after that reading, I subscribed to the press and sporadically an envelope stuffed with poems would appear in the mail. It would arrive torn at the corners and taped to stop it splitting open. Receiving those packages was always a small envy-tinged thrill, but soon enough, the question became how to store them. The incredible volume of work the press has published over the years is truly impressive. Although I subscribed for only a few years, I have dozens of above/ground chapbooks on my shelves and a banker’s box full to bursting of “POEM” broadsides. Unfortunately, a banker’s box is a storage solution that does not lend its contents well to casual reading, and so, at one point, I considered getting rid of the broadsides but that seemed sacrilegious. So I’ve kept the box, carting it from apartment to apartment and house to house, and then from room to room within the house until finally, recently, the broadsides have made their way onto my shelves. Every time I’ve had to move that box and have opened it to see what it held, I’ve felt something akin to nostalgia at the sight of all the POEMs printed on the bright paper. Ah, yes, these! I’d think and tuck the top back on the box leaving the POEMs undisturbed. They remind me, still, of how I felt at the beginning of writing, before children and work consumed all my energy, before the years when I stopped writing altogether; they spark hope and possibility, still.

Over the years, the POEMs have acquired another level of significance. They are part of the history of Canadian poetry, a record of the growth of a community and of the development of individual writers, an inspiration for writers to come. This is no mean feat for a tiny press.

Even more valuable and immediate to me is rob’s unwavering support of poets and writers – new or established, local or not – and his ability to encourage, mentor and nurture this talented community. I want to say that rob is relentless, but that word carries a slight negative connotation that I wouldn’t want to imply. He’s supportive and persistent and, somehow, he manages, with his regular email inquiries, to nudge and push me in a way that I feel, included and valued. In the years when I gave up on my writing, rob did not. The above/ground press kept on publishing poems and poets, building writers and community, and when I was ready to return, rob and above/ground press were there to welcome me.

Last August, the press published a chapbook of mine and I read at the press’ 24^th anniversary alongside other above/ground authors, including Stephanie Bolster, the professor who had encouraged me to attend rob’s reading close to 20 years ago. As full circles come, this one was pretty special: there I was, doing the thing.

For me, above/ground press is and will continue to be a beacon of possibility. It reminds me, when I’m in danger of forgetting, that I want to write, that I should write. And then I do.  

 

Kristina Drake writes and edits in the wilderness of East Hawkesbury, Ontario. Her poems have previously appeared in Carte Blanche, Soliloquies and Yalla!, and as a Tuesday poem on Dusie.

 

Drake is the author of an above/ground press “poem” broadside for her poem “Sex at 31” (#226, 2005), as well as the chapbook Ornithology (2017).

 

The Factory Reading Series: Quinn, Clayton + Bandukwala, June 13, 2018

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

with readings by:

Shannon Quinn (Toronto)
Conyer Clayton (Ottawa)
+ Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Wednesday, June 13, 2018
doors 7pm/reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Shannon Quinn was born in Kanata. Her formative years were spent in the Hazeldean Mall. She has lived in Montreal, Edmonton, Calgary, Lethbridge, Thunder Bay and Iqaluit. She now calls Toronto home. She works in mental health and previously worked for CBC Radio. Her first book, Questions for Wolf, was published by Thistledown Press. Her work has most recently appeared in CV2, ARC, Grain, Prairie Fire and Geez. Nightlight for Children of Insomniacs (Mansfield Press) is her second full length collection.

Conyer Clayton [pictured] is an Ottawa based writer who aims to live with compassion, gratitude, and awe. She has 2 chapbooks forthcoming: Undergrowth (bird, buried press, June 2018), and Mitosis (In/Words Magazine and Press, August 2018). For the Birds. For the Humans. was released with battleaxe press in February 2018. Her work appears in Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead, The Maynard, In/Words, Bywords, Transom, and others. She won Arc's 2017 Diana Brebner Prize, 3rd place in Prairie Fire's 2017 Poetry Contest, and honourable mention in The Fiddlehead's 2018 poetry prize. She is a member of the sound poetry ensemble Quatour Gualour. Check out conyerclayton.com for updates on her endeavours.

Manahil Bandukwala is a Pakistani poet and artist currently living in Ottawa. She is an editor for In/Words Magazine & Press and is on the editorial board of canthius. Her work has appeared in Bywords.ca, the Puritan, In/Words, Coven Editions, Room Magazine and others. You can find her work on her website at manahils.com.

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Michael Dennis

This is the eighteenth 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.

above/ground press.

rob is someone I’ve known for over 25 years, a quarter of a century.  When I first met rob he was literally bursting at the seams with poetry energy and ideas.

I don’t remember exactly when he started above/ground but I know he was kind enough to publish at least two chapbooks for me, and include me a few of his magazines/anthologies. That’s what I remember. Not the press itself but rob’s energetic enthusiasm for poetry. above/ground just feels like it has always been here and I feel very lucky to have participated in a minor way.

 

For me it was a big deal when rob asked me for a chapbook. It meant that my work would see the light of day when there was no one else who had any interest and it meant quite a lot to me that rob – above/ground press – was willing to put their neck out.

 

The sheer volume of production is astounding. When you take a closer look you’ll find that above/ground has published an entire generation of Canadian poets. And that’s something to be very proud of. When above/ground started it had all the appearances of a short term and small time publishing deal. Now, many years later, you could make an entirely decent poetry library out of the chapbooks that above/ground has produced.

 

My big project in recent years has been “Today’s book of poetry” and it was influenced in no small way by rob mclennan’s example.  above/ground press is the Honey Badger of Canadian poetry.  A vision made real.

 

 

Michael Dennis published his first chapbook, quarter on its edge, in 1979. Since then he has published several books and over a dozen chapbooks, his work has appeared in numerous magazine and journals. In April of 2017, Anvil Press published Bad Engine — New and Selected Poems, edited by Stuart Ross.

 

Dennis was born in London, Ontario, grew up mostly in Peterborough, Ontario and has resided in Ottawa, Ontario for the last thirty years. He lived in P.E.I. for year in the mid-80s and Czechoslovakia in 1989–90.

 

For the past few years Dennis has been producing a blog, Today’s book of poetry where he writes about books of poetry he admires. He posts a new blog every two or three days. So far Dennis has written blogs about 509 contemporary books of poetry.

 

Dennis is semi-retired from a career of varied employment. Dennis has installed public art for the Canada Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Ottawa Art Gallery and numerous other arts organizations. He ran a small boutique hotel, The Cartier Inn. He drove taxi and trucks, worked in an ice-cream factory, worked on the motor line at Ford in Windsor, Ontario for a couple of years, a copper mine in northern Ontario. Dennis opened his own non-profit English as a second language school in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia and so on. Now he is supported by his wife and lives the life of luxury afforded most poets.

 

Dennis is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks, including the on-going dilemma of small change (1995) and what we pass over in silence (1996).

 

some author activity: Hall, Anstee, Schmaltz, Barwin + McFadden,

Phil Hall has a new poem up at Halibut; Cameron Anstee is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Eric Schmaltz has some new collaborations up at h&; and Gary Barwin wrote a lovely response to David W. McFadden, via Coach House Books.