National Poetry Month : Sharon Harris,

Things are Unraveling as They Should

I’ll give you two minutes

The phone’s ringing off the hook now

You know something

Folks

You’re wrong

You gotta understand

Let me cut to the chase

I tell you what I hear on the street

Well that's allegedly

It's very very simple

He’s a rock star

A normal, everyday person

The best father around

The headlines of the papers when he won?

‘The White Obama’

Not a politician

He’s an average guy

Very humble

You know something

It’s very simple

They want to execute him

Like what they did to Jesus

It's a David and Goliath scenario

Blue blood vs. blue collar

They hide around and get ya

In a gotcha moment

At the end of the day

He had a couple of pops

Everyone has a little slipup

But he’s moving forward

Let’s get the show on the road

I wouldn't know him if I ran him over

That’s what I’m hearing on the street

Out there with the common folk

**

Let me tell you something,

I brought my kids down there

And I wouldn’t bring my kids back

There was buck naked men running down the street

I spoke to some folks in the gay community

They said they weren’t going

They didn’t like the idea of men running

Middle aged men with pot bellies

I’m not dissing anyone in the gay community

There’s a lot of great people that make up this city in the gay community

Which are friends of mine

**

It’s all about customer service excellence

The best retail politician in the world

We’ll have a barbecue

Come by for a burger

We have a beer tent wine tent

Amusement rides

So we'll leave it at that

And that’s all I’ve got to say

Toronto poet Sharon Harris assembled these Doug “it’s not about truth” Ford quotes into a poem at City Hall as part as the Rob Ford Must Go Sit-In (which became the Doug Ford Must Go Sit-In). A group of protesters sat outside of the Mayor’s office for 258 days. Harris’s poems have been anthologized in The Broadview Introduction to Literature, Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere), and The Last Vispo (Fantagraphics). Her work has appeared in newspapers and magazines, and on radio and television, across Canada. Check out her two above/ground press chapbooks, Like and More Fun with 'Pataphysics.

National Poetry Month 2017 : Sharon Harris,

F e M a L e

Dirty unfinished glorious 

dollhouse of my youth, 

which I was not allowed to play with 

which sat unfinished in our house 

most of 

my life. 

Neither me nor Mom could figure out 

how to put it together 

she paid some guy named Mike 

He did most of it, but not all. 

It's been languishing in the garage for too long. 

It's dirty. 

It needs to be cleaned. 

It's yours.

Sharon Harris is a “woman of ethereal interests,” according to Toronto Life. These include poetry experiments, loveology, urban farming, the chase of love graffiti, Toronto propaganda, and baseball field photography. In 2016, Spacing Magazine named her one of “12 extraordinary Toronto women changing the city’s public realm.” NASA once remarked that one her photos is “clever,” so she’ll probably try to work that into every bio from now ’til the end of time, too. Her work has appeared on television and radio, and in newspapers, literary journals and magazines, across Canada. She hopes to send out two manuscripts of poetry (which have been "almost finished" for years) by the end of National Poetry Month, as she has not published a book since 2006.

Douglas Barbour reviews Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013

Douglas Barbour was good enough to review Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013) over at his Eclectic Ruckus. See his original review here. Thanks, Doug! This is actually the third review of Ground Rules, after Catherine Owen reviewed such over at her blog, and Ryan Pratt reviewed such over at the ottawa poetry newsletter.

Breaking ground, breaking rules:

rob mclennan, ed. Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003 – 2013 (Chaudiere Books 2013).

There are a lot of Canadian (& other) poets who are grateful rob mclennan runs above/ground press & somehow manages to publish a huge bunch of chapbooks, magazine, & broadsheets every year, no matter what else he also gets up to. And he’s been doing so for more than 2 decades now. In Ground Rules, he offers up a generous sampling of what above/ground does for those readers who just haven’t been paying attention or else couldn’t keep up.

Some critics & poets argue that eclecticism makes for weak editing, but mclennan, who has also spent all that time learning as much as he can about (especially) modern & contemporary Canadian poetry, has made it into a virtue. He likes & publishes a very wide range of poetry, but, if this anthology is anything to go by, he has a pretty good sense of what works in any particular area. Ground Rules has a smattering of single poems, including a couple of concrete beauties from derek beaulieu; but the anthology really shines in its many & varied chapbooks. These range from Nathanaël’s gender bending self-examination, ‘what exile    this,’ through the faux (& witty) ‘Text Panels’ of Lisa Samuels’s ‘The Museum of Perception,’ to Rachel Zolf’s lovely minimalist homage, ‘the naked & the nude'; & that’s just the first three.

mclennan appreciates poetic comedy: see Sharon Harris’s ‘more fun with ‘pataphysics,’ with its ‘amazing’ (& always amusing) ‘findings’ & ‘experiments in progress'; or Stephen Brockwell’s ‘Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment),’ which includes (‘From Metonomies: Poems by Objects Owned by Illustrious People‘) these lines by ‘Stephen Harper’s Shoes': ‘Long days holding up the country, / short nights breathing fresh air,’ & ‘My steel / shank would never pass security / if the face did not control it personally,’ in which the ambiguity of that pronoun speaks volumes.

mclennan appreciates the elders: see, among others, D.G. Jones, with the sly & sophisticated lyrics of ‘standard pose,’ & Robert Kroetsch, with the subtle & actively probing wit of his letters to other poets in ‘Further to Our Conversation’ (one of his last chapbooks, generously offered to various small presses). He also appreciates formal experiments, such as Emily Carr’s ‘ ] / & look there goes a sparrow transplanting soil / ] /[3 eclogues]‘ or Gregory Betts’s deconstruction of the Canadian documentary poem in ‘The Cult of David Thompson.’ I also especially enjoyed Monty Reid’s striking serial poem, ‘cuba  A book,’ Marilyn Irwin’s ‘for when you pick daisies,’ Natalie Simpson’s ‘Writing the writing,’ Julia Williams’s ‘My City is Ancient and Famous,’ & many of Eric Folsom’s ‘Northeast anti-ghazals.’ No anthology can satisfy everyone, but Ground Rules has a higher percentage of the worthwhile than most; I found all of the chapbooks worth my reading time.

As a valuable overview of the kinds of poetry above/ground press publishes or just of the kinds of poetry being written in Canada (or North America) during the first decade or so of the 21st century, Ground Rules has much to recommend it. Because it gives each poet real room, & also because it publishes new work, it provides a genuine insight into a lot of what’s happening now. Anyone interested in getting a sense of what a number of our most interesting poets have been up to recently will find Ground Rules offers a terrific introduction to their work.

Ryan Pratt reviews Ground Rules: the best of the second deacde of above/ground press, 2003-2013

Our friend Ryan Pratt reviews Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press, 2003-2013 (Chaudiere Books, 2013) over at the ottawa poetry newsletter. Thanks, Ryan!

Ground Rules launch: a report,

On Saturday, December 7, 2013, we celebrated the publication of the first title in our Chaudiere Books re-launch at The Manx Pub. Thanks so much to David O'Meara and The Manx Pub for hosting the event, and Sean Wilson and the Ottawa International Writers Festival for their sponsorship, and ongoing support. Lovingly hosted by myself, we launched Ground Rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013 [see ordering information here] to a packed house with readings by contributors Marilyn Irwin, Stephen Brockwell and Sharon Harris. We even had copies available of the limited-edition chapbook I simply began: above/ground press at 20 [an interview with rob mclennan] (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, August 2013), a lengthy interview with myself on the beginnings and history of the press that Cameron Anstee conducted [read an excerpt of such here], as well as the previous above/ground press anthology, Groundswell: the best of above/ground press 1993-2003 (Fredericton NB: Broken Jaw Press, 2003).

Marilyn Irwin has been doing quite well lately, from her 2013 Diana Brebner Award win to poems in this year's issue of New American Writing. Part of her reading included a new poem longer than a single page (as she said during her reading, anyone familiar with her work would know exactly how shocking an idea like that is). Unfortunately, I couldn't get a good picture of her (but hopefully someone else did).

Stephen Brockwell, while reading from his reprinted chapbook, Impossible Books (the Carleton Installment), included in the new anthology, was good enough to read a poem in the anthology by Stephanie Bolster. Brockwell's chapbook was an earlier work-in-progress excerpt (one of two such fragments of the same work produced through above/ground press) from what has newly appeared as The Complete Surprising Fragments of Improbable Books through Toronto's Mansfield Press. Notice, too, if you skim the crowd behind this photo of Stephen Brockwell, you can catch glimpses of Brian and Pearl Pirie, Cameron Anstee, Ben Ladouceur, Christine McNair and Monty Reid, among others.

Toronto writer and artist Sharon Harris read from a scattering of works, including her "more fun with 'pataphysics," originally produced by above/ground press as an issue of STANZAS and reprinted in the anthology, as well as a number of pieces from a couple works-in-progress. Harris is originally from Sarnia, Ontario, and read a couple of poems composed on and around her hometown (including some stories that don't seem restricted to those from Sarnia, and could easily be Ottawa Valley stories).

Writer, book conservator, designer and new co-publisher Christine McNair, who is also my lovely wife, designed and produced the book (which is absolutely gorgeous). If you can imagine, two weeks plus earlier, she managed to approve cover stock for the anthology from her hospital bed in the midst of a thirty-seven hour labour. We were enormously happy that she was able to be on hand for the event with our other co-production, two-and-a-half-week-old Rose, making this the baby's first public outing (basically, her first non-baby outing) and first literary reading. We suspect there might be many more such readings in her future!

If you were unable to make the event, fret not; the entire reading was recorded, and will be posted come spring as part of the first Chaudiere Books podcast. Expect to see at least one more Ottawa launch with different readers around the same time, and schemes are cooking to see launches in Toronto, Montreal and even Calgary. Have you joined our Facebook group yet, to keep apprised of updates? And of course, we will be announcing our Indiegogo campaign in the New Year, as well as our 2014 forthcoming titles. Stay tuned!