some author activity: Joseph, mclennan, Moore, MacEachern + Dowling,

Alexander Joseph was interviewed for Boulder Jewish News; rob mclennan has posted a new poem to his blog, and another at Watch Your Head, and a further at Train : a poetry journal; Nathan Alexander Moore is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Jessi MacEachern participates in the "12 or 20 questions" interview series; and Sarah Dowling is co-editing (with Jane Malcolm) a special issue of Amodern, tentatively titled "Body and/as Procedure," and seeks critical papers!

some author activity, dueck, Dowling, Higdon, Barwin + Reid,

nathan dueck has two new poems and a statement up as part of the Spotlight series; Sarah Dowling is being interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; Hailey Higdon has a new poem in Typo; Gary Barwin has an essay on the CBC website on surviving lockdown; and Monty Reid has some new work up at Train : a poetry journal.

some author activity: Syersak, Paige, Gurton-Wachter + Dowling,

Jake Syersak is interviewed by Jeff Alessandrelli over at Fanzine; Abby Paige has a new poem in the poetry pause series via The League of Canadian Poets; Anna Gurton-Wachter has an essay online at Social Text; and Sarah Dowling talks about writing one of her books for the "Opening the Book" series at M/M.

Feliks Jezioranski reviews Sarah Dowling’s Entering Sappho (2017) in Broken Pencil #79

While I very much appreciate that Feliks Jezioranski took the time to attempt a review of Sarah Dowling’s Entering Sappho (2017) in Broken Pencil #79, I really think her wee chapbook deserves better attention than this. I mean, I know sometimes reviewers don’t “get” certain works (it happens to the best of us), but I wish Jezioranski had worked to find a bit more background (you can see the original review here). Fortunately, this is the second review of Dowling’s title, so why not go back to see what Amanda Earl was good enough to write on her blog? As Jezioranski’s review reads:

Sarah Dowling’s zine Entering Sappho is a love poem. All we know if the lover written to is that the speaker is completely overwhelmed by “you.” We also know that “your” voice is especially devastating; by my quick count there are 13 references to this voice.

     Repetition is the poem’s dominant technique. Some of the pages are a listing of places the speaker “is” and persons (and, especially confusingly, concepts such as xenia – hospitality) from Greek antiquity, followed by the words, “I wake up and disappear,” or else, “I wake up without coming to.” Beyond Greece and sex and romance generally, I do not understand the connection to Sappho. These essentially identical lists occupy five out of 21 pages.

     On the rest I found an approximation of this: “as soon as I see you – hardly / because I have seen you, I lack the / voice – this voice no longer reaches my / lips, and my eyes perceive nothing – I’m / greener than grass – and I die almost / of failure – I trickle with sweat…” There’s some variation in structure but by my count there are 13 lines or couplets about dying/being nearly dead, 18 times about sweating, 21 about trembling or vibrating, twelve about “subtle fire”, 10 about green grass, and 31 about not being able to speak/hear/see in the presence of the lover.

     There were certain stanzas that seemed interesting but which I had trouble understanding, which was frustrating when sandwiched between repetitions. There several cryptic references to pressing enter.

     Tallying may seem like a cheap way to evaluate a poem if rhythm and repetition are being used to create the sensation of being overwhelmed. However, getting back to the issue of the lover, I found it difficult to be invested in the speaker’s romantic asphyxiation without having any sense of its cause. Why am I reading 31 examples of the same thing when I could be exploring the poem’s other character? For me, Dowling’s repetition had a deadening effect, boredom taking the place of romantic intensity and empathy.

Amanda Earl reviews five (more) 2017 titles: Sandra Moussempès' From: Sunny girls (trans. Eléna Rivera), Jessica Smith's The Lover is Absent, Lisa Robertson's poorsong one, Buck Downs' the hack of heaven and Sarah Dowling's Entering Sappho

Following her first group review posted here, the esteemed and muchly generous poet, editor, publisher and reviewer (and above/ground press author) Amanda Earl continues her reviews of 2017 above/ground press items, providing a second review of Sandra Moussempès' From: Sunny girls (after Greg Bem's review over at Yellow Rabbits), and first reviews of Jessica Smith's The Lover is Absent, Lisa Robertson's poorsong one, Buck Downs' the hack of heaven and Sarah Dowling's Entering Sappho. Thanks so much! You can see this latest review here.

new from above/ground press: Entering Sappho, by Sarah Dowling

Entering Sappho
Sarah Dowling
$5

IN Ninety-seven Troys

Eighty-three Eurekas

Fifty-seven Etnas

Fifty-six Antiochs

Fifty-four Athenses

Fifty-four Romes

Fifty-one Albions

And fifty Arcadias

In forty-nine Palmyras

Forty-eight Spartas

Forty-five Senecas

Thirty-nine Phoenixes

Thirty-nine Alphas

Thirty-seven Homers

Thirty-six Caledonias

Thirty-six Carthages

Thirty-five Macedonias

Thirty-three Uticas

And thirty-one Corinths

In thirty Milos

Twenty-nine Omegas

Twenty-seven Smyrnas

Twenty-five Argoses

Twenty-five Adrians

And twenty-four Olympias

I wake up and disappear

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Sarah Dowling is the author of DOWN (Coach House, 2014) and Security Posture (Snare, 2009) which received the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. She has previously published one chapbook, Birds & Bees (TrollThread, 2012), as well as numerous shorter works in literary journals. Sarah teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell.

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

Avant-Canada: On the Canadian avant-garde, eds. Betts + Price, Jacket2

above/ground press authors Gregory Betts and Katie L. Price have co-edited "Avant-Canada: On the Canadian avant-garde" over at Jacket2, featuring a series of essays that came out of the Avant Canada: Artists, Prophets, Revolutionaries conference that was held at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, November 4–6, 2014.

Check out here to see their introduction, and links to the featured essays. The list of contributors to the feature includes essays by past and present above/ground press authors Stephen Collis, Alex Porco, Lori Emerson and Erín Moure, as well as Sarah Dowling, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Kaie Kellough, Tyrus Miller, Heather Milne and Vanessa Place, with critical pieces on Jordan Abel, Christian Bök, Ron Silliman, Erin Wunker, Michael Nardone, Lillian Allan, Steve McCaffery, d'bi.young, Lee Maracle, Jeff Derksen, Louis Cabri and Rachel Zolf.

North of Intention: Stewart, Quartermain, Betts, L'Abbe, echoff + others,

Various Canadian authors (and above/ground press authors) participate in North of Intention over at Jacket2, including Christine Stewart and Meredith Quartermain on Fred Wah, Gregory Betts on M. NorbeSe Philip, Sonnet L'Abbe on Stephen Collis, kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Jake Kennedy (collaboratively) on Jordan Scott, all curated by Sarah Dowling.