This
is the eighteenth in a series of short essays/reminiscences by a variety of
authors and friends of the press to help mark the quarter century mark of
above/ground. See links to the whole series here.
above/ground press.
rob is
someone I’ve known for over 25 years, a quarter of a century. When I
first met rob he was literally bursting at the seams with poetry energy and
ideas.
I don’t
remember exactly when he started above/ground but I know he was kind enough to
publish at least two chapbooks for me, and include me a few of his
magazines/anthologies. That’s what I remember. Not the press itself
but rob’s energetic enthusiasm for poetry. above/ground just feels like it
has always been here and I feel very lucky to have participated in a minor way.
For me it was
a big deal when rob asked me for a chapbook. It meant that my work would
see the light of day when there was no one else who had any interest and it
meant quite a lot to me that rob – above/ground press – was willing to put
their neck out.
The sheer
volume of production is astounding. When you take a closer look you’ll find
that above/ground has published an entire generation of Canadian
poets. And that’s something to be very proud of. When above/ground
started it had all the appearances of a short term and small time publishing
deal. Now, many years later, you could make an entirely decent poetry
library out of the chapbooks that above/ground has produced.
My big project
in recent years has been “Today’s book of poetry” and it was influenced in no
small way by rob mclennan’s example. above/ground press is the
Honey Badger of Canadian poetry. A vision made real.
Michael Dennis published his first chapbook, quarter
on its edge, in 1979. Since then he has published several books and over a
dozen chapbooks, his work has appeared in numerous magazine and journals. In
April of 2017, Anvil Press published Bad Engine — New
and Selected Poems,
edited by Stuart Ross.
Dennis was born in London,
Ontario, grew up mostly in Peterborough, Ontario and has resided in Ottawa,
Ontario for the last thirty years. He lived in P.E.I. for year in the mid-80s
and Czechoslovakia in 1989–90.
For the past few years
Dennis has been producing a blog, Today’s book of
poetry where he writes about books of poetry he admires. He
posts a new blog every two or three days. So far Dennis has written blogs about
509 contemporary books of poetry.
Dennis is semi-retired from
a career of varied employment. Dennis has installed public art for the Canada
Council Art Bank, the Canadian Museum of Civilization, the Ottawa Art Gallery
and numerous other arts organizations. He ran a small boutique hotel, The
Cartier Inn. He drove taxi and trucks, worked in an ice-cream factory, worked
on the motor line at Ford in Windsor, Ontario for a couple of years, a copper
mine in northern Ontario. Dennis opened his own non-profit English as a second
language school in Jablonec nad Nisou, Czechoslovakia and so on. Now he is
supported by his wife and lives the life of luxury afforded most poets.
