Jason Heroux : My Life as a Notebook (book trailer,

Kingston poet Jason Heroux has produced a book trailer for his latest above/ground press chapbook, My Life as a Notebook (2025)! Either watch it above, or catch it as part of the YouTube channel, which also includes over one hundred videos as part of the virtual reading series via periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics.

some author activity: Archer, Barwin, Spinosa, Dachsel, Betts, MacEachern + Vitkauskas,

Sacha Archer has some visual work up at Arnold McBay's mOvement, as does Gary Barwin, once or twice, and Dani Spinosa; Marita Dachsel has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series; Gregory Betts is interviewed at The Ethically Immoral Podcast; Jessi MacEachern is featured in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; and Lina Ramona Vitkauskas is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey.

new from above/ground press: Premières Poésies by Eudore Évanturel (1878), by Jamie Sharpe

Premières Poésies by Eudore Évanturel (1878)
Distillated into English by Jamie Sharpe
$6

Pastel

Strokes of dawn silhouette
her figure. Soft light. Colors
brush her skin. She breathes
in the palette of old ends
and new beginnings.


Translator's Preface

When I first encountered the poetry of Eudore Évanturel, I felt I’d stumbled across a misplaced heirloom: a finely etched reliquary of longing, wit, and restraint buried under a century of national amnesia. His images, though rooted in nineteenth-century Quebec, gleamed with modern edges.

My approach to this translation was not archival but sympathetic, even irreverent. I have rendered Évanturel’s French into a succinct English cadence not for fashion’s sake, but to let the poems exist without the velvet rope and museum glass. It is Évanturel in a world where existence is not an extended dance but a frequency, a beat. I hope I tapped into it, however briefly. 

If these poems feel fresh, it’s because they always were. We simply forgot.

Jamie Sharpe (July 11th, 2025)

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jamie Sharpe is the author of five previous poetry collections, the most recent of which is Get Well Soon. His next (and last) book, We, a novel-in-verse annexed from Russia, is forthcoming from ECW Press. He lives in Comox.

Eudore Évanturel (1852-1919) published one book of poetry, Premier Poésies, which was sparsely but poorly reviewed. Literary doors closed to him. He became moribund. Lost his job. Lost his friends. Basically: a paragon of the Canadian poet.

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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

Gwen Aube's pulp necrosis (2025) is reviewed at Discordia Review

Whoever runs Discordia Review, presumably, was good enough to provide a first review of Gwen Aube's pulp necrosis (2025). Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As the rather hefty review includes, to begin:

Gwen Aube is a plucky upstart. You don’t generally hear much talk about a poet’s “pluck” in more formal reviews. Reviewers love to say things like, “the poet brings a radical softness to spaces of violence that leavens their inherently traumatic qualities” or “the poet has a writing practice attuned to affect, absurdity, and community struggle” or whatever. If labouring under a strict wordcount, they might settle for simply calling the poet “brave.” But the “pluck” of Aube’s poetry—that endearing, good-humoured courage of the small carrying on in the shadow of long odds—is a welcome tonic in these times of paralysis and dread. And look, I know plucky is an adjective usually reserved for like, a stocky mutt that wins the tricounty openweight barking contest or whatever, but I promise it isn’t a way for me to say, “Aube technically sucks but in a charming way.” She’s good.

new from above/ground press: Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series, by Renée Sarojini Saklikar

Voices from Planet X
~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series 
Renée Sarojini Saklikar
$6

The Weather 

Northeast winds stripped bare branches; 
great limbs felled, fir to oak, linden to strange
hybrids, contraband imports 
           Ficus benghalensis whispered
indentured migrants, reserve army of labour
sold to work the edges of Perimeter
Winter Portal damaged: change a whipsaw,
once gaping wide, now, minuscule, 
then again huge, blasted, ice pellets strewn
snow banks eight fathoms deep, lakes and rivers, 
temperatures below, below, below, then sudden
change to above, ice cracks, ferocious bellows, 
chunks gaping, the roar of ice water, jade green
liquid pushing slabs below. Toss, tumble unseen.

We, shipped in, transported, rendered, contracted
we to work the change, supply lines jammed;
rumble-shake, quiet, quiet, rumble shake—
change, a portal, now minuscule; then snap!
Gaping wide, below, below,  core splitting fissures
above, the sky, thinned, ozone wearing off
           earth, shrugging us off:
temperatures below, below, below, then above,
once gaping wide, now, minuscule, earth’s push,
pulled, pulling against the ice fast melting— 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Renée Sarojini Saklikar is the author of five books, including the award-winning Children of Air India and Listening to the Bees. Her essays and short fiction have appeared in literary magazines and anthologies, including Exile Editions, Chatelaine, The Capilano Review, and Pulp Literature. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Surrey (2015-2018), co-founded Lunch Poems at SFU, and teaches Creative Writing at Douglas College. Bramah’s Discovery is the third volume of her epic fantasy in verse series, THOTJBAP. She lives in East Vancouver. 

This is Saklikar’s third above/ground press poetry title, after After the Battle of Kingsway, the bees— (2016; second printing, 2019) and from The Book of Bramah (2019).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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: Barwin, Donato, Smiley, dueck, Mc Donnell + Boyle,

Gary Barwin is interviewed by Selena Mercuri as part of the substack Coffee Dates with Authors; Joseph Donato is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Conal Smiley has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series; nathan dueck offers a lecture in Cranbrook, British Columbia on September 24 as part of COTR's Museia Lecture series, titled 'Jesus vs Superman'; Conor Mc Donnell is interviewed by Sheelagh Caygill for On Creative Writing; and Frances Boyle has a new poem online at Anacapa Review.

new from above/ground press: My Life as a Notebook, by Jason Heroux

My Life as a Notebook
Jason Heroux
$6

1.    I am speaking now from a Dollar Store within a mall in Kingston, Ontario where I live a quiet, simple life as a notebook. 100 pages. College ruled. White paper. 3-hole punched. Originally manufactured by ACCO Brands in Brooklyn, New York, USA, I currently reside in the stationary aisle among a diverse range of notebooks. Surrounded by pens, erasers, liquid paper bottles, markers, stickers, other school supplies. I’ve spent years here. Saw a lot of nearby products grow old, lose their abilities, expire, get tossed aside. Their spirits are still on the shelves. Somehow I never expired. Where’s my spirit?

2.    Business is quiet. There seems to be less and less customers these days. A rumour is circulating that the mall is scheduled to shut down, get demolished. A spider overheard the property manager talking on the phone to his brother. “It’s happening.” Yesterday two ghosts wandered along the aisle. The child ghost raised a hand and pointed at me. “A note boat.” The mother ghost laughed, and corrected the child. “No, it’s called a notebook.” But I prefer the term note-boat over notebook. I am a vessel, far off at sea, carrying my blank pages to the nearest shore. 

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the thirty-first title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jason Heroux is a person of some sort, although this has yet to be verified.

This is Heroux's third above/ground press chapbook, after Something or Other (2023) and A Further Introduction to Bingo, with Dag T. Straumsvåg (2024).

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) 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