new from above/ground press: H IS THE LETTER OF THE DOOR, by Maxwell Gontarek

Maxwell Gontarek
H IS THE LETTER OF THE DOOR
$5

We shivered for the sinister flatness of the momentous
There’s no dawn
Iris loads the lake with its scent
It’s where the silicas wake up at the cloud ends
It’s where the ground nerve superimposes its stakes
            on the routs of which we all are is a part
It’s what amasses as history under the heels of our heels rigid
            and coruscant we feel ourselves stiffening with
The passage in landscape
Who pays
The carnage in soil
And that that carnage disappoints above below with such height
“For instants sometimes I cry” is the prime grammar of song
The “I” is a bell
The horizon is a showy diaphragmatic eye
To sow is to ex
True act the avenue

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

Maxwell Gontarek has poems out in Grotto, Lana Turner, Coma, La Lancha, Tagvverk, and elsewhere, and his pamphlet, A Perfect Donkey, is forthcoming from Creative Writing Department. With Léa Fougerolle, he runs the translation project verseant. He has lived in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Las Vegas, Belgrade, Langres, and Lafayette, LA.

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: TERMINALS, by Nathanael O'Reilly

TERMINALS
Nathanael O'Reilly
$5

Equinox

When you sit by the fireplace alone
reading Yeats, stare into the black night,
remember the summer evening when you
placed your right hand on my forearm out-
side the cinema, removed your mask,
declared your love, kissed me in the shadows.
Parked taxi-drivers watched like sentinels
as we caressed, kissed in orange lamplight.
Parakeets tucked heads under their wings,
settled down for the night in the cool air.
A brushtail possum scampered over a fence,
up a tree trunk to the shelter of leaves.
A rummaging in a bin, perhaps a rat,
disturbed our carefully cultivated poise.
We held each other beneath southern stars,
embraced the autumnal equinox.
I remember your sharp white teeth,
distant heels ticking across pavements,
trying to slow down, savour every last
second of our spontaneous self-indulgence.
We did not foresee our undoing
years later in a disintegrating foreign city.
We had no idea how we would feel
in the future, didn’t think about the hour
of passion as existing beyond the now.
As you sit by the fire in your snug house
stare into the black night outside and wonder
if my arms are lovelier than aloneness.

Note: A terminal utilizing the end-words from Denise O’Hagan’s “A World in Waiting.”

Note on the Form
The terminal form was invented by the Australian poet John Tranter (1943-2023). The final word of each line in a source poem is used as the end-word for each line of a new poem. For more on the terminal form and Tranter’s work, see Brian Henry’s article, “John Tranter’s New Form(alism): The Terminal,” Antipodes, volume 18, issue 1 (June 2004), pages 36-43.

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

Nathanael O’Reilly is an Irish-Australian poet residing in Texas. His collections include Separation Blues: Poems 1994-2024 (Flying Islands Books, 2024), Dublin Wandering (Recent Work Press, 2024), Landmarks (Lamar University Literary Press, 2024), Selected Poems of Ned Kelly (Downingfield Press, 2024), Boulevard (Downingfield Press, 2024), (Un)belonging (Recent Work Press, 2020), and Preparations for Departure (University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017). His work appears in journals and anthologies published in fifteen countries, including Anthropocene, Cordite, The Honest Ulsterman, Mascara, Meanjin, New World Writing Quarterly, Rabbit, Southword, Trasna and Westerly. He is poetry editor for Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature.

This is O’Reilly’s third above/ground press title, after Dear Nostalgia (2023) and Blue (2020).

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: the suitcase poem, ed. Amanda Earl

the suitcase poem
Marie-Andrée Auclair * Gregory Betts * Jeff Blackman * Amanda Earl * Ellen Chang-Richardson * AJ Dolman * Doris Fiszer * Gwendolyn Guth * Jenna Jarvis * Chris Johnson * Tanis MacDonald * Roz Toner * MW
$5

Afterword
Since hearing about Ursula K. Le Guin’s Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction on David Naimon’s Between the Covers podcast as part of the show’s “Crafting with Ursula” series, I have contemplated its potential for poem-making. The basic idea is that while stories in Western narrative are usually told from the point of view of a hero, centering conflict and violence, a lot goes missing in such a telling. Le Guin images stories as holding living beings, as a way to nurture and gather. I invited poets I know, first in Ottawa and then further afield, to take part in a collaborative poem about a suitcase to see what its contents might be and where we might go. I shared a Google document and invited people to add lines and words to the text. No one individual is the centre of this poem, the author of the story. In fact, there are many suitcases here, many containers. I love being part of this thriving and creative literary community. I thank all the contributors for taking this journey with me. Gratitude, as always, to rob mclennan for agreeing to publish the poem as an above/ground press chapbook.
~ Amanda Earl

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

In Lieu of Biographies, Suitcases

Before Marie-Andrée Auclair packs their suitcase, they ask: Who will we be there, could we be a better version of us? Are we ready for all kinds of weather? Readiness takes up space.  But there is always room to bring back intangibles. It was years before Gregory Betts owned a suitcase with wheels, great lugs of things heavy with resistance to travel. The sheer weight of them was the inertia against which all destinations, Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax, and all points in between, were measured. Was the sweat worth the burden? With elbows firmly locked against hips, and a damp brow, this was how he once set out into the world. Jeff Blackman's first suitcase had green stripes and two metal latches. He filled it with toys to take to his grandparents' house on the Mountain. Ellen Chang-Richardson found their favourite suitcase buried in a vintage shop in Covent Garden, London, England. They toted it around the world for years until its untimely demise. AJ Dolman's suitcase is currently filling with other people's memories as they move family members into care: a Delft candy dish, red leather pocket book of playing cards, Russian tea box, distinct treasures aching for new meaning, the outsized absence of everything declined. Amanda Earl used her first suitcase to run away from home. She packed dolls & dinky toys & hid w/ tiger lilies on the outside of the wrought iron & stone fence that divided the red brick house from Brock Road in Wilfrid, Ontario.  Doris Fiszer frequently dreams of an oversized suitcase that she is hurriedly packing with lint brushes, flip-flops, cooking utensils and purple hoodies. In these nocturnal adventures, she usually travels to bustling cities with her departed. Gwendolyn Guth's retro suitcase contains grains of sand from a former life. The grains remind her of an unimaginable shade of turquoise. They summon and they abandon. Snow continues to fall in rural Quebec and all is well. Jenna Jarvis has a habit of shoving her worldly possessions into a suitcase or two. Chris Johnson's favourite suitcase was bought at Goodwill, and was irreparably damaged by WestJet in 2012. Chris got $150 to purchase a replacement suitcase. Tanis MacDonald's suitcase is packed full of holes. Every time she travels, she brings back a little more nothing. Roz Toner stores all of their zines in a monogrammed suitcase. To be clear, they haven't a clue who A.E.M. is or was. MW had a blue suitcase that housed a unicorn that loved the dark and loved glow sticks. You could see the shine from the glow sticks even when the suitcase was completely shut like a mouth with nothing to say.

Amanda Earl is the author of ten chapbooks with above/ground press: Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012), A Book of Saints (2015), Lady Lazarus Redux (2017), The Book of Mark (2018), Aftermath or Scenes of a Woman Convalescing (2019), Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (2020), a field guide to fanciful bugs (2021) and THE BEFORE, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia (2022). She edited the first issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (2018), and above/ground press produced Report from the Earl Society, Vol. 1 No. 1 as a festschrift on her ongoing work in 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: from What If I Sang “Flower of Scotland”?, by Catriona Strang

from What If I Sang “Flower of Scotland”?
Catriona Strang
$5

Crash-tackle

Descendant of the last man
in the scrum, I would not
act alone along
the lines of this
well-rucked blood bin where
the Wolf finds his interests
under the pressure of ritualized
aggression: tenants and taxes
rocked, stung, yet still
at odds over the porridge oats
barrelling their way over
the line of touch. What if
the enclosing fences sang, almost as
venerable as waves
of complaint pouring
out of trains, an ungrounding
pulse-over on a mud heap
in heavy rain, this knock-on that
begins to permeate the working
class, sealed by the extraordinary
wealth accrued in the maul – tweed,
hosiery, knitwear, linen – passionate
and intense in the face of
a forward rush of toil
and fatigue, hunger and
peril: “Feet, Scotland,
Feet!”

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

cover artwork: Aoife McLennan

Catriona Strang is a first-generation settler of primarily Scottish heritage who lives on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Lands. Her most recent publication is Unfuckable Lardass (Talonbooks, 2022). She is the author of five other books of poetry, several written in collaboration with the late Nancy Shaw, whose selected works, The Gorge, she edited (Talonbooks, 2017).

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: Robert Duncan at Disney World, by Andy Weaver

Robert Duncan at Disney World
Andy Weaver
$5

On       the third      night
I dreamt      of you, even
though       it was the wrong
        occasion,      wrong
coast,          wrong           specifics,
wrong           colour cape
                                     for this
stark meadow
                   larked into
hieroglyphic occlusion.
                  But location        is a life
long
         mistake,        a torchy        ballad
sang         too slow,         a swan
song sawn      into          the day’s fabric

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

Andy Weaver’s fourth book of poetry, The Loom (University of Calgary), was published in 2024. He was a finalist for the 2024 Vallum Chapbook Award, and his chapbook So/I (above/ground) was longlisted for the 2022 Nelson Ball Prize. He teaches English and Creative Writing at York University.

This is Andy Weaver’s fifth above/ground press chapbook after Three Ghazals to the constellation Corvus (The Crow) (2001), Other Work for your Hands (2004), Concatenations (2014) and So/I (2021).

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: I Am So Calm, by Alice Burdick

I Am So Calm
Alice Burdick
$5

You did it my way
after Christopher Pratt

Aesthetics are managed by direction -
put this here and it is much better.
A tunnel of disturbing balance.
Amused contribution -
a control that always asserts.
Truth and fiction work together.
Especially the fiction, because truth
is never believed. A lie
with a spark gets things done.
A memory flips over and here
we are, driving down the shore.
Hang a left into the tea cup.
A wheel turns, and we don’t
take each other seriously. Dirt
roads a buzz, nostalgic spare tire.
This work is about something,
maybe only the formality of rack
and ruin. I take away character,
the things that fall, stain, pigeon poop -
symmetry, that is what I make.
Rectangles continue, a road
curves and straightens, strangeness
descends into pristine correction.
This longing for order will clean
that which won’t be tidied. Is that
what you want? I want to understand,
to flatten, like these remains
of a seagull, a military symbol.
I’m not suicidal - bing bang, wharf.
Sleep, however, forever -
that is that, left, fine.
We’ll leave it there.
It doesn’t bother me.

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

Alice Burdick writes poetry, essays, and cookbooks in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. She is the author most recently of Ox Lost, Snow Deep (a feed dog book/Anvil Press), and of Deportment, 2018, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Book of Short Sentences, 2016, Mansfield Press, Holler, 2012, Mansfield Press, Flutter, 2008, Mansfield Press, and Simple Master, 2002, Pedlar Press. Her practice often includes collaboration, and recently her poetry has been used in Woodlight, a series of three films created by Hear Here and Erin Donovan. Her poems have appeared in Aubade: Poetry and Prose from Nova Scotian Writers (Boularderie Island Press, 2018), GUSH: Menstrual Manifestos for Our Time (Frontenac House, 2018), Surreal Estate: 13 Canadian Poets Under the Influence, An Anthology of Surrealist Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, Fall 2004), as well as other anthologies. She is the author of many chapbooks, folios, and broadsides since 1991. Her essays have appeared in Locations of Grief: an emotional geography (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020) and My Nova Scotia Home: Nova Scotia’s best writers riff on the place they call home (MacIntyre Purcell Publishing Inc., 2019). She has authored three cookbooks for local publisher Formac Publishing. From 1992-1995, Alice was assistant coordinator of the Toronto Small Press Fair, and has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award.  She is also a freelance editor, manuscript assessor, and workshop leader.

This is Alice Burdick’s third above/ground press chapbook after A Holiday for Molecules (2019) and PLEASURE BRISTLES (with Gary Barwin, 2018).

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: A Further Introduction to Bingo, by Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg

A Further Introduction to Bingo
Jason Heroux and Dag T. Straumsvåg
$5

25

Meanwhile, the mathematician crosses the town square, walks down North Street, turns right, and enters the Britannia Hotel. Fifteen minutes later he reappears on the street. At 1 pm, on a bench outside the cathedral, he eats a sandwich. He spends all afternoon in the harbour, watching the fishing boats come in. Ten, at dusk, he walks home. Once inside, he heads straight for the kitchen table, and starts jotting down numbers in a notebook. At 11 pm he gets up, undresses, turns of the lights, and starts playing his xylophone in the dark.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Cover and interior design by Angella Kassube

Jason Heroux lives in Kingston. His recent publications include a chapbook Blizzard of None (Puddles of Sky Press) and the collection of prose poems Like a Trophy from the Sun (Guernica Editions). He was the Poet Laureate for the City of Kingston from 2019 to 2022.

Dag T. Straumsvåg lives in Trondheim, Norway, and is the author and translator of ten books of poetry, including Nelson (Proper Tales Press, 2017), But in the Stillness (Apt. 9 Press, 2024), and The Mountains of Kong: New & Selected Prose Poems (Assembly Press, 2025). He runs the small press A + D with his girlfriend, the artist and graphic designer Angella Kassube. His work has appeared in a wide variety of journals in Norway, Canada, and the United States.

This is Jason Heroux’s second title with above/ground press, after Something or Other (2023).

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: The Book of Fire, by Carter McKenzie

The Book of Fire
Carter McKenzie
$5

Elspeth Philipp

I told them I’d met the devil
at oatseedtime. His promise
I would want for nothing.
The bright green stems.
The future harvest.
The good bread.
Springtime. How could
love become this, vivid
enough, my telling
what they want from me.
What I want.
The telling come
undone, playing pipes
he was, I said, dressed
in green, a little black man
playing pipes, I said
forbidden sleep
forbidden sleep
I tell and tell

they torment me.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Carter McKenzie (she/her) is the author of a chapbook of poetry Naming Departure (Traprock Books, 2004), and two full-length books of poetry, Out of Refusal (Airlie Press, 2010) and Stem of Us (Flowstone Press, 2018). She is currently working on a full-length book manuscript of poetry called Evidence of the Burning Times. She lives in the foothills of western Oregon’s Cascade Mountains in the Middle Fork Willamette watershed near Lost Creek, in a valley that is the traditional homeland of the Molalla Mountain Band. Carter is an active member of the local chapter of SURJ/ Showing Up for Racial Justice.

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: A Mean, Mean Thirst, by Dani Spinosa

A Mean, Mean Thirst
poems for my friends and their books
Dani Spinosa
$5

like--
  most of us
    never even
      o-
         penned it
      quietude letting us
    rest finally
   sleep as if being awake was
    trivial as the closed captions reading
     unalive in some
      video
    we’ve both seen
  x times on
youtube or else me explaining
   zaddy
     after one or several
        beers && ok
     ciders for stephen && vodka sodas for
   dani && kate &&
      each of us wandering wondering what it’s been
         for, these
      gifts we carry
         here again and again
            in case in
                           jest in
                                    kin

(from "sequence dress," for andy weaver)

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

digital illustrations by the author

Dani Spinosa is a poet of digital and print media. She is sometimes a professor, sometimes a web developer, and all the time a co-founding editor of the feminist micropress Gap Riot. She has published several chapbooks of poetry, several more peer-reviewed journal articles on poetry, one long scholarly book, and one pink poetry book. She lives in beautiful Wasaga Beach, Ontario.

This is Spinosa’s third chapbook with above/ground press, after Glosas for Tired Eyes Volume 2 (2018) and Civilization (2020).

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: Une Couronne Cassée Pour Ma Sœur, by JoAnna Novak

Une Couronne Cassée Pour Ma Sœur
JoAnna Novak
$5

The door creaks & she pulls it shut.
My sister is afraid. Her white gown
    doesn’t really close, her veil, parted
lips, open palms, psalms sung, one
    bed to another. Pewed-prayers, her voice
bread not bred, hips hitched to the body
    of the man under her tongue. This
will not be simple. She is so busy being
    vernacular & vain, missal-less
in the neighbor’s garden. Birds. Bouqueting
    kale. Enkindled kindness, tithes,
she removes her shoes to become a pronoun.
    Stone beneath her skirts, down she goes.
What vibrates in those eighteenth-century walls?

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

JoAnna Novak latest book Domestirexia: Poems was published by Soft Skull in 2024. She is the author of the memoir Contradiction Days: An Artist on the Verge of Motherhood. Novak’s short story collection Meaningful Work won the Ronald Sukenick Innovative Fiction Contest and was published by FC2. She is also the author of the novel I Must Have You and three additional books of poetry: New Life; Abeyance, North America; and Noirmania. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The New York Times, The Atlantic, and other publications.

This is Novak’s second above/ground press title, after Knife with Oral Greed (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

new from above/ground press: A Love Poem While the Children Sleep, by Julia Cohen

A Love Poem While the Children Sleep
Julia Cohen
$5

Even I will move through the night
I will move through the night out
of the way, even
 
to make room
for the thud
of love
 
call it eating the moon’s ass
 
eating the moon’s ass
is something you’d write
& I’m writing it for you
inside the thud
 
*
 
Even if our hands are cold
the same cold temperature, even
 
I will lend you
my belly
to sleep
like we are links
in a drowsy fence
fallen over
in a Wyoming wind
 
*
 
I love to fuck
up books ("A Love Poem While the Children Sleep")

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

cover painting:
Li Shan Chong, lovely soft morning cream bed series #1903.
Acrylic on Canvas.

Julia Cohen is the Director of Writing at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design. She is the author of three books, most recently, I Was Not Born (Noemi Press) and the forthcoming collection of essays, Freak Lip (Texas Review Press, Fall 2025). Her work appears in the Georgia Review, The Southeast Review, Fugue, and The Bennington Review. She co-curates, with Abby Hagler, a poetry interview series at Tarpaulin Sky Magazine. She lives in Colorado Springs with her family.

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: DOCTOR SHAMAN, by Susan Gevirtz

DOCTOR SHAMAN
Susan Gevirtz
$5

Origin is a practice of revision

Diagnosis a practice of reception, a social event a place of encounter

You are changed by attendance
The event changed by your presence         


The commentators say the relation with the text is NATAN, a palindrome  

It changes while you read it     You are read while you read it

The text needs us
–you don’t just take from it

You give to it  -- It takes from us

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
as the twenty-sixth title in above/ground’s prose/naut imprint
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Susan Gevirtz is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Burns (Pamenar 2022), Hotel abc (Nightboat, 2016) and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street, 2010). Her critical books are Coming Events (Collected Writings) (Nightboat, 2013), and Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang, 1996). She was associate editor of HOW(ever), a journal of modernist/innovative directions in women’s poetry and scholarship, and served on the advisory board for its successor, the online journal HOW2. In 2004, with poet and restorer of maritime antiquities, Siarita Kouka, she founded the Paros Symposium, an annual meeting of Greek and Anglophone poets. Gevirtz was Assistant Professor at Sonoma State University, California, for ten years, and subsequently taught in the Visual and Critical Studies and MFA programs at California College of the Arts, as well as in undergrad Writing and Visual Studies. She is currently a writing mentor through Prison Renaissance and Operation Restoration. She is based in San Francisco.

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: And Absurd Cycle, by Drew McEwan

And Absurd Cycle
Drew McEwan
$5

We behaviors rituals

overwhelming serious victims
behaviors
the lengths prevent pleasure
drugs people chemistry

less and OCD

Form in common devastating lives
washing the difficulty
impatient performance hour’s Obsessions
mental Latin

in distress is something pleasant

understood extremely body extremely everyday
physically use transmission
patient rituals make People
and repeat overwhelmed and absurd cycle

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
November 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Drew McEwan is the author of the poetry collections Repeater, If Pressed, and Tours, Variously (forthcoming, 2025). She has also published numerous literary chapbooks including Conditional, Can't tell if this book is depressing or if I'm just sad, Theory of Rooms, and Recoveringly. She works as an educator and researcher at the University at Buffalo.

This is her second title with above/ground press, after theory of rooms (2016).

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: The Winter Circus, by Conal Smiley

The Winter Circus
Conal Smiley
$5

It’s normal to
fear your mind

I’m afraid

that people
will discover

a note on the
xylophone

that when
repeatedly hit

will drill itself
into my skull

like construction
out the bedroom

window
early in

the morning

all detours
leading to a single

congested street
stucco falling

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Conal Smiley was born in London, ON. His childhood was spent combing the aisles of bookstores, video stores and record shops, which is where his passion for the arts began. He is mostly self-taught, and after some creative writing classes at UofT, he decided to pursue poetry. He currently lives in Toronto and works in bookstores.

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: ANTHRONOISE, by Brook Houglum

ANTHRONOISE
Brook Houglum
$5

Ocean-based scenario:

blue growth / in-depth

abundance. Future case:

private—industrial—government

opportunity: marine

minerals / cobalt-rich aquaculture

Global offshore balance /

PROMOTION OCEAN

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Brook Houglum has previously published poems in magazines such as Tinfish, Event, and Interim. She teaches at Capilano University and lives near Sen̓áḵw, now known as False Creek, Vancouver, on unceded Skwxwú7mesh, xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ lands. A second title through above/ground press 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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

new from above/ground press: poetry and labour / is concrete, by russell carisse

poetry and labour / is concrete
russell carisse
$5

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
October 2024
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

russell carisse is currently living on unceded Wolastoqiyik/Mi’kmaw territory in New Brunswick. Here they have resettled from Tkaronto to an off-grid trailer in the woods, with their family of people and animals, to grow food and practice other forms of underconsumption. Work recently forthcoming or in, Queen’s Quarterly, The Temz Review, Touch the Donkey, also online: website: russellcarisse.carrd.co Mastodon: @russellcarisse@writing.exchange

This is carisse’s third above/ground press title, after English Garden Bondage (2022) and In The Margins. . . . . .of french translations found and remixed by russell carisse (2024).

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