new from above/ground press: Report from the Hall Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

 

Report from the Hall Society
Vol 1. No. 1
edited by rob mclennan
$7

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Phil Hall

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Cameron Anstee
Jennifer Baker
Douglas Barbour
Andrew Burke
David Currie
Stan Dragland
Susan Gillis
Mark Goldstein
Robert Hogg
Ann Ireland
rob mclennan
Eirin Moure
Pearl Pirie
John Steffler
Chris Turnbull

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2022
full list of published reports here
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Report on the Society logo by C. McNair, editor’s devil (retired)

Phil Hall has published five chapbooks with above/ground press, including Verulam (2009), the collaborative Shikibu Shuffle (with Andrew Burke; 2012), Alternative Girders (with Stuart Kinmond; 2018) and A Wolf Lake Chorus (2021).

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: FALSE NARRATIVES, by Ken Norris

FALSE NARRATIVES
Ken Norris
$5

PREPARING FOR APRIL

Suddenly there’s a hum of Spring in the air.
And the mind goes hunting
for yellow tulips at midnight.
I caught myself looking at the girls
in that old-fashioned way—full of desire.
I forgot my age and my ailing body.

The river’s been flowing for weeks now.
All that’s left is a rim of ice,
and it floats there, waiting for the finality
of a warm sunny day.
It’s coming, and poets will sharpen their pencils
and write the latest invocation of Spring.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ken Norris was born in New York City in 1951. He came to Canada in the early 1970s, to escape Nixon-era America and to pursue his graduate education. He completed an M.A. at Concordia University and a Ph.D. in Canadian Literature at McGill University. He became a Canadian citizen in 1985. Norris is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine, where he taught Canadian Literature and Creative Writing for thirty-three years. He currently resides in Toronto.

This is Ken Norris’ tenth above/ground press chapbook, after Windward – St. Lucia Poems (1995), The Commentaries (1999), Songs For Isabella (2000), Green Wind (2010), Looking Into It (2011), Hong Kong Blues (2019), Hawaiian Sunrise (2021), Stray Dog Café (2021) and The Traveling Wilburys Collection (2021).

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: mclennan, Robertson, Rogal, Maloukis + Niespodziany,

rob mclennan takes the Galaxy Brain Questionnaire over at Michael Murray's Galaxy Brain; Lisa Robertson writes on the colour rose for Cabinet magazine; Stan Rogal has a new poem up at Train : a poetry journal; Rose Maloukis has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series via the dusie blog; and Benjamin Niespodziany has a one-sentence story over at MonkeyBicycle.

The Poetics of Space: Spotlight on the Super 8 Films of Steph Gray, Curated by Milada Kovacova

The Poetics of Space: Spotlight on the Super 8 Films of Steph Gray, Curated by Milada Kovacova

Available Everywhere Online and On-demand
August 5th to August 11th at the8fest.com

*Tune in for the live Artist Talk with Steph Gray in conversation with Milada Kováčová on Thursday August 11th at 7PM EDT! ASL and live closed captioning will be available.*

“Steph’s movies’ DIY spirit takes me back to the excitement of the 2000s when Will Munro and company were rocking Toronto. DIY was at its finest. Steph makes me lament what no longer is but what is so important to experience.” —Milada Kováčová

Steph Gray's Super 8 films have screened internationally, and in Canada, with screenings at Antimatter, Inside Out, CSIF $100 Film Fest, Cinemuerte and live performed at the8fest and Splice This! Usually edited-in-camera and sometimes hand-processed, Gray’s films are accompanied by live reading or experimental sound, while exploring the city symphonically or digging in the depths of pop culture and contemplating “what you thought you knew / what you knew you thought”. Gray’s last two poetry publications are on Ottawa-based above/ground press, including Words Are What You Get / You Do It For Real.

More details to come at the8fest.com

the latest above/ground press stapler,

now that the prior one has finally stopped working properly. Although I can't recall if this is stapler #6 or stapler #7 over the past near-thirty years (and 1,201 publications-to-date). I most likely have all the prior ones around here somewhere (and even the original Talon magazine/Talonbooks stapler from the early 1960s, gifted by Karl Siegler back in the late 1990s). Already this new device has helped considerably, assembling the latest "Report from the Society" festschrift title (to announce soon, once the unsuspecting subject of the publication sees copies land on their doorstep). Have you been keeping track of the festschrifts that have already appeared? Exciting!

some author activity: parizeau, Ball, Rukeyser, mclennan + Burgoyne,

df parizeau has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series via the dusie blog; there is a short write-up on the work of the late Nelson Ball, as well as some poems, up at brief poems; Susan Rukeyser reads her piece "Less a man than a gun" over at YouTube; rob mclennan is interviewed by Colin Dardis over at Fill Your Books!; and Sarah Burgoyne reads work from her new Turret House Press chapbook over at YouTube.

Graham Sigurdson reviews Amanda Earl's a field guide of fanciful bugs (2021) at Broken Pencil

Graham Sigurdson was good enough to provide a review of Amanda Earl's a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! This is actually the second review of such, after Bryce Warnes reviewed such over at The Pamphleteer. You can see Sigurdson's original review here; although I should mention that, while this is the ninth chapbook above/ground press has done of Earl's work, it isn't the ninth chapbook the press has done of her visuals (this seems an important distinction).

A field guide of fanciful bugs

Originally published as an ebook in 2010, a field guide to fanciful bugs is the ninth chapbook of Amanda Earl’s visual poetry from Ottawa’s above/ground Press. The fanciful bugs in question here are several visual poems made up of single letters or small words. A group of M’s are arranged cleverly, labeled as “The Gnasher.” Several V’s make up “the vampire mosquito.” It’s a playful idea-and indeed, ‘whimsy’ is one of Earl’s stated goals in her bio. But the relationships between letter form, image, poem, and name are rocky and inconsistent, prompting unease. A group of V’s are “the snow bugs,” while later an arrangement of the name ‘Max’ is “the small butterflies of Max Ernst.” The central idea of these visual poems is revealed at the end of the chapbook, but rather than building out a logic to justify it, it feels like a sudden gear shift toward the end. On her website, Earl notes that she has grapheme synaesthesia, where in colour and text often blend together in her perception. Considered through this lens, things make a little more sense, with the folding text and interplay of shapes likely looking significantly different to those who experience this. In this sense, a field guide to fanciful bugs serves as a strong example of synaesthesic art at work. I only wish I’d been able to enter the experience a bit more.