new from above/ground press: Cupcake Royale (second edition), by Sarah Mangold

Cupcake Royale
second edition
Sarah Mangold
$5
 

tell them she is baking you a cake

a special cake

chocolate with purple icing

the place decorates itself

all white cakes

and showering flowers

one day the language goes

and one day the spatial

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2018
originally published by above/ground press in March 2012
celebrating twenty-five years of above/ground press
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Sarah Mangold is the author of the poetry collections Household Mechanics (New Issues, selected by C. D. Wright), Electrical Theories of Femininity (Black Radish Books) and Giraffes of Devotion (Kore), as well as many chapbooks. She is the recipient of fellowships and supported residencies from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Willapa Bay AiR and Artist Trust. She founded and edited Bird Dog: a journal of innovative writing and art, which featured longer poems and emerging women poets. She lives and works in Seattle.

This is Mangold’s fifth above/ground press chapbook, after the first edition of Cupcake Royale (2012), as well as Parlor (2012), A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert (2016) and BIRDS I RECALL (2018). She also had a poem as part of the recent 25th anniversary above/ground press broadside project.

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

Esther Chen reviews Sean Braune's The Cosmos (2018) online at PRISM International

Esther Chen reviewed another above/ground press title online at PRISM International! This time, it was Sean Braune's The Cosmos (2018). Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. This is the second review of Braune's The Cosmos (after Greg Bem reviewed such over at Goodreads). And of course, copies of this (as well as his other two (one, two) above/ground press chapbooks) are still very much available.

The Cosmos – Sean Braune
above/ground press

An experience in itself, reading Sean Braune’s The Cosmos feels like walking through a beauty and cosmetics section in a department store. The chapbook is part of a larger project and gives the reader a glimpse of what he calls “accelerated reading”, a practice that the author says is “essential to the experience of living in the bluster of 21st Century capitalism”. Indeed, the list-like stream of consciousness that makes up the content of The Cosmos is as strange as it is familiar. One section reads: “argan oil lasting sleek / garnier fructis style / prime first for nonstop sleek pre-styling primer / spot the latest coppertone”. The tone feels frantic—the lack of punctuated full stops leaves the reader breathless, as if trying to read out loud the words that pop into one’s mind at every waking moment. As the author explains in his statement on the piece, the variety of texts that surround us read as disembodied—their agency lost in selling a product. By rearranging the selected phrases with creative intent and enjambment (The Cosmos was partly written with the assistance of a stack of Cosmopolitans from 2015), Braune injects voice into washed-up ad copy. “now learn / more dolce & gabbana” the last stanza urges, “we’re light / blue”.

“poem” broadside #346 : “Riposte” by Colin Morton

Right here in the middle of the street,

the passenger door slamming shut on his gun hand

as the car sped away.

Right here on the white solid line,

blood pooling around the base of his skull.

Here, years ago, beneath the new interchange,

waiting at the parkway’s one red light.

With a pistol brought in by diplomatic bag,

rushed out of the country hours later.

Right here face down in the November slush.

Here on the strip while leaving a bistro.

In a scuffle at this tavern door.

In a downtown crosswalk with a crossbow.

With a nine-inch blade across the bar.

The city remembers its private scars.

For others there’s a plaque – one on the mall

where an MP took a bullet in the head.

Another at the jail where someone swung for it.

A stone laid for workers killed on the job.

Statues for those in uniform.

Monuments uncounted, all to the dead.

Heroes’ highways, walks of fame, listed houses

reassure that some are kept in mind.

Even poets have their garden and their path,

echoes nearly lost in corridors of the dead.

Right here, right now, we persist, we speak.

While we can, we have our day.

And in a lab beside the rushing river

someone’s plotting to kill you, death.

We’ve seen the impossible happen before.

Riposte, by Colin Morton

produced in part as a handout during the sixth Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan, walking around the Byward Market, December 8, 2018

above/ground press broadside #346

Twice winner of the Archibald Lampman Award for poetry, Ottawa poet Colin Morton has published more than ten books, ranging from visual and sound poetry (Printed Matter; Two Decades) to historical narratives (The Merzbook: Kurt Schwitters Poems; The Hundred Cuts: Sitting Bull and the Major). His other work includes a novel, an animated film, and many reviews and essays. He has collaborated with poets, artists, and musicians in the poetry performance group First Draft and with film-maker Ed Ackerman in the award-winning animated poetry film Primiti Too Taa. www.colinmorton.net

Esther Chen reviews Kyle Flemmer's ASTRAL PROJECTION (2017) and Stephen Collis' FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN (2017) online at PRISM International

Thanks to Kyle Flemmer catching such online yesterday through a random Google search, I've found out that Esther Chen reviewed two above/ground press titles this past summer over at PRISM International: Kyle Flemmer's ASTRAL PROJECTION (2017) and Stephen Collis' FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN (2017). Thanks so much! You can see the original review here. This is actually the third review of Flemmer's ASTRAL PROJECTION (after Scott Bryson reviewed such over at Broken Pencil, and Greg Bem reviewed such via Yellow Rabbits) and the second review of Collis' chapbook (after Cary Fagan's generous review on his blog). And of course, copies of both titles (as well as their other above/ground press chapbooks) are still very much available.

ASTRAL PROJECTION by Kyle Flemmer
above/ground press

Defined, “astral projection” refers to the term used to describe a willful out-of-body experience during which the astral body leaves the physical body and travels to the astral plane. The poems in Flemmer’s newest chapbook follow suit. ASTRAL PROJECTION reads curiously, pushing the limits of form, leaving the traditional body of what we think of when we think “poetry” in favour of white space, splatters of text, and hanging brackets. Reading through each piece is an exercise in letting go of the concrete, of certainty. The lines break unexpectedly, jumping from left to right and back again, at times reading both left to right and top to bottom. Mentions of Greek mythology add to the sense of otherworldliness. It is tempting to try to find visual patterns in the spaces of text and blankness, to try to find some familiar form or stanza in which to ground yourself. Instead, Flemmer creates in this book a unique space for the reader to float through the pieces, light.

FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN by Stephen Collis
above/ground press

Stephen Collis’s chapbook FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN is comprised of a single, long, twisting poem that oscillates between passionate and resigned, rambling yet brimming with a sure intention. The poem opens by cutting right to the chase, setting the scene of “a universe we / No longer have to search the limits of / the revolutionary subject lies elsewhere” and asks “can we revive?” The tone is restless, that of a racing, intelligent mind: “Late now. Sound of the furnace. Cathy out. Girls asleep. / Take apart all ideas plans and structures again and again.” There is a throughline of righteous anger: at contemporary culture, at the recursive loop pattern of living, at the corruption of art. Open brackets following open brackets and repeating loops of text add to the sense that the speaker is ruminating over these musings, spiralling deeper and deeper, opening box after box. Throughout the piece, Collis maintains a stream of consciousness that is the opposite of messy, the lines hold a straight-edged coherence, clean yet urgent. While a shorter book than other chapbooks out there, Collis’s is an important piece that drives one to question their own artistry (“what is poetry if money is information?”), to pick apart and think, to write and write and write. “Writing as problem solving…” Collis pens at one point, “…in the age of insoluble problems.”

Ian Dreiblatt's how to hide by showing in the age of being alone with the universe listed as one of Kenyon Review’s Holiday Reading Recommendations

Two lists in two days! Kirsten Reach, Fiction Editor at the Kenyon Review offers Ian Dreiblatt's how to hide by showing in the age of being alone with the universe (2018) as one of Kenyon Review’s Holiday Reading Recommendations, calling it "a delight." We totally agree. Thanks so much!

Kirby at knife | fork | book offers Travis Sharp's Sinister Queer Agenda as a top 2018 pick!

As a response to the Globe & Mail leaving poetry off their "Top 100 Books" list for the third year in a row (a third year at least), Kirby at Toronto's legendary poetry-only bookstore, knife | fork | book. has written up his own list of "Top 2018 Picks!" He lists a wealth of materials, from full-length collections to chapbooks, and was good enough to include above/ground press' Sinister Queer Agenda (2018) by Travis Sharp! Huzzah! Thanks for this, Kirby! We totally agree.

new from above/ground press: bodies and breath, a summer poetry workshop chapbook

bodies and breath
a summer poetry workshop chapbook
edited by rob mclennan
$4

featuring new writing by:

Marie-Andree Auclair
allison calvern
Allie Duff
Laurence Gillieson
Janna Klostermann
Leah MacLean-Evans
Sneha Madhavan-Reese
and Billie Moss

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

[this chapbook launches in Ottawa as part of a special Factory Reading Series event this Friday at the Carleton Tavern]

This is the third “rob mclennan poetry workshop” chapbook, after cycle 7 (April 25, 2003), with poems by Lindsey Barr, Robynn Collins, Brendan Hodgson, James Irwin, Soraya Peerbaye, LM Rochefort, Suzanna Showler and Mary Trafford; and assignment: zero (December 2015) with poems by Frances Boyle, Amanda Earl, Claire Farley, Rosemarie Krausz, Barbara Myers and Dawn Steiner.

For information on further workshops, check out the link at: http://robmclennanauthor.blogspot.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

Marie-Andree Auclair’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and online publications in Canada, the United States, Ireland and in the United Kingdom. Her chapbook, Contrails, was released by In/Words Magazine and Press/Ottawa. She lives in Ottawa, Canada.

allison calvern lives in Vanier on a street sandwiched between two cemeteries—dead centre of town. She writes a few poems while collaborating on a graphic novel with local artist, Benjamin Comeau.

Allie Duff is originally from St. John’s, NL and now lives in Ottawa, ON. Allie writes poems, performs stand-up comedy, and occasionally plays electric guitar. She is a proud co-founder of Spoken Word St. John’s, an organization that hosts monthly poetry open mics.

Laurence Gillieson began writing in high school as a way to deal with the growing realization that math is stupid. She honed her skills at the University of Ottawa (with a BA in English Literature), followed by Algonquin College (Print Journalism, followed shortly after by Dramatic Scriptwriting). Her poetry has been published in Bywords and in a university anthology. She has had a couple of short plays produced at the NAC’s Fourth Stage and on CKCU radio. She currently works part-time at the gift shop of the Ottawa Hospital General Campus. She shares her writing with multiple other interests and hobbies, including reading, cooking, and creating sometimes useful things with yarn.

Janna Klostermann (@jannaKlos) is a feminist writer, recreational performer and PhD student in Carleton’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Her academic and artistic work wrestles with how to respond to suffering, how to be with others in vulnerable moments, and how to tell our own stories in solidarity with others. The chips help.

Leah MacLean-Evans writes poems and stories in Ottawa. Her work has appeared in Canthius, untethered, Qwerty, On Spec Magazine, and elsewhere. She was the 2017 fiction winner of the Blodwyn Memorial Prize and the 2018 winner of the League of Canadian Poets’ National Broadsheet contest. She has an MFA in Writing from the University of Saskatchewan and is the proofreader of Grain. Find her online at macleanevans.ca or @penanddragon.

Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of the poetry collection Observing the Moon. Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, including The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She is the 2015 winner of Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize and was a finalist for a 2018 National Magazine Award. She lives with her family in Ottawa. “Frost Flowers” was originally published in The New Quarterly.

Billie Moss is an educator who lives in Ottawa with her partner, toddler, and cat.