some author activity: mclennan, Syersak, Koss + Schmaltz,

rob mclennan writes of five favourite writers over at The Poetry Question, and has a new poem for Stuart Ross' birthday up at Train : a poetry journal; Jake Syersak has some new translations up at Folder magazine; forthcoming author Zane Koss has new work in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and Eric Schmaltz has some new work up at Train : a poetry journal.

new from above/ground press: Eldon, letters, by Pearl Pirie

Eldon, letters
Pearl Pirie
$5

Those who have left

Dad,
I want you to know that I remember Aunt Alice. She wouldn’t let me leave without some books, often slipped me some Fireside Books while we visited her. She was getting frail then. You knew her when she was a force to be reckoned with. How many times did you tell me that she saved your frost-bitten ears. She was mid-wife to your mom too. Your job as a young lad to take the cutter and go fetch her in the snow storm. So much responsibility for your young heart. I never asked. Which sister or brother was it being born? How old were you?

    too cold to wash
    smears from
    the window—
    my father
    would've been ninety


You heard Iona passed? It seems presumptuous to tell the dead who’s dead. But there sure are a lot of you.

Incoming – Harold too.

It is a crime that assisted suicide wasn’t allowed for so long. It is now 3000 have done it. He’s bedridden and has been for years. He’s blind and deaf. Jean goes from the senior’s home to see him every other day and Irene is doing the other days.

    your auctions receipts
    a memento from each old friend—
    broken stick

They had an estate auction, Sheila was telling me, of Harold’s farm. Sheila and I talked probably 45 minutes. A neighbour bought Harold’s tractor. Sorry, I forget which neighbour.

The woodshop was pulled out long ago. You and he talked a long time in there by sawdust and lathe. I turned them in my hands, beautiful golden curls.

    pine
    drawn out
    wood shavings

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Pearl Pirie has 3 poetry collections with a forthcoming in the fall of 2020 from Radiant Press. These haibun are unrelated to those. She gives workshops and readings sporadically. She lives in rural Quebec with her brilliant husband, scratchy cat and sweet dog. She can be found on twitter @pesbo and you can sign up for her mailing list at www.pearlpirie.com

This is Pirie’s fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after the oath in the boathouse (2008), vertigoheel for the dilly (2014), today’s woods (2014) and sex in sevens (2016).

[Pearl Pirie will be launching in Ottawa on August 10th as part of the above/ground press 26th anniversary launch/reading/party]

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: contrite, by Chris Turnbull

contrite
Chris Turnbull
$5

skip. rock.

                        a side-arm motion sets momentum or observation flittering.

                      here, rock, crow, hut, ice, creep, filter.

     shove land.

 coordinates hang.

we met at the waste-field

II

duplication is a dream.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Chris Turnbull is the author of continua (Chaudiere Books 2015; now a homestay at Invisible Publishing 2019) and [ untitled ] in o w n (CUE Books 2014). She has published several chapbooks: Shingles (Thuja1999); continua 1-22 (above/ground 2010); and Candid (hawkweed 2019). Undertones, a collaboration with text/artist Bruno Neiva, is forthcoming in summer/fall 2019 with Low Frequency Press (Buffalo). Other visual and text based work and collaborations can be found online, in print, and within landscapes. She curates a footpress, rout/e, whereby poems are planted on trails: www.etuor.wordpress.com. A collaborative chapbook with a rawlings, The Great Canadian (Low Frequency Press 2016), combined Turnbull’s photographs from rout/e with rawlings’ text from her ongoing echolology.

Candid was previously published as part of Dusie Kollective #8 and is also online at http://dusie.blogspot.com/2016/12/dusie-kollektiv-8-curated-by-rob.html. It is the first of three interconnected chapbooks. contrite follows Candid much like a riffle: “guess a spokesperson of it all” was published as a broadside in above/ground press’ 25th Anniversary collection (2019); other pieces were published in The Capilano Review 3.35 (Spring 2018) and Café Review (Spring 2019: ed. Bob Hogg).

This is her second chapbook with above/ground press, after continua 1-22 (2010).

[Chris Turnbull will be launching in Ottawa on August 10th as part of the above/ground press 26th anniversary launch/reading/party]

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Jami Macarty reviews Conyer Clayton's TRUST ONLY THE BEASTS IN THE WATER (2019)

Jami Macarty was good enough to provide the first review of Conyer Clayton's TRUST ONLY THE BEASTS IN THE WATER (2019) over on Facebook via The Maynard; thanks so much! And of course she's launching this in Ottawa on Saturday at the big above/ground press 26th anniversary reading/launch/party!

Short-form Shout Out
TRUST ONLY THE BEASTS IN THE WATER. Conyer Clayton
(above/ground press, 2019)
by Jami Macarty, The Maynard Co-founder & Editor

Conyer Clayton’s chapbook of 23 prose poems navigates the central question: “How did we get here?” Whether coming to terms with physical trauma--“the car is there, tipping over the mud in slow motion”--or psychological trauma (related to childhood/family of original) --“My mac-and-cheese is cold. If I complain about it, I’m never allowed to eat it again”--the poems track how the psyche, at the various levels of consciousness, digests trauma and “process[es] what we take in” while alive in a world where “Every moment is an edge we nearly stumble off of.” The primary il/logic moving within the poems is that of dreams, where “We float like apples down dirty streets and... The concept of density has never actually mattered.” There’s grieving levity, there’s intelligent heart in these poems on their road that “winds perpetually upward and eternally downward and hopefully.”

#TheMaynard #TMViewsSeries #TMreview #TMShortformShoutouts #abovegroundpress #poetry #readpoetry

new from above/ground press: NINETY TINY POEMS, by Stuart Ross

NINETY TINY POEMS
Stuart Ross
$5

10 TINY POEMS (25 November 2012)


i

wheaties


ii

fountain
soup


iii

Frieda’s
floor wax


iv

holy ventricle!
tiny puddle


v

an eel
varies its
routine

 
vi

Felt tired.
Lay down.
Woke down.


vii

Piles of centipedes
quivered
in the starlight.


viii

I slapped
his apology.
Kicked it.
Fed it.


ix

the piano
rolled into the room,
played the guitar.


x

he protested his scabs.
a sign fell.
forty years passed.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover art and design by Amelia Does

Stuart Ross is a writer, editor, writing teacher, and small press activist living in Cobourg, Ontario. He was first published at sixteen, then began selling his self-published chapbooks on the streets of Toronto at twenty, and is now the prize-winning author of twenty books of poetry, fiction, and essays, most recently Motel of the Opposable Thumbs (Anvil Press, 2019), Espesantes (above/ground press, 2018), A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent (winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry; Wolsak and Wynn, 2016), and the novel in prose poems Pockets (ECW Press, 2017). His novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew won the Mona Elaine Adilman Prize for Jewish Fiction, and his story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog won the ReLit Prize for Short Fiction. He also has scores of chapbooks to his credit. His writing has been translated into French, Spanish, Nynorsk, Russian, and Slovenian. Stuart is currently working on a dozen different poetry, non-fiction, and fiction manuscripts. His micropress, Proper Tales Press, is now in its 40th year (visit fortypropertales.blogspot.com). Support Stuart’s work at patreon.com/StuartRoss.

This is his second chapbook with above/ground press, after ESPESANTES (2018).

[Stuart Ross will be launching in Ottawa on August 10th as part of the above/ground press 26th anniversary launch/reading/party]

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Barwin, Beaulieu, Unsworth, Konchan + Kinaschuk,

Gary Barwin has a new essay posted in the "Forty Proper Tales" series, celebrating forty years of Stuart Ross' Proper Tales Press, as does Derek Beaulieu; Lydia Unsworth is interviewed over at Wombwell Rainbow Interviews; Virginia Konchan has a new poem up at Yes Poetry; and Kyle Kinaschuk has a new essay in the "On Writing" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

new from above/ground press: the day the moon went away, by Marilyn Irwin

the day the moon went away
Marilyn Irwin
$5

ant moth

an ant

trudging

the length

of a kitchen sill

a moth

on its back

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
 
Shortlisted for the 2016 bpNichol Award and winner of the 2013 Diana Brebner Prize, Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published by Apt. 9 Press, Arc Poetry Magazine, bywords.ca, Hussy Press, Puddles of Sky, and The Steel Chisel, among others. the day the moon went away is her ninth chapbook, and fourth published by above/ground press. She runs shreeking violet press in Ottawa.

This is Irwin’s fourth chapbook with above/ground press, after for when you pick daisies (2010), flicker (2012) and north (2017).

[Marilyn Irwin will be launching in Ottawa on August 10th as part of the above/ground press 26th anniversary launch/reading/party]

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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com