above/ground press (mini) lockdown sale,

Until the end of May 2021: you can have any six above/ground press 2021-so-far titles for $20 (Canadian; outside Canada, $20 US; plus shipping; rates below). Can you believe that above/ground press has produced twenty-five titles (so far) this year?

2021 titles-to-date: that i want, by Ava Hofmann ; Knife with Oral Greed, by JoAnna Novak ; I am a language you are the sound device, by Sandra Moussempès translated by Eléna Rivera ; Clinging & Grasping, by Franklin Bruno ; a grain of sand, Photograph by Julya Hajnoczky Poem by Helen Hajnoczky ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #29 : with new poems by Bill Carty, Michael Turner, Nina Vega-Westhoff, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Robert Hogg, Elizabeth Robinson, Tom Prime and Simina Banu ; a journal of the plague year, by Edward Smallfield ; still life with elegy, by Valerie Coulton ; The Hotdog Variations, by James Hawes ; The Great Beauty, by Anik See (prose/naut) ; Chronotope, by David Dowker ; zero dawn, by Shelly Harder ; buttons & bones, by Alexander Joseph ; a field guide to fanciful bugs, by Amanda Earl ; OCCUPATIONAL ELEGIES, Joseph Mosconi ; Moonbathing in Al Faiyūm, by Brenda Iijima ; Transmissions from the Crawdad Constellation, by Michael Sikkema ; OFF THE RESTING SEA, by Al Kratz (prose/naut) ; THE OCEANDWELLER, by Saeed Tavanaee Marvi, translated by Khashayar Mohammadi ; Bridge and burn, by Jason Christie ; micro moonlights, by katie o'brien ; Less Dream, by N.W. Lea ; Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #28 : with new poems by MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty and Lisa Fishman ; Geometric Mantra, by Andrew Brenza ; The Universe in an Earth-Shaped Urn, by Amish Trivedi ;

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 robmclennan.blogspot.com

Forthcoming chapbooks by Andy Weaver, Stan Rogal, Matthew Owen Gwathmey, Summer Brenner, Benjamin Niespodziany, Ken Sparling, Phil Hall and Madhur Anand, Jen Tynes, Franklin Bruno, Gregory Betts, Robert Hogg, Amaranth Borsuk, Katie Naughton, Valerie Witte, Kōan Anne Brink, Alyssa Bridgman, Michael Sikkema, M.A.C. Farrant, Monica Mody, Conor Mc Donnell, James Lindsay, Jamie Townsend, Barry McKinnon, David Miller, Amish Trivedi and plenty of others! And there’s totally still time to subscribe for 2021, by the way (backdating to January 1st, obviously). Oh, and you are checking out periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics regularly, yes? lots going on there.

Stay home! Stay safe! Get vaccinated! Wash your damned hands. Be nice to each other.

new from above/ground press: that i want, by Ava Hofmann

that i want
Ava Hofmann
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Originally from Oxford, Ohio, Ava Hofmann is a trans writer currently living and working in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. She has poems published in or forthcoming from Poetry Daily, Black Warrior Review, Fence, Anomaly, Best American Experimental Writing 2020, The Fanzine, Datableed, and elsewhere. Her interactive chapbook, THE WOMAN FACTORY, was published via The OS. Her latest chapbook is my my summer of total failure, published by The Offending Adam. Her full length collection [...], is forthcoming in 2021, with more books on the way. She also edits SPORAZINE, a magazine of experimental writing written by trans people. Her website is www.nothnx.com and her twitter is @st_somatic

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Bryce Warnes reviews Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) over at The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Amanda Earl | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2021

Staple-bound, 24 pages | Purchase

Even if there are 10 quintillion insects on our planet, it can be easy to overlook them—until they sting, or until someone pins them in a display case. The same goes for the printed word and its components. Amanda Earl won’t let us ignore these ubiquitous swarms, collecting them, arranging them, sometimes dissecting them with a naturalist’s eye for subtle harmonies. “intersects” threatens to overwhelm the margins with a swarm of i’s, until it doesn’t. “the vampire mosquito” puts a stake through V’s axis, while “the demon caterpillar” is hungry hungry for your dreams. And something about the interzonal a/symmetry of “burroughs’ araknid” keeps this reviewer returning to the page. Entomophobes beware.

some author activity: Armantrout, O'Reilly, Sikkema, McElroy, mclennan + Turner,

Rae Armantrout has a new poem posted in the London Review of Books; Nathanael O'Reilly has work in the debut issue of Bealtaine magazine; Michael Sikkema has a new poem up on the Chaudiere Books blog as part of National Poetry Month, as does Gil McElroy; and rob mclennan and Michael Turner (among others) have new poems posted as part of The Mirimachi Reader.

new from above/ground press: Knife with Oral Greed, by JoAnna Novak

Knife with Oral Greed
JoAnna Novak
$5

The barefoot
heroine, white
wax on her front
teeth, drags the
book across the rug. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

JoAnna Novak’s debut memoir Contradiction Days will be published by Catapult in 2022. Her short story collection, Meaningful Work, won the 2020 Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and will be published by FC2 in August. Her third book of poetry, New Life, will be published by Black Lawrence Press later in 2021. She is the author of the novel I Must Have You and two previous books of poetry: Noirmania and Abeyance, North America. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, and other publications. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and chapbook publisher, Tammy.

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: I am a language you are the sound device, by Sandra Moussempès (translated by Eléna Rivera

I am a language you are the sound device
Sandra Moussempès
translated by Eléna Rivera
$5

What connection are we looking for while watching a film,
while reading a poem?
anticipation or eloquence
using a repetitive metaphor

enjambment                “caesura”

the sequences between sound and sense, the poetry of affect,
the juxtaposition of the poem, time and light, fade(s) to black,
point of view, fragment, the metric, subtraction

what’s the difference between exorcism and the close-up
a way of writing in the dark (the visual narrative)

at first it’s a composition of living matter        barely
resized
our thoughts noted        inside the sculpted house

these fragments in a film-loop

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover photograph by Russell Switzer, 2019

Sandra Moussempès is a poet and vocal artist, born in Paris in 1965, and former resident of the Villa Medici. She has published twelve books of poetry including : Cassandre à bout portant (Poésie/Flammarion, 2021), Cinéma de L’affect (Boucles de voix off pour film fantôme) (L’Attente, 2020), Colloque des Télépathes & CD Post-Gradiva (L’Attente 2017), and Sunny girls (Poésie/Flammarion 2015). As a sound and vocal artist, she has recorded four albums and has performed at the Centre Pompidou, the Louis Vuitton Foundation, and MAMCO in Geneva, among others. above/ground press also published a selection from Sunny girls, translated by Eléna Rivera (2017).

Eléna Rivera was born in Mexico City and raised in Paris. Her most recent book of poetry is Epic Series (Shearsman Books, 2020). Her translation of Bernard Noël’s The Rest of the Voyage (Graywolf, 2011) received the Robert Fagles Translation Prize. She also translated Noël’s The Ink’s Path (Cadastre8zéro, 2018), Isabelle Baladine Howald’s Hantôme (forthcoming Black Square Editions, 2021) and Isabelle Garron’s Body Was (forthcoming, Litmus Press, 2021). She received a National Endowment for the Arts in translation and fellowships from MacDowell (2020) and the Trelex Paris Poetry Residency (2019).

This is their second above/ground press chapbook, after From: Sunny girls (2017).

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Hunter, Barbour, Robinson, Hajnoczky, hanna + Downs,

Carrie Hunter has some new work up at talking about strawberries all of the time; Douglas Barbour is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Ben Robinson has a new poem posted as part of National Poetry Month over at the Chaudiere Books blog, as do Helen Hajnoczky, natalie hanna and Buck Downs.