some author activity: Abel, Bowering, mclennan, Dean + Young,

Jordan Abel has won the 2024 Banff Mountain Book Competition Prize for Mountain Fiction and Poetry; The George Bowering Collection and Reading Room is scheduled to be installed in Special Collections at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 2025; rob mclennan was interviewed by Alan Neal for CBC Radio's All In A Day; and Leesa Dean is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey ; and did you see this interview with American poet Geoffrey Young?

some author activity: Novak, Babineau, Sikkema, Bowering + Ross,

JoAnna Novak has new work at MerionWest; Kemeny Babineau has new work in the Spotlight series; Michael Sikkema has some new work up at cul-de-sac of blood; George Bowering is quoted in this recent piece on the infamous 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference; and Stuart Ross has three new poems in Gargoyle.

some author activity: Unsworth, Weaver, Bell, Morton, Bowering, Hogg + mclennan,

Lydia Unsworth has a poem up as part of the Tuesday poem series; Andy Weaver is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Wade Bell, Colin Morton, George Bowering and others all have new pieces as part of the "Remembering Bob Hogg" feature at The Typescript; and rob mclennan answers one question for Hollay Ghadery at River Street Writing.

new from above/ground press: LALIQUE, by Artie Gold & George Bowering

LALIQUE
Artie Gold & George Bowering
$5

                        AG: Lalique

 

They're both in the room. He, he's slow or dull-witted. She does
most of the talking. I guess her to be in her early sixties; she is
telling me of a time she bought two lovely milk-glass table-
pieces. She's doing all of the talking, seems to hover near the
door. The room is filled with small lacquered tables, doilies,
silver ashtrays too small for cigarettes; the curtains are from
the thirties, horrible things really drawn tight, yet light enters
diffused about the blotches of almost shapeless flowers and
green pears woven into the cloth. The chairs are highbacked
Duncan Phyfes neatly arranged geometrically about a table of
stained medium wood, cherry maybe. Four thin people might
slip between table and chairs, ghost-dining. He mumbles,
"cranberry glass"; I take no notice; he leaves, I guess, because
he feels unnecessary. She motions to another room, a bed,
magnificent poster. satin overcloth, no windows anywhere,
smaller room we are inside. She sits by the drawn sheet pillow.
I am standing, mention yes, there's no cameo glass anymore,
hardly see Lalique in stores. She rises; I shuffle, look about,
see some smaller pieces of glass on corner bracket shelves;
she bends a bit at the back, straightens, bids me be seated,
which seems innocent (I know it's not). Hand bends across
my arm, touches lightly; she isn't talking any longer. I am
seated. She is seated beside or by my side hand limp brushes
my forearm I am excited as hell I can hear old man heavy
breathing outside door.

 

                        GB: Lalique

 

Every time I went over to Mary Brown's place, where he
lived, Artie would show me stuff he collected. I was a
collector, too, of books, sport magazines, frog figurines,
James Dean stuff. But Artie, a decade younger than I,
was a lot more sophisticated. He had a lot of collections,
and I kind of think that he decided not to become an in-
patient at the Montreal Chest Clinic because he did not
want to give up his rocks, his precious stones, his ancient
cocaine tins, his Laliques, his Sendaks, his Frank O'Haras.
As to the woman sitting beside him on the four-poster
bed, did you think this is a dream account? I am not so
sure. After quite a while that possibility entered my mind;
but it didn't necessarily stay there.

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

In Spring of 2023 NeWest Press published George Bowering’s anthology of English language poets from Wyatt to Avison, with one-page essays on each of the poets, Good Morning Poems.

Montreal poet Artie Gold (1947-2007) published numerous books throughout the 1970s. His selected poems, The Beautiful Chemical Waltz (1992), appeared with an introduction by George Bowering. Talonbooks published The Collected Books of Artie Gold in 2010.

This is George Bowering’s seventh above/ground press title, after STANZAS #12 (“BLONDES ON BIKES: 1-20,” April 1997), A, You’re Adorable (as “Ellen Field,” October, 1998; reissued October 2004), Tocking Heads (ALBERTA SERIES #2, October, 2007), That Toddlin’ Town / Baby, don’ ya wanna go? (2016), Hotels (2021) and the collaborative Ruby Wounds, with Artie Gold (2022).

Artie Gold’s above/ground press chapbook, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS, appeared in 2003.

An Artie Gold/George Bowering bundle is currently available as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary fundraiser.

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

A (Vancouver) Reading in Memory of Bob Hogg : February 12, 2023

new from above/ground press: from RUBY WOUNDS, by Artie Gold & George Bowering

from RUBY WOUNDS
Artie Gold & George Bowering
$5

                 AG: The Naked Prose of my Heart

 

I can show you  that  10 /  is  15, and this is not my paradox. Distributed like the naked vernacular that composes cities, I am asleep with the sense of being awake. Now /  there is contra- diction.  Now  /  perhaps the middle skin examined. And light. Light is accident. Mowers in a field. Mechanical decomposers. I am reduced physically; therefore, these must be my simpler elements. O take me to reduced consciousness. Wrap my dry skin in hot Vic Tanny oblivion. To get away is neither to live nor to die, but to be comfortable. It's only when I add a third ball, then I am the juggler. This  /  is the prose of my equally naked disposition. Which, curdling itself last week or so, and lifting,  /  only revealed itself. Beneath one thing are small pieces of that thing, gnostic and absurdly available to Parmedines. Beneath scepticism, you want to say, is doubt, but  /  how do you know? Whoever claims against you is in possession of fenced goods and throws the towel in––but the absurdity of the situation––well, son, I would like to be able to claim you as a non-dependent  (said my father  /  like the caterpillar in Alice­­­­––but you exist . . . you are a fact!

 

 

                 GB: My Heart's Naked Prose

 

Morality is no one's business. But perhaps we all have need of it. I can show you that 10 is 15, and this is not my paradox. It belongs to poetry and therefore not my heart. I am asleep and dreaming of being awake, though dreams are told as if they were prose, so people who have to hear are bored. Even Freud suspected that dreams were boring, even though he thought poets were people who never grew up. Freud pounded his fist and Asked H.D. what the hell women wanted when he should have remembered that she was a very tall poet. Lying down on a couch nearby, now could one not become bored? Not to get away is neither to live nor to die, but only to be comfortable. If I had been Sigmund Freud I would have had my analysands stand up for fifty minutes. H.D. mentioned that Freud had miniature statues all over his office. I have only a few, including a little Parmenides I received from a famous grown up poet. Ever since it came to me it has existed, and I talk to it when I have a thought to. I tell it that 10 is 15 and it speaks into my hearing aids: "If you speak of something it must be." I believe that he was telling me something about my poor injured heart's ordinary prose.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
December 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

In Spring of 2023 NeWest Press will publish George Bowering’s anthology of English language poets from Wyatt to Avison, with one-page essays on each of the poets, Good Morning Poems.

Montreal poet Artie Gold (1947-2007) published numerous books throughout the 1970s. His selected poems, The Beautiful Chemical Waltz (1992), appeared with an introduction by George Bowering. Talonbooks published The Collected Books of Artie Gold in 2010.

This is George Bowering’s sixth above/ground press title, after STANZAS #12 (“BLONDES ON BIKES: 1-20,” April 1997), A, You’re Adorable (as “Ellen Field,” October, 1998; reissued October 2004), Tocking Heads (ALBERTA SERIES #2, October, 2007), That Toddlin’ Town / Baby, don’ ya wanna go? (2016) and Hotels (2021).

Artie Gold’s above/ground press chapbook, THE HOTEL VICTORIA POEMS, appeared in 2003.

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

HAL magazine, guest edited by Karl Jirgens : Bowering, Spinosa, Earl, Tucker, Davey, Hogg, Clarke, McCaffery, Betts, beaulieu, Rogal, Hall, Lynes, Nećakov, mclennan, Barwin, Arnott, Ross + Norris,

In case you haven't seen, above/ground press author Karl Jirgens guest-edited the fourteenth anniversary issue of Hamilton Arts and Letters, and included work by a whole ton of folk, including numerous (current and former) above/ground press authors! Why not check out the issue as a whole? Or check out the specific submissions by George Bowering, Dani Spinosa, Amanda Earl, Aaron Tucker, Frank Davey, Robert Hogg, George Elliott Clarke, Steve McCaffery, Gregory Betts, derek beaulieu, Stan Rogal, Phil Hall, Jeanette Lynes, Lillian Nećakov, rob mclennan, Gary Barwin, Joanne Arnott, Stuart Ross and Ken Norris! And there are bunches of others as well! So you really have to check out the issue as a whole, really.

some author activity: mclennan, Saklikar, Bowering, Newlove, Niespodziany, Abel + Turnbull,

rob mclennan offers write-ups on works by Susan Howe, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Joshua Beckman and John Newlove, as well as an anthology edited by George Bowering and Jean Baird, and an anthology edited by Eli Mandel, and has two new poems as well, up at Katie Naughton's Etcetera ; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at Rejection Letters; Jordan Abel is interviewed by Joseph Shea-Carter for The Puritan; and Chris Turnbull has some new work up at Pamenar Press.