HAL magazine, guest edited by Karl Jirgens : Bowering, Spinosa, Earl, Tucker, Davey, Hogg, Clarke, McCaffery, Betts, beaulieu, Rogal, Hall, Lynes, Nećakov, mclennan, Barwin, Arnott, Ross + Norris,

In case you haven't seen, above/ground press author Karl Jirgens guest-edited the fourteenth anniversary issue of Hamilton Arts and Letters, and included work by a whole ton of folk, including numerous (current and former) above/ground press authors! Why not check out the issue as a whole? Or check out the specific submissions by George Bowering, Dani Spinosa, Amanda Earl, Aaron Tucker, Frank Davey, Robert Hogg, George Elliott Clarke, Steve McCaffery, Gregory Betts, derek beaulieu, Stan Rogal, Phil Hall, Jeanette Lynes, Lillian Nećakov, rob mclennan, Gary Barwin, Joanne Arnott, Stuart Ross and Ken Norris! And there are bunches of others as well! So you really have to check out the issue as a whole, really.

new from above/ground press: The Goose, by Melanie Dennis Unrau

The Goose
Melanie Dennis Unrau
$5

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

Melanie Dennis Unrau respectfully acknowledges the original caretakers of the land known as Treaty 1 territory/Winnipeg, where she lives as a guest of mixed European ancestry on the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Melanie is a Research Affiliate at the University of Manitoba Institute for the Humanities and a Visiting Fellow at St. John’s College (U of Manitoba). She is the author of Happiness Threads: The Unborn Poems (Muses’ Company, 2013), a former editor and poetry editor at Geez magazine, and a former co-editor of The Goose: A Journal of Arts, Environment, and Culture in Canada.

This is Melanie Dennis Unrau’s second above/ground press title, after guest-editing G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #17 (June, 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: Report from the McCarthy Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

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

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Pattie McCarthy

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Laynie Browne
Barbara Cole
Sarah Dowling
Jenny Drai
Al Filreis
Sarah Heady
rob mclennan
Elizabeth Robinson
Edward Smallfield
Han VanderHart
Kevin Varrone
Divya Victor
Elizabeth Willis

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 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)

Pattie McCarthy is the author of seven books of poetry—six from Apogee Press, Wifthing (2021), Quiet Book (2015), Marybones (2012), Table Alphabetical of Hard Words (2010), Verso (2004), and bk of (h)rs (2002); and one from Horse Less Press, Nulls (2014). She was interviewed as part of her appearance in the debut issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal].

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 robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: O'Reilly, Siklosi, Spinosa, Chernoff, Best + the ottawa small press book fair,

Nathanael O'Reilly has a new poem up at Identity Theory; Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa are conducting a Late Winter Writers Residency Online through Banff Centre (apply now!); MLA Chernoff has a poem in the poetry pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Ashley-Elizabeth Best has an article up at Chatelaine; and don't forget the ottawa small press book fair returns in two weeks, yes?

new from above/ground press: glass / language / untitled / exaltation, by Jason Christie

glass / language / untitled / exaltation
Jason Christie
$5

a small song

            For Andrea

If I struggle to arrive like a union of treated pianos,
then I’ll bind to that sound some vitamin D and toast
if I'm a hot Monday wavering, then, look,
what a way to start writing without myself.
If I'm somewhat public in the public’s mind, I’ll listen.
If your body says walls are a problem
where forests mean otherwise than being
is it a fine memory itself becoming afraid to village?
Either way, if I've held you close enough in that moment
when the aesthetic clicks, then I'm expansive in the way
I've used the word relentless to describe reading,
quiet mornings in letters or a tantrum, a roundabout
or in a round, a resounding ballad of dissonances plays
and a coffee machine beeps: sound in a box.

* * * *

I wrote the poems in this chapbook during a period of years where my language and memory were shattered by sleep deprivation. In order to keep myself connected to poetry, I started writing in a file about our life with young kids. I didn't think much about what I was writing. The point was to do it. I amassed a large repository of content, but I stopped adding to it as life found a new level.

While reflecting on how hard it was to remember anything as a result of years of disrupted sleep, I realized that what I had in the original file was literally stored in memory on my computer. I wondered if I could treat that original material with processes that would be similar to what was happening to my mind during sleep deprivation?

To replicate some of the effects of memory loss and the difficulty of thinking, I wrote Python scripts that cut up, recombined, and selected random lines from that source material. The results were a mess, but I edited them to try to make sense of the jumble that had once been rational.

Much like how memories are stories, how we gloss over the messy, difficult, or impossible to recall details, how we invent the connecting pieces to attribute to our memory a sense of completeness, I worked on the poems to attempt to let them become something new, an active remembering. Memory, as I now think of it, is not entirely an act of recall with varying degrees of fidelity, but also an act of creation. We look at the glossy or glossless images of our past and glue them together into a whole new collage.

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

cover image by the author

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, some of which appear in this chapbook.

This is Christie’s eighth chapbook with above/ground press, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Government (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018) and Bridge and Burn (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: Report from the Hajnoczky Society. Vol. 1 No. 1

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

an assemblage of writing in response
to the work of Helen Hajnoczky

including
poems, critical writings
and
philosophical transactions

with contributions by:
Gary Barwin
Derek Beaulieu
Christian Bök
Caroline Boreham
Kit Dobson
Kyle Flemmer
Julya Hajnoczky
rob mclennan
Ryan Pratt
Eric Schmaltz
Kate Siklosi
Dani Spinosa

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 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)

Helen Hajnoczky has published four chapbooks with above/ground press: A history of button collecting (2010), The Double Bind Dictionary (2013), No Right on Red (2017) and a grain of sand (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 robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Abel, Armantrout, Scroggins + Robertson,

Jordan Abel delivers the 2022 Page Lecture at Queen's University, Kingston, on November 8; register for online or in-person here; Rae Armantrout has a new poem in The New Yorker, and three more in the London Review of Books; Mark Scroggins offers a new essay over at Hyperallergic; and Lisa Robertson offers an obituary for Issey Miyake (1938-2022) over at Artforum.