new from above/ground press: The Baroness and her Ex Read Orgasmic Toast: To Whom It May Concern, by Grant Wilkins

The Baroness and her Ex Read Orgasmic Toast: To Whom It May Concern
Grant Wilkins
$5

              Art!


When our statesmen and orators called out
concerning our love of dog-eared bibles and flame-flagged men,
the earth was thus provisioned for the idleness of the pious
and the omnipotency generated by the Elizabethan intrigue
and accidental antiquity of our Malted Milkshakes.

The ancient critics would pronounce this the greatest
achievement in lyricism of which they knew,
and so we will nudge it, kick it, prod it, push it and
broadcast it by all of our best endeavours
and senseless relentless pleasures
upwards and onwards
into the realm of Art!

 

* * * *

These poems are a response to “The Baroness Elsa Project,” an exhibition of art, poetry and performance inspired by the dadaist artist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, which showed at the Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa from September 28 to December 12, 2021. The exhibition was curated by Heather Anderson and Irene Gammel.

The motivation to write the poems came from my participation in “Cosmic Chemistry,” an experimental performance and improvised choral event that followed the exhibition, organized by CUAG and led by Gabriel Dharmoo and Kathy Kennedy.

Special thanks to Glenn Nuotio for inviting me to participate.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[Grant Wilkins will be launching this title in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary reading/launch/party on August 12!]

Grant Wilkins is an occasional poet, printer and papermaker from Ottawa who has made a practice of doing strange things to other people’s words. He has degrees in History & Classical Civilization and in English, and he likes ink, metal, paper, letters, sounds and words, in no particular order.

This is Wilkins’ third chapbook with above/ground press, after Reading The Great Classics Of Canlit through Book 5 of bpNichol’s The Martyrology (2022) and In Which Archibald Lampman / Translates Arthur Rimbaud (2023). A fourth launches later this week.

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: Bolster, Niespodziany, Glover + Boyle,

Stephanie Bolster answers the 'six questions' interview questions via Chaudiere Books; Benjamin Niespodziany has new work up at Jake; ; Douglas Glover has new work up at minor literature[s] (he also has a substack worth following, but you probably already know that, yes?); and Frances Boyle has new work up at Dark Winter Lit, Acropolis Journal, The Windsor Review, petrichor, Rogue Agent and Parenthesis Journal.

new from above/ground press: Groundling : On Apology, by Jennifer Baker

Groundling: On Apology
Jennifer Baker
$5

*

fighting in the street
 we were two kicked dogs

bared teeth
 cornered

& terrible
    we clung
    
I still don't know
how to write about this in a poem
    the utter    breakdown        of love
    when love is seeing each other

    we got it so wrong
    we devoured our own hearts

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[Jennifer Baker will be launching this title in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary reading/launch/party on August 12!]

Groundling: On Apology was originally published by John Goodman’s Trainwreck Press, November 2021.

Jennifer Baker is a poet and Adjunct Professor of English Literature living and working in Ottawa. She is the author of three chapbooks: Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014), Memento Mishka (with David Currie, Apt.9 Press, 2023) and Groundling (Trainwreck Press, 2021). Her poetry, reviews, and articles can be found in ottawater, Dusie, Canthius, The Bull Calf, Canadian Literature, The Journal of Canadian Poetry, and Robert Kroetsch: Essayist, Novelist, Poet (University of Ottawa Press, 2020), among others, and she is the 2022 honourable mention recipient of Arc Poetry Magazine’s Diana Brebner Prize.

This is Baker’s second title with above/ground press, following Abject Lessons (2014).

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

Jérôme Melançon: 30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press : Arc Poetry Magazine #101

Regina poet, critic, translator and above/ground press author Jérôme Melançon was good enough to compose the essay "30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press" which was recently published in Arc Poetry Magazine #101! You should pick up a copy at your local/favourite magazine shop, or order a copy directly from them here! Thanks so much!

new from above/ground press: SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE, by Karen Massey

SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE
Karen Massey
$5

Commiserating, a friend texts,
I hate dementia/pandemic eldercare


              / all night snowfall,
so much so hard you hear it
stacking up, filling dim
elastic hours with drowsy moonlit
blasts, yet pre-dawn, such depths,
tenderness, artful drift architecture
cut by gusts—roofs, bicycles, even
thin lamp posts balance enormous
tall white toques, tires spin as
neighbours strain to push free of
buried hours where breath colludes
& shadows slump chilled, listless,
or stretch away from daylight, thin
ache-blue branches reminiscent of  /

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[Karen Massey will be launching this title in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary reading/launch/party on August 12!]

Karen Massey (she/her) lives in Ottawa, Canada, on unceded Algonquin Anishinabe territory. Her poems & found poems have been published online, in 2 chapbooks, over 2 dozen print anthologies, & in literary journals including TNQ, Aesthetica, Mslexia, subTerrain & Arc Poetry Magazine, where she received the 2020 Diana Brebner Award.

This is Massey’s third above/ground press title, after Bullet (1999) and Strange Fits of Beauty & Light (2014).

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

Keith Waldrop (1932-2023)

Sad to see that American poet (and above/ground press author) Keith Waldrop died earlier this week, a giant of American (and beyond) letters, not only for his own work, but for the forty years he and his wife Rosmarie (equally a giant as well, through her own work) were editors, publishers and printers of the legendary Burning Deck (1961-2017). above/ground press published his chapbook from THE LOSS OF WORDS in 2020 as part of the prose/naut series. Charles Bernstein posted an obituary on Waldrop, written by Peter Gale Nelson, over at Jacket2. You can find my review of the essential and hefty collection of Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop's Keeping / the window open: Interviews, statements, alarms, excursions (Wave Books, 2019) over here. Our condolences to everyone that knew and loved him, especially Rosmarie.

new from above/ground press: edgeless : letters, by rob mclennan

edgeless : letters,
rob mclennan
$5

January 14


You are away from home for two weeks, working
on poems. The children     are sketching out cards.

Where fingers        invent noise. The cat

, this marriage of confused caterwaul        amid
our main floor’s        endless pace.

An unthinkable work, this interruption. This pause. You
are in Banff, the second         highest elevation

of a community    in Canada.        I am seeking
the cold from my bones.

Robert Kroetsch: Time rewrites     every book.
And from this week,        I shape my earth.

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

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, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include the poetry collections the book of smaller (University of Calgary Press, 2022) and World’s End, (ARP Books, 2023), and a suite of pandemic essays, essays in the face of uncertainties (Mansfield Press, 2022). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics and Touch the Donkey. He is editor of my (small press) writing day, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

This is mclennan’s sixty-seventh above/ground press chapbook, following The Alta Vista Improvements (2023), Autobiography (2022), the collaborative SOME LEAVES (with Gary Barwin; 2020), Twenty-one stories, (2020), Poems for Lunch Poems for SFU (2020), Somewhere in-between / cloud (2019), Study of a fox (2018), snow day (2018) and It’s still winter (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