some author activity: Varrone, Pakdel, O'Reilly, Tracy, Robinson + Earl,

Here's a video that New Jersey high school students Charlie Mawn and Jonathan Kane made of Kevin Varrone’s "Poem I Wrote Sitting Across the Table from You"; Saba Pakdel has a poem in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; Nathanael O'Reilly has new work up at Eastern Iowa Review; Dale Tracy is interviewed by Rob Taylor over at Read Local BC; Ben Robinson also has a poem in the "poetry pause" series; and so does Amanda Earl!

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day five of five: Koss, van Vliet + Arnott,

As it all winds down. Do you remember where you were? Here we are, already, on the final day of this stretch of virtual readings as an adjunct to this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. There are lots of other upcoming schemes, by the way, to help celebrate above/ground press’ thirtieth year. You’ll hear about them soon enough. After today, I think you’ve earned a few days off, yes? Well, before Ottawa’s VERSeFest begins next week, obviously.

Zane Koss is a poet, translator, teacher, and scholar from the East Kootenays, currently living in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of Harbour Grids (Invisible, 2022) and co-translator of Commonplace by Hugo García Manríquez (Cardboard House, 2022), along with several poetry chapbooks, most recently Kitchen Table (Model, 2023).

Robert van Vliet is a poet and teacher who lives in St Paul, Minnesota. His above/ground chapbook is This Folded Path (2023), and his first book will be published by Unsolicited Press in 2024.

Mother of many, master of none, Joanne Arnott is a writer, editor, arts activist on the west coast. Reading a selection from A Night for the Lady (Ronsdale) and pandemic friendship (above/ground press). She’s published ten poetry books/chapbooks, among other titles, and edited a dozen volumes by others. Poetry Mentor (The Writers Studio), Poetry Editor (EVENT Magazine), and Shadbolt Fellow (2021-2).

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day four of five: Beaulieu, O’Reilly, Izsak, Qi + Smith,

Furthering this week’s thread as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary as an adjunct to this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair, today’s penultimate post wonders if anyone is even catching these? I hear these events are pretty exciting, albeit expensive. Is everyone at home simply pretending that none of this exists? It’s nearly spring, you know. Isn’t my birthday coming up as well?

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence, is forthcoming from Sweden’s Timglaset Books, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to literature, and is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award.’ Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, is Banff’s Poet Laureate, and the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet; he teaches creative writing at The University of Texas at Arlington. His nine collections include Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Beir Bua Press, 2023), Boulevard (Beir Bua Press, 2021), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), BLUE (above/ground press, 2020) and Preparations for Departure (UWAP, 2017). His poetry appears in over one hundred journals and anthologies published in fourteen countries, including Another Chicago Magazine, Anthropocene, Cordite, The Elevation Review, Identity Theory, The Madrigal, New World Writing Quarterly, Trasna, Westerly and Wisconsin Review. He is the poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

Emily Izsak lives and writes in Toronto, ON. Her poetry tends to combine surreal imagery, linguistic play, and formal experimentation. Her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Puritan, House Organ, Cough, The Steel Chisel, The Doris, and CV2. In 2014 she was selected as PEN Canada’s New Voices Award nominee. Her first full-length collection, Whistle Stops: A Locomotive Serial Poem, was published by Signature Editions in April 2017. She has published two chapbooks with above/ground press: Twenty-five and Never Have I Ever.

Jenny Qi is the author of Focal Point, winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Prize. Her essays and poems have been published in The New York Times, The Atlantic, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. She has received support from organizations such as Tin House, Omnidawn, Kearny Street Workshop, and the San Francisco Writers Grotto. Born in Pennsylvania to Chinese immigrants, she grew up mostly in Las Vegas and now lives in San Francisco, where she completed her Ph.D. in Cancer Biology. She has been translating her late mother’s memoirs of the Chinese Cultural Revolution and immigration to the U.S. and is working on more essays and poems in conversation with this work.

“Note: Focal Point came out in October 2021, but Jenny is aggressively bad at making videos (in her own words) and sent this one from earlier that year.”

Pete Smith. Born in the English Midlands, then moved to Kamloops in 1974. Spent a working life supporting folk with intellectual plus psychiatric disability to find a place in the world and trying to help the rest of the world see the person in each of them – a task each generation must take up anew. Poetry published in a dozen chapbooks (above/ground, Oystercatcher, Wild Honey, Poetical Histories, and other fine presses), sundry magazines, and Bindings with Discords, 2015, from Shearsman. Reviews and essays on writers such as Alice Notley, Lisa Robertson, Lissa Wolsak, W D Snodgass, Keston Sutherland, Sharon Thesen, Barry MacSweeney, Trevor Joyce, John James can be found in such places as Agenda, The Gig, Crayon, Capilano Review, The Salt Companion to John James.  Recently preoccupied with translating Osip Mandelstam’s poems from the winter of 1933-34: some published in Snow 9 and 10. First of a series called Translation Suites appeared in Guest No. 23, edited by David Dowker.

 

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day three of five: Nećakov, Trivedi, Christie, Kelsey + Rebrec,

Furthering this week’s thread as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary as an adjunct to this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair, one might begin to ask: just how offsite is offsite? What does it mean, exactly? One suspects that, in the end, we might discover that the true meaning of #AWP was actually inside of us this whole time.

Lillian Nećakov is the author many chapbooks, including The Lake Contains and Emergency Room (Apt. 9 Press; shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award), as well as the full-length collections il virus (Anvil Press; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Hooligans (Mansfield Press), The Bone Broker (Mansfield Press), Hat Trick (Exile Editions), Polaroids (Coach House Books) and The Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak and Wynn). Her new book, Midnight Glossolalia, a collaborative poetry collection with Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag was published in February, 2023 (Meat for Tea Press). Her other new book, duck eats yeast, quacks, explodes; man loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin is forthcoming in May 2023 from Guernica Editions. She has also published in many print and online journals in Canada and the U.S. Lillian lives in Toronto.

Amish Trivedi is the author of three books, most recently FuturePanic (Co•Im•Press). He has poems in American Poetry Review, Bennington Review, The Brooklyn Rail, and others. He has an MFA from Brown, a Ph.D. from Illinois State, and is a Post Doctoral Researcher at the University of Delaware.

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: Glass Language Untitled Exaltation (excerpt) (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.

Laura Kelsey is a poet and performer living in Nanaimo, B.C., which is on Snuneymuxw First Nations Territory. Her poems have appeared in publications including the New Chief Tongue, the Carnegie Newsletter, Stone Pacific Zine and Sea & Cedar Magazine; and her debut chapbook west coast shorts was published by above/ground press in May 2022. Her four-song debut EP Hunting Season is out April 29.

Angela Rebrec lives and works on the unceeded, ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, scəw̓aθən, Stó:lō, and qʼʷa:n̓ƛʼən̓ peoples. Her most recent writing has appeared in Vallum, Prairie Fire, GRAIN, The Dalhousie Review, as well as the anthology Voicing Suicide (Ekstasis Editions, 2020). Angela’s poetry films have been recognized at the Barcelona International Film Festival, FilmmakerLife Awards, and Santa Barbara International Shortfest, among others. Her 2020 collaboration with composer Mickie Wadsworth for ART SONG LAB has been included in NewMusicShelf’s Anthology of New Music for Trans & Nonbinary Voices, vol.1. Angela is active in her community supporting the arts by facilitating writing and expressive arts workshops for kids and adults of all age. She is the founding and current president of the Delta Literary Arts Society (DLAS).

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day two of five: MacEachern, Heroux, Vallières, Webb + Drescher,

Furthering yesterday’s post, as part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. I mean, offsite means offsite, right?

Jessi MacEachern (she/her) is the author of the poetry collection A Number of Stunning Attacks, as well as the chapbooks Television Poems, You Do Not Like Animal Sounds, and Ravishing the Sex into the Hold. Her new chapbook When a Folk, When a Sprawl is forthcoming with above/ground press in 2023 and her new poetry collection Cut Side Down is forthcoming with Invisible in 2025. She is the 2022–24 reviewer of Poetics for Oxford University Press’s This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Bishop’s University.

Jason Heroux was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022. He is the author of four books of poetry: Memoirs of an Alias (2004); Emergency Hallelujah (2008); Natural Capital (2012) and Hard Work Cheering Up Sad Machines (2016). His recent books include a short fiction collection Survivors of the Hive (Radiant Press) and two poetry chapbooks: New and Selected Days (Origami Poems Project) and Something or Other (above/ground press).

William Vallières is a Montreal poet. His work has appeared in The Walrus, Best Canadian Poetry, Grain, and Event, among other places. His chapbook Poor Rutebeuf, a translation of the French medieval poet Rutebeuf, just appeared through above/ground press. His first book of poems, Versus, is out with Véhicule Press.

Lindsey Webb is the author of the chapbooks House (Ghost Proposal, 2020) and Perfumer’s Organ (above/ground press, 2023). Her writings have appeared in Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, jubilat, and Lana Turner, among others. She lives in Salt Lake City, where she is a Steffensen Cannon fellow in the PhD program in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Utah.

Julia Drescher is the author of OPEN EPIC (Delete Press, 2017). Her above/ground chapbooks are BLATTA & Metastatic Flower (2020). She lives in Colorado.

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day one of five: Witek/Lopes, Robinson, Melançon, Unrau + Chernoff,

As part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. While I’ve never actually attended myself (being unaffiliated with any organization that might assist with funds to attend such a thing), it does seem like a pretty cool destination. An Ottawa one would be cool; should they just host an Ottawa one? Until then, I suppose, something like this might have to suffice.

US poet Terri Witek (terriwitek.com) and Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have collaborated since 2005--their works together include museum and gallery shows, performance and site-specific projects featured internationally in New York, Seoul, Miami, Crete, Manchester, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, and Valencia. Witek holds the Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing at Stetson University in Florida, and Lopes is an art professor at CUNY John Jay in New York City. Together they teach Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson’s low-residency MFA of the Americas. Their collaborative projects are represented by the liminal (Valencia Spain).

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His most recent chapbook is with above/ground press, Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022, after 2020’s Coup), and his most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on Twitter mostly, and sometimeson Instagram, both at @lethejerome.

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent publication is Without Form from The Blasted Tree and knife | fork | book. The Book of Benjamin is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in the fall of 2023. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.

Melanie Dennis Unrau is a poet of mixed European ancestry living on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg. A Research Affiliate and Visiting Fellow at the University of Manitoba, also a sessional instructor at the University of Winnipeg, Melanie studies oil poetry and the poetics of just transition. She is the author of the poetry collection Happiness Threads (Muses’ Company, 2013) and the poetry chapbook The Goose (above/ground, 2023), a co-editor of Seriality and Texts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat (Palgrave, 2014), and a former editor of The Goose journal and Geez magazine. Her forthcoming book “The Rough Poets: Petropoetics and the Tradition of Canadian Oil-Worker Poetry” is on contract with McGill-Queen's University Press. She is working on a poetry collection, “The Goose,” a literary-critical reading of “father of the tar sands” S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails. She recently co-edited a forthcoming issue of Canadian Literature journal on “Poetics and Extraction.” Melanie was a long-time participant in the Artist Mothers’ Collective at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art in Winnipeg; she loves collaborating with visual artists and poets. This reading was first prepared for the Late Winter Writers Online Residency at the Banff Centre in February 2023.

MLA Chernoff is a poet, performance artist, meme enthusiast, and recovering academic. Their debut full-length poetry collection, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], was released by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2021. MLA is also the author of several chapbooks, including delet this, TERSE THIRSTY, SCRIED FUNDAMENTS, and I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY). They hope you are having a real nice day xo xo

new from above/ground press: Night Protest, by Ben Jahn

Night Protest
Ben Jahn
$5

NIGHT PROTEST

when we heard about a man lapping milk spilled from a truck into a gutter with a pack of dogs and the radio said every minute every day every week that we delay / we decided we’d had enough / something had to be done / we made signs cut rough from old box flaps but couldn’t decide on a slogan so we filled them in completely / getting a little high off the marker’s fumes we waited for nightfall and donned dark sweatshirts and masks and stood an appropriate distance apart along old highway 123 / a distance suggesting / we felt / solidarity // in time no doubt others will join us / news media will catch on / call it an eerie spectacle you may have heard by now / of a night protest / what do they want / and we will lose control of the aesthetic / people will project their theories and fears onto our blank black signs / but for now no one has noticed our protest is pure / it’s making the difference we imagined that first giddy night when the concept was fresh

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
March 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Ben Jahn has published in Fence, Tin House Flash Fridays, ZYZZYVA, The Best of McSweeney’s, [PANK], The Santa Monica Review, DUSIE, and periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. He received a National Endowment for the Arts grant in fiction, and his story, “Reborn,” appeared in The Paris Review as the winner of NPR’s Three Minute Fiction contest. He lives in Richmond, CA, not far (but usually upwind) from the Chevron refinery. He teaches at Contra Costa College, and spends his free time traveling with his partner and her kids. For infrequent updates, go to benjahn.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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com