some author activity: Crosby, Witek, Chang-Richardson, Smith, Tucker, Holmes + Young,

Gregory Crosby is interviewed over at talking about strawberries all of the time, as is Terri Witek; Ellen Chang-Richardson is interviewed by Leila Marshy at All Lit Up; Pete Smith is in the Canadian Poets Series over at Peripety and/or Tronies; Aaron Tucker and Michael Holmes and Derek Beaulieu all have new work up at NewPoetry; and Geoffrey Young has new work in the Spotlight series.

new from above/ground press: The World is Beautiful, by Lillian Nećakov

The World is Beautiful 
Lillian Nećakov
$6

The World is Beautiful

David Hockney says the world is beautiful. I believe him, because I am an optimist, knowing the average weights of the organs of the human body, knowing, there is a kind of reincarnation, even after you tell them, you sometimes wished you were a boy. Knowing the brain, at 49 ½ oz. Avoir – one thousand, three hundred eighty-nine point 13 grams and a bit more - is generous enough to endure both imagination and crown through the acrobatics of feasts and funerals.

David Hockney’s heart equals 11 oz. His eyes are the word we use for the colour of water, he widens the Grand Canyon as easily as letting out a seam, says the world is beautiful and I believe him. Knowing that lungs {right 24 oz. left 21 oz.} are the colanders of time, cradling vestiges of scree from the mass of one breath {0.5-5 g} times a lifetime. Knowing that there are lakes drowning in the whimsical ether of a tourniquet-wielding junkie-planet, invisible and blue.

David Hockney believes me when I say the world is beautiful, knowing that every swimming pool is a small bit of heaven where you and Fred Astaire are always cheek to cheek, knowing that a body in motion stays in motion, knowing that the executioner never takes his finger off the trigger, not even when the kiss is slower than death. Knowing that Popeye clung to Olive Oyl behind the spinach cannery while the sun parched our lips raw. Knowing that night is coming, like a confession, dressed in raspberry, saw-toothed hot pants.

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

Lillian Nećakov is the author of 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), The Sickbed of Dogs (Wolsak and Wynn), Midnight Glossolalia, a collaborative poetry collection with Scott Ferry and Lauren Scharhag (Meat for Tea Press), Duck Eats Yeast, Quacks, Explodes; Man Loses eye, a collaborative poem with Gary Barwin (Guernica Editions). She has also published in many print and online journals in Canada and the U.S. Lillian lives in Toronto.

This is Nećakov’s second chapbook with above/ground press, after 3¢ Pulp (2022).

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

new from above/ground press: household: meadow, by Kate Siklosi

household: meadow
Kate Siklosi
$6

The yard

hers, unsilenced, hers, bright. uttered. unafraid of syntax, little fire, lit and sparking. open-mouthed, barefoot, bellied to the sun.

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

cover image by Mina Simone Siklosi Welch

Kate Siklosi’s work includes Selvage (Invisible 2023), leavings (Timglaset 2021), and six chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has also been featured across North America, Europe, and the UK. She also curates the Small Press Map of Canada and is co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press.

This is Kate Siklosi’s third above/ground press title, after po po poems (2018) and 1956 (2019). She co-edited (with Dani Spinosa) G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] #8 (2020). In 2022, above/ground press produced Report from the Siklosi Society, Vols. 1 and 2.

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

De Villo Sloan reviews Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) at Asemic Front 2

De Villo Sloan was good enough to provide a first review of Nada Gordon's COPIUM (2025) over at Asemic Front 2. Thanks so much! You can read the original post here. As they write:

COPIUM by Nada Gordon
Ottawa, Canada: above/ground press, August 2025
24 pages; stapled

Review by De Villo Sloan

rob mclennan has added another literary gem to the list of recent chapbooks issued by above/ground press in Ottawa, Canada, with the publication of COPIUM by Nada Gordon.

COPIUM is a single lyric poem composed of elegant tercets that encode opulent imagery like ornate beadwork. Through associations, wordplay, unexpected juxtapositions, and explorations of poetic discourse, Gordon creates a unique and engaging record of what in Modernity is known as “the stream of consciousness.”

Her narrative melds objective and subjective realities; she skillfully provides multiple perspectives on daily life. The book includes images by Gordon in collaboration with MidJourney AI.

COPIUM succeeds on its Flarfy juxtapositions, irony, popcult references, and occasional absurdist incoherence. She has developed a postavant poetic line that extends Modernist fragmentation into new realms, which I believe is an accomplishment of great significance.

Nada Gordon has a rare ability to create poetic forms that permit (if they do not encourage) multiple but equally illuminating interpretations. In COPIUM, I unexpectedly found a lyric poem of outstanding beauty and insight. The third and fourth stanzas of the poem provide a good example of how its self-reflexivity contributes to the poem’s genesis:

    Peacock fanning out…
    swans entwining necks
    as co-beings

    feathering extremities
    like kelp, flowers, hands
    in a diamond brain (brine) of lost time.

For me, the pleasure of reading COPIUM is found in its self-reflective reverie, (consciously) aesthetic escapism, and its meta-poetical commentary. Gordon gives me the sublime experience of decayed opulence described to perfection with imagery by Charles Baudelaire in The Flowers of Evil. I find myself returning to the text for the pleasure of its aesthetic decadence for the same reasons I return to Baudelaire and Poe. 

COPIUM is also a fascinating compendium of English language nouns and adjectives that are useful in both scientific and artistic discourse. Here is an example from COPIUM by Nada Gordon showing her use of particulars:

           Caves of gems, and a pomegranate gem
           as a giant war demon.
           Mendelssohn infuses a dark city

           With the idea of ‘charging’
           (being recharged) –
           rogue elephants

           the tusk, the tree
           the metals, the mortals,
           breath and gourds and reeds.

           what are:

           ‘words’ ‘texts’ ‘friends’
           ‘membranes’ ‘borders’ ‘organs’

           countries’ ‘Jews’ ‘food’
           animals’ ‘cities’ ‘books’
           ‘cells’ ‘Gaza’ ‘gauze’

Paradoxically, however, looking beyond traces of conceptual writing, Gordon’s lyric is built on the solid foundation of, “No ideas but in things.” In fact, a close linguistic analysis of the various catalogs woven into COPIUM would likely produce interesting results.

A worldview present in Gordon’s writing is that language is an inevitable intermediary in human communication, expression and – of course - poetry. COPIUM is a lush sea of imagery and a (sometimes) mechanistic interrogation of language. Nada Gordon often approaches the edge of meaning: the same terrain as asemic writers. She brings COPIUM into the realm of visual and concrete poetry:

    Owls
    Opals
    Opossums

    and a lunar pOnd
    the loss of pherOmOne pOwer
    in the OdORless digital world

    The letter O:
    Just lOOk at it!
    Ketamina LOy.

Nada Gordon's COPIUM is a multi-faceted composition that invites readers to engage with the text often, revealing multiple perspectives and interpretations. She is one of our most important poetic voices. above/ground press has done extraordinary work producing this edition. If you only purchase one chapbook in 2025, order COPIUM by Nada Gordon. 

some author activity: Walker, Berlatsky, Niespodziany, Markotić, Archer, Ebbitt + the Indie Lit Market!

Laura Walker has new work up at Astrolabe; Noah Berlatsky has three poems in the new issue of Ranger; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at HAD; Nicole Markotić is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Sacha Archer has four pieces up at A-Minor; Katie Ebbitt has new work at talking about strawberries all of the time; and don't forget the Indie Lit Market in Toronto on November 2nd!

new from above/ground press: eyesore, by Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung

eyesore
Johannes S.H. Bjerg and Charlotte Jung
$6

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

cover image by Johannes S.H. Bjerg

Johannes S. H. Bjerg is a Danish writer and artist. He works hard at not overdoing it. www.megaga.dk

Charlotte Jung is a concrete poet and playwright based in Stockholm – for more information about her and her work please see www.charlottejungwriter.com

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

above/ground press: 2026 subscriptions now available!

The race to the half-century continues! And with more than FOURTEEN HUNDRED TITLES produced to date over nearly thirty-two years, there’s been a ton of above/ground press activity over the past calendar year, including MORE THAN FIFTY TITLES (so far) produced in 2025 alone, including: poetry chapbooks by Eudore Évanturel (trans. by Jamie Sharpe, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Jason Heroux, Jon Cone, Ben Ladouceur, Yaxkin Melchy (trans. by Ryan Greene, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Michael Sikkema, Laynie Browne, Nada Gordon, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Buck Downs, Noah Berlatsky, Andrew Brenza, Mandy Sandhu, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Steph Gray, Beatriz Hausner, J-T Kelly, Terri Witek, Jason Christie, Micah Ballard, Monty Reid, Tom Jenks, Orchid Tierney, Brook Houglum, Sandra Doller, Eileen Myles, Gregory Crosby, Kevin Davies, Lori Anderson Moseman, Thor Polukoshko, Lydia Unsworth, Ryan Skrabalak, Jacob Braun, Cary Fagan, Gwen Aube, Penn Kemp, Maxwell Gontarek, Nathanael O’Reilly, Catriona Strang, Andy Weaver and Alice Burdick; prose chapbooks by Jason Heroux, Stuart Ross, Meredith Quartermain, Leah Souffrant and R Kolewe; the chapbook anthologies Verse on the Banks / Poèmes sur le rivage, eds./dir. Véronique Sylvain and/de David O’Meara, and the suitcase poem, ed. Amanda Earl; issues of the poetry quarterly Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] and an issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club (all of which are still in print, at least for the moment).

NEW SLIDING SCALE SUBSCRIPTIONS (AND RESUBSCRIPTIONS): Postal increases this year have been brutal (30% back in January), so I’m taking Stuart Ross’ sage advice, and for 2026, I will be offering a sliding scale subscription rate. According to multiple folk (including current subscribers), I really should have upped the rates years ago, but I always resist, not wanting to price anybody out (as I think finances is the worst reason to not be able to participate). Subscriptions include everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2026, such as chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and quarterly poetry journal Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal].

CANADIAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (CAN $)
AMERICAN SUBSCRIPTIONS : $75-$120 (US $)
INTERNATIONAL SUBSCRIPTIONS : $100-$140 (CAN $)

Honestly, if you are open to subscribing, whatever works within that particular range is completely fine! Not everyone has the same kinds of resources, and the main goal is to have the books available to those who want them. As well, anyone who subscribes on or by December 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package of 2025, including those exciting new titles by a number of those folk listed above, plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year.

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal button at robmclennan.blogspot.com).

Forthcoming items through the press also include individual chapbooks by Frances Cannon, Lance La Rocque, russell carisse, David Gaffney, Kevin Spenst, Lillian Nećakov, Jill Stengel, a collaboration between Cary Fagan and Rebecca Comay, Buck Downs, Guy Birchard, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jeremy Luke Hill, Mrityunjay Mohan, David Phillips, and a collaboration between Charlotte Jung and Johannes S.H. Bjerg, as well as Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #47, featuring new work by Jason Christie, Sabyasachi (Sachi) Nag, Aidan Chafe, Sarah Rosenthal, Meredith Quartermain, c.a.r. rafuse and Susan Gevirtz (a couple of which have already been sent to the printer, by the by), as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet. Who knows what might happen next.

And don’t forget our glorious new substack! I’ve been posting author features/interviews over there for a while now, lots of cool updates that way (and a good way to catch the occasional above/ground press update).

And don’t forget (also) that groundswell: the best of the third decade of above/ground press, 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2024) is also still available, yes? 

The Factory Reading Series is gearing up for some further events, but have you seen the virtual reading series over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics (with otherwise new monthly online content, by the way; the pandemic-era extension of above/ground press). Have you seen the posts, as well, through the (ottawa) small press almanac? lots of information on above/ground press and everyone else in town who makes chapbooks/ephemera etcetera! And the next edition (32nd anniversary!) of the ottawa small press fair is November 22nd!