Showing posts with label Stephanie Bolster. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephanie Bolster. Show all posts

Thursday, November 7, 2019

the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize longlist: Stephanie Bolster + Franco Cortese,

above/ground press authors Stephanie Bolster and Franco Cortese are among the thirty-three writers included in the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize longlist! Hooray! Stephanie Bolster is the author of the above/ground press chapbooks Three Bloody Words (1996), Biodome (2006), Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016) and Ghosts (2017), and was also included in the 2012 shortlist and the 2017 longlist! Franco Cortese is the author of, among other items, the 2019 above/grond press chapbook uoiea. Congratulations to all! And good luck!

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

CBC Poetry Prize longlist : Bolster + mclennan,

above/ground press authors Stephanie Bolster and rob mclennan made the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, alongside thirty-one other Canadian writers. Hooray! Congratulations to all! Stephanie Bolster is the author of more than a couple of above/ground press titles still in print, including Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016) and GHOSTS (2017), which is made up of poems from the same work-in-progress as her poems on the longlist; and rob mclennan is the author of far too many items that remain in print, but most recently include King Kong (2014) and It's still winter (2017), which is also made up of poems from the same work-in-progress as his poems on the longlist.

Monday, August 14, 2017

new from above/ground press: GHOSTS, by Stephanie Bolster

GHOSTS
Stephanie Bolster
$5

GHOSTS


Just south of the Canadian border, what’s left
of Bolster’s ninety log houses, the few hopes
no wolf gusted down.
Little to live on, but much to live for.

Three stores, post office, assay office, newspaper
called “The Bolster Drill,” several
saloons, Doctor Beale’s office,
and a three-story hotel. 


One year later, there goes the mine.

No one goes.
It was never much. Nothing
to do with me.



Prehistoric Gardens
newly restored all the dinosaurs
already 14 years old when I was born
still there in the streambeds in the ferns
the Pteranadon with its 27 foot wingspan
as dead as ever the skunk cabbage
as stinking yellow the gift shop
stocked with by-the-scoop
stones gleaming like that Ichthyosaur’s
eye by the gleaming stream
by the Oregon coast.



Farther south Paul Bunyan and Babe
outside the restaurant
we used to visit did we ever
go beyond the shop
what was there there? Trees
of Mystery, California’s premier
nature attraction on the North coast.


That filtered light on paths and trunks.

The site shows rooms of First Peoples’
arts and artefacts I don’t remember seeing.
Called End of the Trail Museum.
published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2017
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Stephanie Bolster
has published four books of poetry, the first of which, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. Her latest book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Work from her current manuscript-in-progress, Long Exposure, from which this chapbook is also drawn, was a finalist for the Canada Writes/CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal.

This is Stephanie Bolster’s fourth above/ground press chapbook, after the original Three Bloody Words (1996), Biodome (2006) and Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016).

[Produced for the above/ground press 24th anniversary reading/launch/party! Thursday, August 31, 2017]

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

Wednesday, August 9, 2017

the above/ground press 24th anniversary reading/launch/party!

above/ground press presents readings and other such by an array of poets:
Stephanie Bolster (Montreal)
Adele Graf (Ottawa)
Kristina Drake (East Hawkesbury)
Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
+ rob mclennan (Ottawa)
lovingly hosted by above/ground press author and Apt 9 Press editor/publisher Cameron Anstee
7:30pm door/8pm reading
Thursday, August 31, 2017
Backdrop Food & Drink
160 Metcalfe Street, Ottawa
http://www.thebackdrop.ca/

$5 at the door; includes a copy of a recent above/ground press title


Stephanie Bolster has published four books of poetry, the first of which, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General's and the Gerald Lampert Awards in 1998. Her latest book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award. Work from her current manuscript-in-progress, Long Exposure, from which this chapbook is also drawn, was a finalist for the Canada Writes/CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal.

She will be launching the chapbook GHOSTS.

This is Stephanie Bolster’s fourth above/ground press chapbook, after the original Three Bloody Words (1996), Biodome (2006) and Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016). She also appeared in the fifth issue of the long poem magazine STANZAS (April 1995).

Adele Graf’s poems have appeared in many Canadian journals including The Antigonish Review, CV2, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead, Room and Vallum. Her first poetry collection, math for couples, was published this spring by Guernica Editions.

She will be launching the chapbook a Baltic Friday early in grey.

Kristina Drake writes and edits in the wilderness of East Hawkesbury, Ontario. Her poems have previously appeared in Carte Blanche, Soliloquies and Yalla!, as an above/ground press broadside, and as a Tuesday poem on Dusie.

She will be launching the chapbook Ornithology.

Amanda Earl is an Ottawa writer, publisher and visual poet. She’s the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the fallen angel of AngelHousePress. More information is available at AmandaEarl.com.

She will be launching the chapbook Lady Lazarus Redux.

This is Earl’s fifth chapbook with above/ground press, after Eleanor (2007), The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman (2008), Sex First & Then A Sandwich (2012) and A Book of Saints (2015).

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent titles include The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection A perimeter (New Star Books, 2016). He has two poetry collections forthcoming: Life Sentence (Flat Singles Press, 2018) and Household items (Salmon Poetry, 2018). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books (with Christine McNair), The Garneau Review, seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics, Touch the Donkey and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater. He is “Interviews Editor” at Queen Mob’s Teahouse, a regular contributor to the Ploughshares blog, and an editor/managing editor of many gendered mothers. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

He will be launching the chapbook It's still winter.

This is mclennan's millionth chapbook with above/ground press. There are too many to list.

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Klara du Plessis reviews Stephanie Bolster's Three Bloody Words (2016) at Broken Pencil

Montreal poet Klara du Plessis was good enough to provide the first review of Stephanie Bolster's Three Bloody Words: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016) over at Broken Pencil. Thanks so much! You can see the original review here.
Three Bloody Words
Stephanie Bolster, 23 pgs, above/ground press, abovegroundpress.blogspot.ca, $5

This is an anniversary publication, a reissue twenty years after the original release, celebrating Stephanie Bolster’s chapbook Three Bloody Words—a sequence of poems and short paragraphs aiming to rewrite well-known fairytales from the perspective of the princess. In an new afterword, Bolster describes her feminist project and her desire “to reclaim women’s narratives … I was, simply and sincerely, claiming identity as a writer. In giving these women a voice, I was giving myself one.”

Modeled as retellings of fairytales, these pieces are thematically linked by their consistent exposure of the latent violence inherent to so-called children’s stories—“To think they read these stories to children” being one of the poem’s titles. While the fairytales are never named, the narratives are presumably so familiar to most readers that select elements are enough to clue in reader that, for example, a man lurking in the forest, threatening a girl dressed in red, is most probably based on Little Red Riding Hood. Similarly, a girl with “snow-white skin/ blood-red cheeks, hair as black as ebony” is sufficient to position the under-aged, coerced and subsequently vengeful child bride as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

What sets Bolster’s retellings apart from similar work by, for instance, Anne Sexton, is her insistence on the contemporaneous nature of the narratives. When “this guy in a suit comes & asks what’s it like being in fairytales he’s doing his thesis,” it becomes clear that the entitled, patriarchal, often aggressive and nonconsensual archetype of the Disney prince has just changed his guise for modern times; “it was the same old story.” The legendary “happily ever after” postures as the continuity of fairytale violence and inequality into the present day.

Monday, September 12, 2016

above/ground press in Ottawa: a report,

[Braydon Beaulieu, reading] As you most likely know, this past Saturday was the above/ground press twenty-third anniversary event at Black Squirrel Books in Ottawa, held not long after a similar event in Toronto [see my report on such here], with readings and launches by Braydon Beaulieu, Sean Braune, Pearl Pirie and Stephanie Bolster. Thanks so much to all who participated!
[Sean Braune, reading] Now that I've heard two different readings by Beaulieu and Braune in a short period, I'm getting a better sense of what either of them are doing (Braune's reading really stood out, of the four authors), and might be capable of (and am further intrigued). Beaulieu also has work forthcoming in The Calgary Renaissance (Chaudiere Books), an anthology edited by myself and Derek Beaulieu.
[Pearl Pirie, reading] The crowd was small, but worthy, and included a variety of above/ground press authors past and present, including Cameron Anstee, Amanda Earl, Stephen Brockwell, Michelle Desbarats and Colin Morton, as well as Ottawa poet Chris Johnson, who generously donated his time and energy for the sake of the door/book table (did you know he has a chapbook forthcoming with Frog Hollow Press?). What became curious, in hindsight, was realizing that the four readers read in reverse order of how long I've known them, having first interacted with Stephanie Bolster back in the mid-1990s, and publishing her first item back in 1996 (newly reissued, and discussed here).
[Stephanie Bolster, reading] For Pearl's reading, she made a point of wearing Vulcan ears, to acknowledge the 50th anniversary of Star Trek (she wore them unrelated to the reading in any way). Another highlight included the fact that Stephanie came by the house a few hours early for the sake of a visit, and to meet our latest edition, nearly five-month-old Aoife. And after the reading, a small mound of us went out for drinks and an extended period of stellar conversation.

While I may be a bit behind on a couple of publications (and mailouts) (our newborn and toddler are rather distracting), the next few weeks should see new chapbooks by George Bowering, Geoffrey Young, Carrie Hunter and John Barton, as well as the 11th issue of Touch the Donkey, among other possibilities.

As well, I'm most likely announcing 2017 subscriptions around the end of the month, by the by. And what might 2017 bring? I'm not entirely sure yet, but, as per usual, I've a number of irons in the fire. Just keep watching.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

the above/ground press 23rd anniversary (Ottawa) reading! September 10, 2016

above/ground press presents readings and other such by an array of poets:
Stephanie Bolster (Montreal)
Braydon Beaulieu (Toronto)
Sean Braune (Toronto)
+ Pearl Pirie (Ottawa)
lovingly hosted by above/ground press editor/publisher rob mclennan
[and don't forget the Toronto event, August 25th!]
7:30pm, Saturday, September 10, 2016
Black Squirrel Books & Café
1073 Bank St, Ottawa

$5 at the door; includes a copy of a recent above/ground press title

Stephanie Bolster
is the author of four books of poetry, the first of which, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Signal/Véhicule, 1998), won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards. Her latest book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award and more recent work was a finalist for the Canada Writes/CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems by the late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner, and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal, where she also coordinates the writing program.

She is the author of three above/ground press chapbook: Three Bloody Words (1996), Biodome (2006) and Three Bloody Words : Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2016).

Braydon Beaulieu is a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary where he studies creative writing, poetics, science fiction, and games. He lives in Toronto.

He is the author of the above/ground press chapbook ERASURE: A Short Story (2016).

Sean Braune’s theoretical work has been published in Postmodern Culture, Journal of Modern Literature, Canadian Literature, symplokē, and elsewhere. His poetry has appeared in ditch, The Puritan, Rampike, and Poetry is Dead, and elsewhere.

His first chapbook, produced by above/ground press, is the vitamins of an alphabet (2016).

Pearl Pirie does bookish and lookish things. She has made a bunch of chapbooks & you probably should too.  (Bio is Italian for speaker’s corner, right?) For those who answer no, Pirie has been published in 3 books, a few anthologies, many chapbooks and has a renewed love of canoes. www.pearlpirie.com has resources for templates.

She is the author of six above/ground press publications, including the chapbooks oath in the boathouse (2008), vertigoheel for the dilly (2014), today’s woods (2014) and the brand-new sex in sevens (2016).

Tuesday, May 24, 2016

new from above/ground press: Three Bloody Words : Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by Stephanie Bolster

Three Bloody Words : Twentieth Anniversary Edition
Stephanie Bolster
with a new afterword by the author
$5



my name is rose red blood
                                                             dark lips it’s all the same negation of everything my sister is they knew all along when we were born i was lesser more susceptible to lust less likely to reward them with golden grandchildren so she got the bear when he turned prince
                                                  i wish he had stayed dark & furry his skin thick as rugs smelling of musk wilted roses the inside of caves our new castle never a home not dark enough for me to steal away to him always his fair brother dozing beside me & him too far away in the next room with her dreaming of ripe berries



published in Ottawa by above/ground press
May 2016
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy


Three Bloody Words was originally produced through above/ground press in an edition of 300 copies, May 1996. It subsequently appeared in the anthology Groundswell: the best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press / cauldron books, 2003), edited by rob mclennan.

Stephanie Bolster is the author of four books of poetry, the first of which, White Stone: The Alice Poems (Signal/Véhicule, 1998), won the Governor General’s and the Gerald Lampert Awards. Her latest book, A Page from the Wonders of Life on Earth (Brick Books, 2011) was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award and more recent work was a finalist for the Canada Writes/CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. Editor of The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008 and The Ishtar Gate: Last and Selected Poems by the late Ottawa poet Diana Brebner, and co-editor of Penned: Zoo Poems, she was born in Vancouver and teaches creative writing at Concordia University in Montréal, where she also coordinates the writing program.

This is Stephanie Bolster’s third above/ground press chapbook, after the original Three Bloody Words (1996) and Biodome (2006).

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