Greg Bem reviews Stuart Kinmond and Phil Hall's Alternative Girders: a collaboration / 2014 - 2017 (2018)

Our pal Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first review for Stuart Kinmond and Phil Hall's Alternative Girders: a collaboration / 2014 - 2017 (2018) at Goodreads. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

Reading through this book is like reading through each breath of the poets. Their language spurts out like girders, like structural supports, the innards of the book as a whole. There is a visual quality to the poem that is certified by the vispo works splicing the more conventional poems every few pages. The language is quite astute and phantasmagorical, with such intimacies that pretension need not be suspected.

new from above/ground press: little ditch, by Melissa Eleftherion

little ditch
Melissa Eleftherion
$5

ammonite sonnet


the ammonite an index of sutures
i got tired of cataloging them
hermetically sealing little traumas
afraid they’d get to know one another go boom
little mother catastrophes instead
i smashed little rocks to bits in a ditch
each shard a memory released pressure
from stomach the common burial ground
the cavity of accumulation
each little box coated in dust and feelings
each glass stone chamber not really secret
i get ready to shatter the discretions
i open my palms no explosions no pain
coalesce little traumas wrap your wounds
around each other a chrysalis blood
a becoming of feathers of air a fire

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

Melissa Eleftherion is a writer, librarian, and a visual artist. She grew up in Brooklyn, dropped out of high school, and went on to earn an MFA in Poetry from Mills College and an MLIS from San Jose State University. She is the author of field guide to autobiography (The Operating System, 2018), & five chapbooks: huminsect (dancing girl press, 2013), prism maps (Dusie, 2014), Pigtail Duty (dancing girl press, 2015), the leaves the leaves (poems-for-all, 2017), & green glass asterisms (poems-for-all, 2017). Founder of the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange for San Francisco State University, Melissa now lives in Mendocino County where she works as a Teen Librarian, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series at Ukiah Library. Recent work is available at www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Greg Bem reviews Miguel E. Ortiz Rodríguez's ANGELTONGUE / LENGUA DE ÁNGEL (2018)

Our pal Greg Bem was good enough to provide the first review for Miguel E. Ortiz Rodríguez's ANGELTONGUE / LENGUA DE ÁNGEL (2018) at Goodreads. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.

A brief book of poems that pulls from multiple literary lineages to explore conversations of humans and angels. The poems are crisp, dense, and material. Combined with frightening illustrations, they form a visceral bond with the reader and revisit ongoing questions of mortality and superhuman capabilities. Spirituality and practicality exist in harmony here.

some author activity: Siklosi, mclennan, Graham, Turnbull + Flemmer,

Kate Siklosi has a new essay on the work of M. NourbeSe Philip up at The Puritan; rob mclennan has a new poem up at Dream Pop; Lea Graham has some new collaborative work with John Breedlove in the new issue of where is the river, as do Chris Turnbull and Bruno Neiva; and Kyle Flemmer has new work in rob mclennan's Spotlight series over at Medium.

above/ground press 25th anniversary essay: Pete Smith

This is the thirtieth 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. 

25 & Counting

Nearly Too Much is the title of an early critical book about J.H. Prynne.  When you puts down $65 for a year's worth of chapbooks & by August 31st you've received 43 + three issues of Touch the Donkey (a neat little quarterly mag that comes out quarterly, imagine!, Jan, April, August right on time) + some broadsides & The Peter F Yacht Club anthology #26, well it's both Nearly Too Much & Not Nearly Enough: the former in trying to keep up with the reading, the latter in cost.

I had first stumbled across the small-press world through Peter Finch's extraordinary survey of everything he could lay his hands on in "Small Press Scene" in his mag Second Aeon. The names of the presses signalled their distance from mainstream: Curiously Strong, Strange Faeces, Transgravity Advertiser, Sixpack, Gaberbocchus Press, Baron Samedi.  It was to these presses & mags like Grosseteste Review & Great Works that you came to find a living tradition of restless folk wanting to create  more than museum exhibits.  I was, however, a provincial kid  with no contact with poets who was only looking in on that small press world & starting to seek that kind of energy in his writing but was also working on his 'museum' skills.

Somehow I disconnected from all of it. A switch of continents & if you will, of consciousness brought that exploration to a temporary end.  Recently I described it to a friend thus: "must have been the late 90s when I'd returned to writing poetry after my 'alien abduction' had kept me away for 15 or so years. They took me to their mothership called the Church of Holy Fingerwagging but eventually my agnostic angel came to my rescue." 

The second wind of poetry brought me in touch with poets through readings at the local college, Earl Birney, John Newlove, rob mclennan come to mind, & connection with local poets through Warren Dean Fulton & a fruitful few years of connection to the Kootenay School of Writing in Vancouver. Internet connections took me many places & to publications & readings in England & Ireland in particular but, except for Kamloops Poets' Factory, ksw's W & poems & reviews in The Gig, nothing in Canada.

Enter above/ground.  "You'll know quickly if he wants to go with it & then it will appear surprisingly soon after that."  It did. Strum of Unseen in 2008. I found rob easy to work with & its 'industrial look' echoed Writers Forum chapbooks in England which was a bonus for me. Connection with above/ground I discovered did not end with the chapbook in hand.  The 12 or 20 question interview soon followed (which I treated way too flippantly & would like to see disappear, but I guess that is me some of the time, nervous to acknowledge how vital poetry is to me) & invitations to the Dusie Tuesday poem (not the Rolling Stones song) & to Touch the Donkey.  I don't know what took me so long to finally subscribe to above/ground. I'm late to the party but now I have this box containing everything I've received since 2015. I've even read some of them!  I regularly grab a couple for my coffee house trip.  And feel a bit more connected.

I see the mclennan poetics as L=i=v=i=n=g.  All else follows: as simple and as difficult as that.

Pete Smith: Born & raised in the English Midlands, emigrated to the interior of BC in 1974.  Worked with/for people marginalized from birth by intellectual, behavioural & mental health challenges.  Wrote in the margins of that working life. After a long wrestling match with poetry he acknowledged defeat & began writing again circa 1990. Has since published essays, poems, reviews, a chapter in a book of criticism, chapbooks and a poetry collection gathering six longish sequences. Uncountable thanks for publishing &/or invitations to read to the late William Cookson, kamloops poets factory, Randolph Healy, Peter Riley, John Tranter, Keston Sutherland & Andrea Brady, kootenay school of writing, Nate Dorward, Ted Byrne, David Dowker, Kevin Nolan & Lissa Wolsak & CCCP16, Peter Hughes, rob mclennan, Peter Quartermain, Mona Furtig & Harold Rhenisch, Simon Perril, Andrew Levy, Tony Frazer, Jenny Penberthy, Peter Philpott, Michael Boughn & Kent Johnson. It is still a blast.

Smith is the author of two above/ground press chapbooks, including Strum of Unseen (2008) and A New Love/ An Aching Stone (2016). A third is forthcoming.

new from above/ground press: how to hide by showing in the age of being alone with the universe, by Ian Dreiblatt

how to hide by showing in the age of being alone with the universe
Ian Dreiblatt 
$5

we fly in the forest.  our seeing the arrow.  thieves live here.  and the forest is actually a series of forests of different sizes, some lining the floors of others.  you put it together.  we get smaller and smaller until we’re not even real anymore.  night showers us with ratios.  we walk a long stair.  we know stones, bricks, timbers, the external merge of any two syntactic objects.

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

Ian Dreiblatt is a poet, translator, genial crackpot, and musician. His previous chapbooks are sonnets (Metambesen) and barishonah (DoubleCross Press), his translations include Comradely Greetings (the prison correspondence of Pussy Riot’s Nadyezhda Tolokonnikova with Slavoj Žižek, Verso), Nikolai Gogol’s The Nose (Melville House), and contributions to Russian Cosmism (Boris Groys, ed., MIT) and Not a Word About Politics (Roman Osminkin, Cicada). Poems have appeared in Conjunctions, Elderly, BOMB, the Agriculture Reader, Pallaksch. Pallaksch., and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn, where he takes extravagantly long walks, creates masterful soups, and hopes to run into you soon.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

REPORT: THE ABOVE/GROUND PRESS SILVER ANNIVERSARY READING/LAUNCH/PARTY!

lovable editor/publisher/host rob mclennan ; photo by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

Already a week-plus behind me, and I’m still reeling from the recent silver anniversary above/ground press event at Vimy Brewing Company: an incredible array of readings, writing and support, celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press [I forgot to report on last year's, but do you remember the year prior? That was fun. And the Toronto event? Or the 19th anniversary?]. Thanks so much to everyone who came out to hear, came out to read, and/or came out to otherwise assist with the event, including valuable tech-asssists by Stephen Brockwell and Monty Reid, book tabling by Anita Dolman and door-coverage by Allie Duff and Marilyn Irwin. The staff at Vimy Brewing Company were incredibly generous, and the space was perfect for the event. My only disappointment was the realization that gifts of silver weren’t forthcoming, despite my hints, given the twenty-fifth anniversary, that such would be certainly welcome.

Anita Dolman sporting the new above/ground press anniversary shirt ; photo by Pearl Pirie

This event also saw the introduction of above/ground press t-shirts! Lovingly designed by Christine McNair, utilizing the classic above/ground press logo, and produced by Ottawa’s own Troublemaker Print! Tote bags were also ordered, but the bags themselves were backordered by the supplier, so they have yet to arrive (I’m also putting another order in soon for t-shirts, so if you have any specific size requests, please let me know: I’m selling them for $25 (shipping, at least to anywhere in North America, included)). Send me an email to see what I have on-hand, and what sizes I might be ordering, and when (rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com).

photo by Pearl Pirie

Really, it was just grand to be able to see so many people I like in one place, and the audience included multiple friends and above/ground press authors alike, including Karen Massey, Kees Kapteyn, Amanda Earl, Pearl Pirie, Chris Turnbull, Gwendolyn Guth, Allison Calvern, Cameron Anstee, Rob Fairchild, Avonlea Fotheringham, Michael Dennis, Grant Wilkins, Conyer Clayton, Robert Hogg, Grant Savage, David Scrimshaw, jwcurry and many, many others. Unfortunately, given we were technically out of town for the weekend, watching my father’s house/pets as well as my sister’s, Christine wasn’t able to make the event at all (I attempted an audio recording of the evening, but god knows if it actually worked), solo at the McLennan homestead an hour away, with the girls: watching two dogs, two cats, a guinea pig and a fish. It did, at least, mean that I could stay out a bit later, and even host Billy Mavreas over at our wee house. The following morning, I might add, was not an early one (and involved me driving an hour, once I finally woke and delivered Billy, post-breakfast, to the bus station).

Aaron Tucker ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

Old pal Aaron Tucker opened the event, as well as the first set, reading from his third above/ground press title, Catalogue d’Oiseaux (2018), an excerpt of a much longer work-in-progress, dedicated to his partner, Julia Polyck-O’Neill. I’m fascinated by the long stretch of lines, and the accumulation, existing as a single, extended poem.

natalie hanna ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

photo by Pearl Pirie

I’ve been fortunate enough to be aware of natalie hanna’s work for some time now, since she emerged somewhere in the mid-1990s, before retreating into law school. Fortunately for us, she reappeared after a few years, and has been impressing us ever since. Reading from her new chapbook, some of which responds directly as a call-and-response with recent work by Stephen Brockwell, she ended her set with a startling poem for multiple voices, adding Liam Burke, Conyer Clayton, Cameron Anstee, Nathanael Larochette and Frances Boyle for a piece that description can’t do justice.

Natalee Caple ; photo by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

It was great to be able to hear Natalee Caple read from her Love / Wildness (2018), especially knowing that she’ll be doing more of such next spring, when the book-length version appears with Wolsak and Wynn. She drove the whole family from St. Catharines, Ontario to Ottawa for the event, but their twins became immediately infatuated with Jason Christie’s small children (who could blame them?) and decided to remain there, instead of coming out to the reading. I can’t even remember the last time I heard Natalee read, but it would have been at The TREE Reading Series back when the readings were held at SAW Gallery; at least five years ago? Seven?

Billy Mavreas ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

Opening the second set of readers, Montreal’s Billy Mavreas launched his visual collection A MERCY OF SIGNS (2018) by discussing the difficulty with reading from a collection of visuals, and managed to give a performance on marginalia that felt like a silent sound poem. Why doesn’t this guy have a full-length collection of his concrete and visual poetry yet? He has micropress publications going back years, from an array of publishers, including self-published, and his work deserves far more attention.

Stephen Brockwell ; photo by rob mclennan

Stephen Brockwell really is one of my favourite humans. It is always such a pleasure and a delight to interact with him at all, and I do think his ongoing thoughtfulness and generosity of spirit is often taken for granted. As part of reading his latest title, Immune to the Sacred (2018), he read some of the poems he had composed in conversation with natalie hanna. I’m curious to see where this conversation might go, and what form the eventual larger conversation might take. Will this ever appear as a single-unit collaboration/conversation, or will the threads remain more disperate?

Phil Hall ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

Stuart Kinmond ; photo by Pearl Pirie

Phil Hall’s collaboration with artist Stuart Kinmond, Alternative Girders (2018), provided an opportunity for both to present on the two sides of their conversation, from Hall’s words to Kinmond’s visuals, backdropped beautifully by Kinmond’s own work. Hall’s thoughtfulness is expansive, and incredibly precise, and he manages to both capture an attention to the smallest moment as well as somehow see the big picture, simultaneously. I’m curious to see if their collaboration continues beyond the work gathered in his small chapbook.

Jason Christie ; photo by rob mclennan

Jason Christie opened the third set, launching his sixth chapbook with the press, by reading excerpts from every one of his above/ground press titles, from his Calgary-work 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004) to works produced since their move to Ottawa: Government (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017) and glass language (excerpt) (2018). One of my favourite people these days, I am very much looking forward to his next full-length title, out next spring with Coach House Books.

Julia Polyck-O'Neill ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

I’ve been quite taken with the work of Julia Polyck-O’Neill, seemingly appearing out of nowhere to appear fully-formed and confident in her work, allowing above/ground press to produce two chapbooks of her writing so far. And did you see this recent interview up at Train: a poetry journal? There is some absolutely amazing work happening here, and worthy of far more attention. I’m just hoping the next time we cross paths, I’m actually able to spend some time talking to her (the evening made for very little in the way of larger conversation with just about anyone).

Stuart Ross ; photo by Stephen Brockwell

A personal favourite, Stuart Ross closed the event with a reading from his above/ground press debut, ESPESANTES (2018). Given his generous example as a poet, editor, reviewer, chapbook publisher and supporter over some four decades, I was incredibly grateful to have Ross included in such an event. His own Proper Tales Press will be forty years old next year, if you can imagine it. I just hope that 2019 sees some kind of proper acknowledgement for his ongoing contribution and support of small and micro press.

Julia Polyck-O'Neill, rob mclennan and Aaron Tucker ; photo by Julia Polyck-O'Neill

Twenty-five years! God sakes. And of course, after weeks of lead-up, I managed to crash entirely after the event, falling into a combination of exhaustion/sinus cold that lingers. And, as well, the inevitable look forward to what publications will emerge next. Work is already underway on more than a couple of titles, with still-forthcoming chapbooks by Erín Moure (which has appeared already, in the time it took me to write this up), Ian Dreiblatt, Melissa Eleftherion, Kyle Flemmer, Lisa Rawn, Sean Braune, Michael Martin Shea, Cole Swensen, Jennifer Stella, Jamie Townsend, Sara Renee Marshall, Dennis Cooley, Mark Laliberte, Sacha Archer, Sandra Ridley and multiple others. Watch for 2019 subscriptions to announce on October 1^st! (or just send me an email if you really can’t wait)

photo by Pearl Pirie

And: if you’ve been keeping track, above/ground press has done anniversary anthologies every ten years, so this year won’t be seeing such, but watch for the launch of a special twenty-fifth anniversary project at the Ottawa international writers festival on October 30^th, featuring readings by Sarah Mangold (Seattle), Gil McElroy (Colborne) and Sandra Ridley (Ottawa)!

photo by Pearl Pirie

But don’t you worry: a thirtieth anniversary collection is in the works. Picton, Ontario publisher Invisible Publishing recently accepted the project, which will appear in print in 2023! I mean, that might sound like a long time away, but it really isn’t…