Saturday, January 8, 2022
some author activity: Ross, Melançon, Brockwell, Marshall + Pirie,
Wednesday, January 5, 2022
some author activity: Niespodziany, Beaulieu, mclennan, Boyle, Pirie + Patton,
Sunday, January 2, 2022
Thursday, December 30, 2021
new from above/ground press: 13 more songs the radio won’t play …, by Stan Rogal
Stan Rogal
$5
Comes Love
Why, baby, why, baby, why, baby, why?
Questions of the soon-to-be-slain.
Where fat grim orange jack-o-lanterns leer
& empty vases you endow with flowers
fill the gloom.
That’s all brother (don’t try hiding).
Comes love, nothing can be done.
It’s a cheating situation, yes?
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger.
Will be the bomb, the door in the wall,
an offer of instantaneous intimacy,
of perpetual (e)motion.
That’s all brother (don’t try hiding).
Comes love, nothing can be done.
Ah, sweet easing away of all edge, evil & surprise!
The sometimes mouth that masticates or gags.
Everything that acts is actual.
(I believe it’s the auratic quality that sucks one in).
Comes a sad song, give your nose a little blow.
Comes the devil, you can tell him where to go.
Comes love?
That’s all brother (don’t try hiding).
Comes love, nothing can be done.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Stan Rogal lives and writes in relative obscurity in the hamlet known as Toronto. He has been rumoured to have published widely and is the apparent author of 25 books (6 novels, 7 story and 12 poetry) and several chapbooks (most with above/ground press). He is a former Master bowler and retired dart champion.
This is Rogal’s sixth above/ground press chapbook, after In Search of the Emerald City (1997), “THE CELEBRITY RAG: Opá” (STANZAS #44, March 2006), All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace (2004), muscle memory (2018) and ALAS & ALACK (2020).
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
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
The Peter F Yacht Club #30 : the virtual issue,
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews : “Jesus in a Prom Gown”
Kimberly Quiogue Andrews is a poet and literary critic. She is the author of A Brief History of Fruit, winner of the Akron Prize for Poetry from the University of Akron Press, and BETWEEN, winner of the New Women’s Voices Chapbook Prize from Finishing Line Press. She teaches creative writing and American literature at the University of Ottawa, and you can find her on Twitter at @kqandrews.
Susan J. Atkinson : “Reading Palms,” “The Dining Room Poem by another Poet”
and “Interpreting Rothko”
Susan J. Atkinson’s poems have won a number of awards, most recently first prize in the 2019 National Capital Writers Contest and chosen as a Notable Mention in the 2020 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse. She has new work in Grain Magazine and The Queen’s Quarterly. Her first full-length collection, The Marta Poems was published by Silver Bow Publishing in 2020 and her chapbook The Birthday Party, The Mariachi Player and The Tourist came out in Spring 2021 with Catkin Press. Visit www.susanjatkinson.com for more information.
Frances Boyle : “The whole tall world” and “Abbey”
Frances Boyle is the author of two poetry books, most recently This White Nest (2019). She has also written Tower, a Rapunzel-infused novella (2018), and Seeking Shade, a short story collection (2020) which was a first-place winner of the Miramichi Reader’s Very Best! Awards, and a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Award and the ReLit Award. Her writing has been selected for the Best Canadian Poetry series, nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, and published throughout North America and internationally. Frances’s third book of poetry is forthcoming in fall 2022 with Frontenac House Press. www.francesboyle.com
Jason Christie : “Slow death”
Jason Christie lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of Canada Post (Invisible), i-ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). His most recent chapbooks are: Bridge and Burn (above / ground) and Heavy Metal Litany (Model press). He is looking for a home for a new manuscript of poetry he wrote with the help of several Python scripts.
Conyer Clayton : “Family Dinner” and “Intruder,” both from But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (Spring 2022, A Feed Dog Book by Anvil Press).
Conyer Clayton is a writer, musician, editor, and gymnastics coach living on unceded Algonquin Anishinaabe land. Her debut collection, We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions, 2020), won an Ottawa Book Award and was a Relit Award finalist. She's released 2 albums and many chapbooks; recently, Towers (Collusion Books, 2021) by VII, of which she is a member, and Sprawl (Collusion Books, 2020) written with Manahil Bandukwala, shortlisted for the bpNichol Award. Her second book, But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves (A Feed Dog Book, Anvil Press) is forthcoming Spring 2022.
Laurie Anne Fuhr : “applicable skills of the military brat #1” and “applicable skills of the military brat #2,” from night flying (Frontenac House 2018).
Laurie Anne Fuhr, ex-Ottawan, current Calgarian, is author of night flying (Frontenac House 2018), which was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry 2016 in ms form. Fuhr had work in several anthologies in 2021, including Uncommon Grounds: poems by the Espresso Poetry Collective (epcpress 2021); Wonder/Shift 40th Anniversary Anthology (AWCS Press 2021); and The Stroll of Poets Anthology (2021), and had a poem on a tall can with Blindman Brewing's Session Stories series (ed. Jason Lee Norman). Her poem mixed media was shortlisted in the Freefall Magazine poetry contest 2020 (Judge Gary Barwin). Her work has been published in an above/ground chapbook and in many periodicals like This Magazine, Journal of Literature and Aesthetics (India), Bywords, and Prairie Journal. Fuhr is a poetry instructor with alexandrawriters.org; its poetry workshops are now open to all on Zoom.
natalie hanna : “keep moving / keep sleeping” and “to learn of making”
natalie hanna is a queer, disabled, feminist, Middle Eastern, Ottawa-born lawyer. She runs battleaxe press, and has authored thirteen chapbooks, including three titles with above/ground press, Baseline Press (2020), and collaboratively with Liam Burke, machine dreams, from Collusion Books (2021). She is working on her first full length poetry collection. Her poetry, interviews, and commentary have been published in Canada and the U.S. Learn more: https://nhannawriting.wordpress.com.
Robert Hogg : “The Poem that Starts in the Night”
Robert Hogg was born in Edmonton, Alberta, grew up in the Cariboo and Fraser Valley in British Columbia, and attended UBC during the early Sixties where he was associated with the Vancouver TISH poets, co-edited MOTION - a prose newsletter, and graduated with a BA in English and Creative Writing. His books include: The Connexions, Berkeley: Oyez, 1966; Standing Back, Toronto: Coach House, 1972; Of Light, Toronto: Coach House, 1978; Heat Lightning, Windsor: Black Moss, 1986; There Is No Falling, Toronto: ECW,1993; and as editor, An English Canadian Poetics, The Confederation Poets – Vol. 1, Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2009. He recently published several chapbooks: from LAMENTATIONS, Ottawa: above/ground, 2016; two Cariboo poems, Ranch Days – The McIntosh from hawk/weed press in Kemptville, ON; Ranch Days—for Ed Dorn from battleaxe press (Ottawa 2019); A Quiet Affair – Vancouver ’63 (Trainwreck, May 2021); and in August 2021 a chapbook titled From Each Forthcoming (above/ground). In December 2021, a chapbook will be released from Hogwallow Press, called The Red Menace, and another from Apt 9 Press in Ottawa, called Apothegms.
Margo LaPierre : “A Video of You, Laughing” (first published in Mineral Lit Mag), “Hysterosonogram” (forthcoming 2022 in Sable Books’ disability anthology The Ending Hasn’t Happened Yet) and “Air Show” (first published in Train Journal)
Margo LaPierre is a freelance editor and author of Washing Off the Raccoon Eyes (Guernica Editions, 2017). She serves as newsletter editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and is a member of poetry collective VII. She is the winner of the 2021 Room Poetry Contest and the 2020 subTerrain Lush Triumphant Award for Fiction and was shortlisted for the 2021 Fiddlehead Creative Nonfiction Contest. She is completing her MFA in Creative Writing at UBC. Find her on Twitter @margolapierre.
Gil McElroy is reading three new poems from his ongoing project, The Julian Days.
Gil McElroy is a poet currently living in Colborne, Ontario.
rob mclennan : “Autobiography of green,” “Coordinates” and “Burning the dead grass”
Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious
capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home
full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of
more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most
recent poetry title, the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press,
2022), is now available for pre-order. In spring 2020, he won ‘best pandemic
beard’ from Coach House Books via Twitter, of which he is extremely proud (and
mentions constantly). He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as
writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.
Christine McNair : “Déjà Entendu” and “Déjà vu”
Christine McNair has published two books of poetry with Bookhug – Conflict (2012) and Charm (2017). Her most recent manuscript is a hybrid non-fiction poetry manuscript focused on preeclampsia, illness, and disability. She works as a book doctor in Ottawa. Also – she recorded this last year for Canthius but it may have been lost in the ether, much like she was lost in the Christmas tree.
Pearl Pirie : “Daily you detail weather” & “time scales mountains” are from the tentatively titled, “Well-Behaved Thistle.” If you’re a potential publisher, ask for it by name.
Pearl Pirie’s fourth poetry collection is footlights (Radiant Press, 2020). rain’s small gestures (Apt 9 Press, fall 2021) is minimalist poems. Mudflaps for Short Dogs is out from Trainwreck Press (July 2021). Interact with her at Instagram or Patreon at Pearlpiriepoet.
Monty Reid : two poems from “Playground”
Monty Reid is a damaged Ottawa poet.
Stuart Ross : “A Stephen Crane Christmas,” “Sixty-Two” and “Razovsky On The Volga”
Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, and writing teacher, the author of 20 books of fiction, poetry, and essays, and countless chapbooks and ephemera. He received the 2019 Harbourfront Festival Prize and the 2021 James Tate Poetry Prize. Stuart’s work has been translated into Nynorsk, French, Spanish, Estonian, and Russian. His most recent book is 70 Kippers, written with his dearest friend, the late Ottawa poet Michael Dennis. Stuart’s hybrid poem/essay The Book Of Grief And Hamburgers, dedicated to Michael, comes out this spring from ECW Press. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.
Renée Sarojini Saklikar : from the Perimeter sequence in Bramah and The Beggar Boy
Renée Sarojini Saklikar is a poet and lawyer who lives in Vancouver on the unceded traditional territories of the Coast Salish peoples. She is the author of four books, including the ground-breaking poetry book, children of air india, about the bombing of Air India Flight 182 which won the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Prize and is the co-author, with Dr. Mark Winston, of the poetry and essay collection, Listening to the Bees, winner of the 2019 Gold Medal Independent Publishers Book Award, Environment/Ecology. She is currently working on Book 2 of the THOT J BAP series, an epic fantasy in verse.
This poem is from the Perimeter sequence in my epic fantasy in verse, Bramah and The Beggar Boy (Nightwood Editions, 2021).
An early version of this poem, one of the first in my long poem series, https://thotjbap.com/, first appeared in a beautiful hand made chapbook by the late Marthe Reed, to whom I was introduced by rob mclennan at the Factory Reading Series in Ottawa.
Other poems from the sequence also appeared in Kathryn Mockler’s The Rusty Toque.
With gratitude for these, past and present, who support/supported long form poetry.
D.S. Stymeist : Big Ride: Passage 1” and “Tonic.”
D.S. Stymeist’s debut collection, The Bone Weir, was published by Frontenac in 2016 and was a finalist for the Canadian Author’s Association Award for Poetry. He continues to publish widely in both academic and literary magazines. Alongside fending off Crohn’s disease, he teaches creative writing and crime fiction at Carleton University. He’s the former president of VERSe Ottawa, which organizes VERSeFest, Ottawa’s international poetry festival.
On special assignment: Cameron Anstee, Stephen Brockwell, jwcurry, Anita Dolman, Amanda Earl, Lea Graham, Marilyn Irwin, Chris Johnson, Janice Tokar, Roland Prevost, Sandra Ridley and Chris Turnbull.
Tuesday, December 28, 2021
new from above/ground press: Microbial Soup Kiss, by Sean Braune and Émilie Dionne
Microbial Soup Kiss
Sean Braune and Émilie Dionne
$5
dance—like strings or sifflets
our heads strike
twigs: i heard
within the hour, we’d be
standing further than
two metres apart
with masks sewn
like love between
our smiles, our hope,
our fingers in our eyes
piercing through
ice
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2021
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
Sean Braune is the writer of the poetry book Dendrite Balconies (University of Calgary Press, 2019) and the philosophy book Language Parasites: Of Phorontology (Punctum Books, 2017). His first feature-length film, Nuptials, has just screened at the Cyprus International Film Festival (2021).
Émilie Dionne is a health researcher, sociologist, political theorist, writer and visual artist based in Quebec (Montreal & Quebec city). She’s been writing since she was 10, wrote three novels, five plays, many short stories and collections of poetry. Her writing has been published only once before, Secrètes Immortelles (1999), and her visual art is available online. She’s a runner, lover of animals and nature.
This is Braune’s fourth above/ground press chapbook after the vitamins of an alphabet (2016), The Cosmos (2018) and FACE PORTRAITS and AUTHOR COPS (2018).
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
Sunday, December 26, 2021
some author activity: mclennan, Niespodziany, Witte, O'Reilly + Boyle,
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