new from above/ground press: Cloud Game with Plums, by Rose Maloukis

Cloud Game with Plums
Rose Maloukis
$5

Oh! Those shrubs!

That one! lays

itself on top of itself

variegated swell over

dark serried quick

mound upon mound

                                          

fan fingered leaves

reach to the earth

its body so godly—

if it could stand

and walk away

I would follow

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Rose Maloukis is a poet and visual artist, with a BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. She was born and grew up in the United States but has dual citizenship and resides in Montreal. Her poetry appears in a limited-edition bilingual artist’s book, From the Middle ~ Sonoritiés du Coeur, which is held in the collection of both the national and provincial libraries. She was short-listed for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize and two poems were published in Matrix Magazine, Issue #105. A winning Second Place poem has been published in Geist’s 2018 Spring Issue #108.

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

poetry pause : the league of canadian poets

Thanks to The League of Canadian Poets' "poetry pause" series for helping celebrate twenty-seven years of above/ground press! The series allowed me to curate ten authors for recent slots, all of whom are Canadian (and/or Canadian-based) authors with 2020 above/ground press publications. Most of the poems included in the series are reprinted from their collections, but a few even provided new poems! Here are the authors' names, with the links to their "poetry pause" poems: Dani Spinosa, George Stanley, Khashayar Mohammadi, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Sarah Burgoyne, Lance La Rocque, J.R. Carpenter, Leesa Dean, Razielle Aigen and Dale Tracy. Can you believe we're twenty-seven years deep? What might the rest of the year bring? We are so close to thirty!

some author activity: Unsworth, Earl, Tierney, mclennan + Spinosa/Siklosi,

Lydia Unsworth has some new work up at Tentacular; Amanda Earl offers some nice words for the above/ground press anniversary (and a visual poem!) over at her blog; Orchid Tierney has some recent work up at Ethel; Jenya Stashkov asked rob mclennan for an interview and a poem, both of which appear here in English, as well as translated into Russian; Dani Spinosa and Kate Siklosi answer the "ottawa small press book fair : home editions" questions over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

new from above/ground press: TENTACULUM SONNETS, by Sarah Burgoyne

TENTACULUM SONNETS
Sarah Burgoyne
$4

at the enunciation of you, bloom
                of witch broom
autumn. love brocades its long lung game    
    and lets me in your house.         running
the cold gold line to find you,   
                winters:

a slender limb rushing as flex or bright
animal bough, especially opiate around
the night-mouth of a mollusk or urchin, an opal is you
used for grasping, moon-mouth, aloof, moving
about, your moon-bearing sense organs, vervain (in this, a gazebo)
a light which is the moon (in a plant) a tendril
the night's noon or a tender glandular hair.
            a look across the mim-
icking glass, the form which
is sound and pines bursting with ice, my voice
is the spider in your alley, its
                haunting shake.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover art: Mara Eagle

Sarah Burgoyne’s first collection Saint Twin (Mansfield Press: 2016) was nominated for the A.M. Klein prize. Her second manuscript is coming out with Coach House Books in 2021.

This is Burgoyne’s second above/ground press title, after A Precarious Life on the Sea (2016). A further is forthcoming.

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

Robert Kroetsch 2020 tributes: Lea Graham, Dennis Cooley, Robert Hogg, Frank Davey, Nicole Markotić, rob mclennan + Amanda Earl

A gathering of tributes to the late poet, critic, editor and novelist (and above/ground press author) Robert Kroetsch (1927-2011) have begun to appear online at The Typescript under the heading "Robert Kroetsch 2020," and includes poems by a variety of other above/ground press authors such as Robert Hogg (see his poems here), Dennis Cooley (see his poems here), Frank Davey (see his poems here), rob mclennan (see his poem here), Nicole Markotić (see her poems here) and Lea Graham (see her poems here). The feature even includes an updated version of Amanda Earl's above/ground press chapbook The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (originally published in 2008 and copies are still available), as well as a new essay by Earl on composing the original sequence.

new from above/ground press: Another Tricky Day, by Buck Downs

Another Tricky Day
Buck Downs
$5

not right now


    I felt that wave
of what nicotine
    could do for me

extended form of mind
    full of capture

breathing in and out
share the same seat

    doing all that math
on the day I would die

        satisfied
        that ruin
    in the cadaver
    is the bottom-line

        come and get
        your feeling
    of every kind

    the world of not
    spending the night

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Another Tricky Day is Buck Downs' third above/ground chapbook, after Shiftless [Harvester] (2016) and The Hack of Heaven (2017). A native of Jones County, Miss., he currently lives in Washington, DC. Furniture Press Books (Baltimore) published a selected poems, Unintended Empire, in 2017. Other books and printed matter are available at www.buckdowns.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 at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Boyle, Birchard, Barwin, Hofmann + Eleftherion,

Frances Boyle has some new poems up at FEED; Guy Birchard is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Gary Barwin has a piece on writer's block up on the AllLitUp site; forthcoming author Ava Hofmann is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Melissa Eleftherion is featured over at the sundress blog.