The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 17: Kearney, Hawes, Pennock, Beaulieu + (possibly) McNair,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
the glorious return (after four years!) of the pre-small press book fair reading
celebrating 29 years of the ottawa small press book fair
featuring readings by:

Rae Kearney (new to Ottawa!)
James Hawes (Montreal)
Tyler Pennock (Toronto)
Derek Beaulieu (Banff)
              + possibly (childcare-dependant)
Christine McNair (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 17, 2023
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day (NOTE DIFFERENT LOCATION) at the Tom Brown Arena]

Rae Kearney [pictured] is a poet and designer who just moved to Ottawa after spending time on the west coast. This year, she helped edit and design The Lupine (2023), a new journal published alongside the Whistler Writers Festival. Previous work can be found at above/ground press (2020) and in antilangmag no.3 (Winter 2019).

James Hawes lives and writes and makes films in Montreal. His poems have been published in print and online journals across Canada. His full length book of poetry Breakfast With a Heron (Mansfield Press) was shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit Award. He is the author of 3 chapbooks; Bus Metro Walk (Monk Press) was long-listed for the inaugural Nelson Ball Prize, The Hotdog Variations (above/ground press) and under an overpass, a fox (Turret House) was recently shortlisted for the 2023 Nelson Ball Prize. He started Turret House Press in 2023, dedicated to publishing new and experimental Canadian poetry. He has 2 cats.

Tyler Pennock is the inaugural Indigenous Writer-in-Residence at Carleton University. They are a two-spirit adoptee from a Cree and Metis family around the Lesser Slave Lake region of Alberta, and is  a member of Sturgeon Lake Cree Nation. They graduated from Guelph University’s Creative Writing MFA program in 2013.Their first book, BONES (Brick Books) was shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry. Their second book, BLOOD was released in September 2022. They currently teach at the Centre for Indigenous Studies at the University of Toronto.

Derek Beaulieu is the author/editor of over twenty-five collections of poetry, prose, and criticism. His most recent volume of fiction, Silence: Lectures and Writings, was published by Sweden’s Timglaset Books, his most recent volume of poetry, Surface Tension, was published by Toronto’s Coach House Books. Beaulieu has won multiple local and national awards for his teaching and dedication to students, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for this dedication to Albertan literature and is the only graduate from the University of Calgary’s Department of English to receive the Faculty of Arts ‘Celebrated Alumni Award.’ Beaulieu holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University, has served as poet laureate of both Calgary and Banff, and is the Director of Literary Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Christine McNair is the author of Charm (Book*hug, 2017) and Conflict (Book*hug, 2012). McNair lives in Ottawa where she works as a book doctor. And she even has a new chapbook with shreeking violet press!

some author activity: Cantrell, McNair, Berlatsky + Witek

Walking the Wrack Line? by videographer-photographer Matt Roberts and poet Terri Witek. Photo by Rick de Yampert

Andrew Cantrell has new work up at Annulet; Christine McNair is interviewed alongside Elee Kraljii Gardiner for Amanda Earl's The Small Machine Talks podcast; Noah Berlatsky is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and forthcoming author Terri Witek is part of "Cuerpo-territorio: Reverberations of Belonging," an exhibit at Stetson University's Hand Art Center.

new from above/ground press: Gardens in Motion, by Stephen Collis

Gardens in Motion
Stephen Collis
$5

went out to walk at plant pace

long arcing stride of rubus stepping canes

coastal rainforest zone Pacific mists

to berry and behold

if we ever come this way again the seeds were saying

sown on the wind and trampled on the trail

gut carried and shat forward

mycelium inching beneath the forest’s shifting fringe

some forgotten corner of the holy forest

bees’ jet-black bodies and blue iridescent wings  

time lapse and our lapse in timing

no future as sure as less abundant being

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

Stephen Collis' many books include Almost Islands and A History of the Theories of Rain. Most recently he edited A Dream in the Eye: the Complete Paintings and Collages of Phyllis Webb. He lives near Vancouver and teaches at Simon Fraser University.

This is Collis’s third title with above/ground press, after NEW LIFE (2016) and FIRST SKETCH OF A POEM I WILL NOT HAVE WRITTEN (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

new from above/ground press: STORY LINE, by Rae Armantrout

STORY LINE
Rae Armantrout
$5

     STORY LINE


Kids like talking animals
as well or better than
they do people--

until the wolf eats gramma

then tells Red
a love story.

After that, children
are concerned
about trajectories.

     *

The gulls are worked up
this morning, swooping and circling
one dilapidated house.

The crows lining the wire
ignore them.

This is the beginning
of a story
with two characters,

but the narrator
has gone missing.

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

Writing for the Poetry Foundation, David Woo says that Rae Armantrout’s recent book Finalists (Wesleyan 2022) “emanates the radiant astonishment of living thought.”  Her 2018 book, Wobble, was a finalist for the National Book Award that year. Her other books with Wesleyan include Partly: New and Selected Poems, Just Saying, Money Shot and Versed. In 2010 Versed won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. Retired from UC San Diego where she was professor of poetry and poetics. She is the current judge of the Yale Younger Poets Prize. A new book, Go Figure, will appear from Wesleyan in September, 2024.

This is Armantrout’s third above/ground press title, after Custom (2012) and Rituals (2013).

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

new from above/ground press: glass / language / untitled / exaltation (second printing! bpNichol winner!), by Jason Christie

glass / language / untitled / exaltation (second printing
WINNER OF THE 2023 bpNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD
Jason Christie
$5

a small song

            For Andrea

If I struggle to arrive like a union of treated pianos,
then I’ll bind to that sound some vitamin D and toast
if I'm a hot Monday wavering, then, look,
what a way to start writing without myself.
If I'm somewhat public in the public’s mind, I’ll listen.
If your body says walls are a problem
where forests mean otherwise than being
is it a fine memory itself becoming afraid to village?
Either way, if I've held you close enough in that moment
when the aesthetic clicks, then I'm expansive in the way
I've used the word relentless to describe reading,
quiet mornings in letters or a tantrum, a roundabout
or in a round, a resounding ballad of dissonances plays
and a coffee machine beeps: sound in a box.

* * * *

I wrote the poems in this chapbook during a period of years where my language and memory were shattered by sleep deprivation. In order to keep myself connected to poetry, I started writing in a file about our life with young kids. I didn't think much about what I was writing. The point was to do it. I amassed a large repository of content, but I stopped adding to it as life found a new level.

While reflecting on how hard it was to remember anything as a result of years of disrupted sleep, I realized that what I had in the original file was literally stored in memory on my computer. I wondered if I could treat that original material with processes that would be similar to what was happening to my mind during sleep deprivation?

To replicate some of the effects of memory loss and the difficulty of thinking, I wrote Python scripts that cut up, recombined, and selected random lines from that source material. The results were a mess, but I edited them to try to make sense of the jumble that had once been rational.

Much like how memories are stories, how we gloss over the messy, difficult, or impossible to recall details, how we invent the connecting pieces to attribute to our memory a sense of completeness, I worked on the poems to attempt to let them become something new, an active remembering. Memory, as I now think of it, is not entirely an act of recall with varying degrees of fidelity, but also an act of creation. We look at the glossy or glossless images of our past and glue them together into a whole new collage.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
second printing : originally published in October 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover image by the author

Jason Christie lives and writes in Ottawa. He is the author of Canada Post (Invisible), i-ROBOT (Edge/Tesseract), Unknown Actor (Insomniac), and Cursed Objects (Coach House). His most recent chapbooks are: Bridge and Burn (above/ground) and Heavy Metal Litany (Model press). He is looking for a home for a new manuscript of poetry he wrote with the help of several Python scripts, some of which appear in this chapbook. In November 2023 he won the bpNichol chapbook award for Glass Language Untitled Exaltation (excerpt) (above/ground).

This is a second printing of Christie’s eighth chapbook with above/ground press, after 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Government (2013), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018) and Bridge and Burn (2021).

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

As part of his win, above/ground press is offering copies of all but one (his 2013 title, Government, is essentially out-of-print) of his above/ground press titles over the years as a bundle: 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018), Bridge and Burn (2021) and glass / language / untitled / exaltation (second printing, 2023) for $35. I only have ten bundles to offer (add $3 for postage; in US, add $5; outside North America, add $10)

Jason Christie's glass / language / untitled / exaltation (2022) HAS WON THE 2023 bpNICHOL CHAPBOOK AWARD

Incredible congratulations to Ottawa poet Jason Christie, who has won the bpNichol Chapbook Award for his glass / language / untitled / exaltation (above/ground press, 2022)! Check out the Meet the Presses YouTube channel, where they have a video of Jason reading from the poems! And congratulations to the other shortlisted titles as well: Light Years, by Laboni Islam: baseline press; The Lake, by James Lindsay: knife/fork/book; Third State of Being, by Cassidy McFadzean: Gaspereau Press; I Need Not Be Good, by kitchen mckeown: Rahila’s Ghost Press (all of whom are also reading from their titles on the Meet the Presses YouTube channel). The prize was announced earlier this afternoon in Toronto at this year's Meet the Presses Indie Market! Unfortunately, above/ground press was unable to be there this year, but Jason is on-site (presumably) signing and selling many copies of the second printing of his award-winning title!

As part of his win, above/ground press is offering copies of all but one (his 2013 title, Government, is essentially out-of-print) of his above/ground press titles over the years as a bundle: 8th Ave 15th St NW. (2004), Cursed Objects (2014), The Charm (2015), random_lines = random.choice (2017), glass language (excerpt) (2018), Bridge and Burn (2021) and glass / language / untitled / exaltation (second printing, 2023) for $35. I only have ten bundles to offer, so get those orders in! To order, send cheques (add $3 for postage; in US, add $5; outside North America, add $10) 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

Here's the short write-up that Meet the Presses read for me as part of the award announcement, in my absence:

I’m enormously pleased to hear that Jason Christie’s glass / language / untitled / exaltation won this year’s bpNichol Chapbook Award. This was Jason’s third time on the bpNichol shortlist, all of which were with above/ground press titles—his Cursed Objects (2014) made the 2015 shortlist, and Government (2013) made the 2014 list—three of some eight different titles of his that above/ground press has produced since 2004, back when he still lived in Calgary.

It is exciting to consider that this win adds Jason’s name to a list of Canadian writers that includes Mark Laba, Paul George Bowering, Janice Williamson, Barry McKinnon, Robert Kroetsch, P.K. Page, Stan Dragland, Lisa Robertson, Christine Leclerc and Gil McElroy, all of whom also won the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Jason’s work has long deserved an attention more than what it has been, although one might say that of most poets working in Canada. What am I even saying? Jason is great and his work is great and you should read more of Jason’s work. I am proud to know that above/ground press has played even a small part in any of this.

new from above/ground press: Dinosaurs of Glory, by Nikki Reimer

Dinosaurs of Glory
Nikki Reimer
$5

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

This chapbook is a companion piece to Reimer's 2023 poetry book No Town Called We (Talon Books), which launches in Calgary at Shelf Life Books on Wednesday, November 8, 2023 as part of the Talonbooks Fall 2023 Poetry Launch.

Nikki Reimer is the author of four books of poetry, most recently No Town Called We (Talon Books). They make art, write non-fiction, and are currently studying towards an MA in Communication. Reimer is a carbon-based chronically ill neurodivergent prairie settler of Ukrainian and Russian Mennonite descent who resides on the traditional territories of the people of the Treaty 7 region in Southern Alberta. They are very tired.

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