the ottawa small press book fair : home edition #12 : above/ground press,

above/ground press hosted its first launch on July 9, 1993 in a café that no longer exists, in a building that no longer stands, on Ottawa’s Lisgar Street. Over twenty-seven years, above/ground press has produced more than one thousand items, including more than four hundred single-author poetry chapbooks, and currently also produces the quarterly Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], the occasional Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors], as well as the new online journal periodicities:a journal of poetry and poetics.

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 and 2017. In March, 2016, he was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. His most recent poetry titles include A halt, which is empty (Mansfield Press, 2019) and Life sentence, (Spuyten Duyvil, 2019). He co-founded the ottawa small press book fair in fall 1994 with James Spyker, and has run the fair solo twice a year since.

Q: Tell me about your press. How long have you been publishing, and what got you started?

I started self-producing chapbooks in 1992, realizing that there wasn’t anyone as excited to produce my work as I was. I had officially founded above/ground by the following summer, after realizing how relatively easy it was to produce chapbooks, and seeing the poets in my immediate vicinity that I thought were doing interesting work. Moving through the shelves in the library at the University of Ottawa, I saw small and micro press as something exciting and engaging, although entirely historical. I didn’t see much in the way of publishing around me, so I started above/ground press to produce chapbooks, as well as the chapbook-sized long poem journal, STANZAS, a journal I distributed gratis, with some forty-five issues produced from 1993 to 2006. Early above/ground press authors included David Collins, Tamara Fairchild and Joe Blades.

Q: How many times have you exhibited at the ottawa small press fair? How do you find the experience?

I have, obviously, been at every one! The shifts have been interesting over the years, although I’ve found the fair as an experience has been consistently good for at least eighteen years, if not more. It took a couple of years for audience to figure out we existed, and what we were actually doing. What I also really like is seeing the same exhibitors, year after year, as well as new exhibitors emerging, and seeing what the new publications are. There’s such an incredible wealth of material being produced that I can barely keep up.

Q: Would you have made something specific for this spring’s fair? Are you still doing that? How does the lack of spring fair this year effect how or what you might be producing?

I’m not sure I would have made anything specific for the fair that I haven’t simply produced during lock-down. I had been hoping to launch the Michael e. Casteels collaboration at the pre-fair event (as we had discussed that as a possibility), but I still produced the chapbook in the same way I would have.

Q: How are you, as a small publisher, approaching the myriad shut-downs? Is everything on hold, or are you pushing against the silences, whether in similar or alternate ways than you might have prior to the pandemic? How are you getting your publications out into the world?

The bulk of my sales come through subscriptions and mail order, so that hasn’t changed. I still have a certain amount of sales through small press fairs, so I am missing that, as well as the human element. I’ve long known that there are certain times that purchases are more likely in person than online, so there are some opportunities being lost through this, but we’ll get there eventually. I am disappointed to not be able to hold my annual anniversary event this year, given the previous have been so wonderfully attended by both writers and audience (over the past few years, I’ve been ridiculous enough to attempt to launch ten new titles per anniversary event), but there’s not a whole lot I can do about that. I’ve wondered about ways to hold an alternate to the in-person anniversary reading for lock-down, but haven’t quite come up with the right kind of idea, yet.

Q: Have you done anything in terms of online or virtual launches since the pandemic began? Have you attended or participated in others? How are you attempting to connect to the larger literary community?

Back in March, I started working on a ‘virtual reading series’ over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics, posting short videos online of a variety of poets reading from their work, but nothing specifically for above/ground. It has been fun to see the reactions to the videos, as well as seeing the videos themselves, part of which has allowed me to actually see and hear certain poets I’ve known for years for the first time. I’ve participated in a ZOOM reading, and even watched a couple, including one Christine McNair participated in recently, but not much more than that. I like that they exist, but I tend to get distracted by the evenings, and tend to want to nest. The bulk of my outreach interactions, instead, have been through Canada Post.

Q: Has the pandemic forced you to rethink anything in terms of production? Are there supplies or printers you haven’t access to during these times that have forced a shift in what and how you produce?

When the original lock-down first hit, I lost access to all of my print options, but had, fortunately, already produced a couple of items I hadn’t yet announced. I did have to make a cover for the April 2020 issue of Touch the Donkey with materials I had already on-hand, which I felt pretty lucky about. I mean, even having enough materials to be able to fake a cover. I also had to learn how to send print orders through the Staples.ca online system for two different issues of G U E S T (although designed by Christine McNair and natalie hanna, respectively), which I didn’t care for in the least. Once the stores opened up a bit, I worked to produce as much material as possible for eventual release, in case lock-downs might resume. Back in June, I produced so much material that I haven’t yet managed to fold and staple all of them, including chapbook set for July, August and September release, and the October 2020 issue of Touch the Donkey. I’m thinking that if we’ve a further wave, I want to be prepared with publications already on-hand (with the presumption that Canada Post will remain as an option for sending out author packages and subscription envelopes). Who knows what might happen next?

Q: What are your most recent publications? How might folk be able to order copies?

Oh, I’ve been ridiculously busy, with new chapbooks over the past few weeks by Rose Maloukis, Sarah Burgoyne, Buck Downs, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, orchid tierney, Derek Beaulieu, Julia Drescher, Misha Solomon, Dani Spinosa and Andrew Cantrell as well as an issue of Touch the Donkey. Copies can be ordered through the direct links to their publications (there’s a whole sidebar of links to names on the site, which provide access to each author’s most recent above/ground press publication), or through sending me an email: rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com

Q: What are you working on now?

I’d love to receive further videos in the ‘virtual reading series,’ and am working on upcoming issues of Touch the Donkey (I usually work to be three to four issues ahead) and monthly content at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. For above/ground specifically, I’m working on new chapbooks by Zane Koss, Jérôme Melançon, Kemeny Babineau, Sarah Burgoyne (a collaboration with her mother) and a further by Julia Drescher, as well as the next issue of G U E S T, which was guest-edited by Jim Johnstone. Further issues down the line will be edited by Karen Schindler and Michael Sikkema (see his call for submissions on such here). I’ve already produced a second chapbook by Dublin poet Paul Perry, with a September release date, just so he can receive his contributor copies around the same time the book might be announced (it takes six to eight weeks for packages to head overseas).

Recent Reads: "North" by Marilyn Irwin

North by Marilyn Irwin

Published by above/ground press, 2017.

(&)

he said he wouldn’t speak

to me ever again

if i killed myself

This is the opening page from North, a chapbook by Marilyn Irwin that documents a woman’s unraveling life. Perspective here is obscured by depression, plainspoken in sparse lines that communicate exhaustion but just as evocative through omissions – the disassociated flitting between subjects and settings. After moving from a clinical environment of bed straps and wired windows to a domestic refuge of bedcover stasis, the text hones in on smaller maneuvers, sharing various interactions in a semi-present state.

(&)

goes to an interview

she puts bright colours on

and what she thinks is a smile

she doesn’t get the job

she repeats this 17 more times

And in a later stanza:

(&)

her mother asks if she is tired

this is my voice now

she says

A lot of creative writing about depression drives to the net: protagonist suffers a steep mental decline followed by an act of self-harm (which, callously speaking, acts as the money shot). This isn’t a totally inaccurate depiction so much as a limited one, often exploited in CliffsNotes form as a plot point in some greater narrative. Inattention to the broader scope of depression – the creeping isolation, fatigue and gradual surrendering of capacities – might rescue readers from "the boring stuff" but it also implies that the author looks in on this condition as otherness.

Quite the opposite, North shapes this woman’s chronic fog like a lived-in experience, embodying mental illness through feelings of exclusion and the banality of repeated tasks. The intentional overuse of the ampersand may entwine each narrative instance for one marathon, run-on sentence but it’s the author’s restraint – the precision in voice and diction – that transmits so much despondency in so few words. Almost every line feels like it could be the last.

Where the title comes into play is “epilogue”, wherein Irwin switches from “she” to the personal “I” and makes an oblique reference halfway through:

a thank you card in the mail

a job application to Toronto

she chose north

It’s the only mention of “she” in “epilogue” and, given the prior couplet, it’s possible that “north” is being used geographically. Or, perhaps the abrupt change in perspective is making a solemn, figurative pronouncement – who’s to say? With the uncertainty of “epilogue”, Irwin throws a wrench into her own well-constructed malaise and alerts readers, who had settled into the woman’s decline, to re-evaluate both voices. No spoilers here – I only have theories – but North is a haunting little chapbook that sharpens "the boring stuff" into vital, heart-churning attempts at salvaging a life. 

Recent reads: "Vesper Vigil" by Bronwen Tate

Vesper Vigil by Bronwen Tate
Published by above/ground press, 2016.

"You sleep, I sigh, we mingle breath like lovers –
I reach a stealthy hand, adjust the sheet.
Somewhere between sentiment and complaint
are words to name the child sleeping here"


So begins Vesper Vigil, a collection of sonnets which chronicle the last weeks of Bronwen Tate’s pregnancy with this perfectly succinct ambiguity – how it feels to be pinned down by what we love most. True to her intent, Tate records both the daily parenting of her young son and the approaching birth of her daughter without getting precious or irate. Instead, she employs a tenderness that seesaws between love and pain, gentle yet sore to touch.


“Will this lumpy baby ever come out?”
Owen considers, replies “I don’t know”.
So we measure days in peaches, bruises,
bruised peaches, it’s the body that chooses."


Tate explores the fragile limits of our bodies – how we feed, grow and injure them – within the framework of domesticated routines that gauge her excruciating wait. Every seemingly casual digression probes one of two spectres, the impending pain or joy. They’re a package deal, of course, and her bittersweet tone acknowledges it. Like the development of a fetus, these sonnets mature in nerves that feel deeply rooted thanks to the sing-song rhyme scheme. Each page can encapsulate hours or weeks. Her choice of form allows that compression rate without sacrificing a fluid rhythm, though – as is common with the sonnet – rhymes occasionally raise an eyebrow. (Did she really play disco, or does it just rhyme with San Francisco, etc.?) In any case, by the time she’s admitted to her hospital room, the anxiety and loneliness of third-trimester pregnancy is palpable:


"I’ve taken Misoprostol, Cervidil,
now sitting, watch contraction numbers rise,
one hand to hold the heart monitor still,
slight lag between the pain and peaking highs.
We left with early fog but found no bed,
paced corridors and watched the shifting crane,
took Owen to a playground, sat and read,
called only to be postponed again.
At two at last they showed me to my room,
this prison of uncertain duration,
can’t leave these walls till baby quits the womb,
perch on window bench, await dilation.
Alone now, I breathe through pains, try to sleep.
The road to you be gentle, dark, and steep."


Reading the above selection, I realize how little I’ve contemplated the psychological effects of pregnancy and childbirth. (Just analyzing Tate's thought that, once admitted, she cannot leave the hospital without first enduring an unknown pain gives my pulse a race.) As someone who looks in on parenthood from the outside, that’s my biggest takeaway from this chapbook. Tate manages to imbue archetypal family dynamics with a memorable dose of personal details, creating an unguarded glance at motherhood in transition.

Recent Reads: "from Lamentations" by Robert Hogg

from Lamentations by Robert Hogg

2^nd Edition. Published by above/ground press, 2016.

As its title suggests, from Lamentations is a sampler of poems from an as-yet-unreleased body of work about memory. That this is the compilation’s expanded, second edition implies considerable gestation time. But even without knowing that, the sporadic growth of this manuscript can be measured by dates that accompany each poem, marking when their finished drafts occurred. As a result, Robert Hogg explores the past in layers, writing about his childhood and formative years in the 1950s and 1960s via perspectives he held on dates ranging from the early '90s up until January of this year.

Hogg pokes and prods these breadcrumbs of autobiography for gleanings beyond his own experience. “Roy Rogers – a jazz elegy” and “Summer of sixty-three” deal in fractured, stream-of-conscious details that transpose the youthful significance of its subjects to disquieting uncertainty. He slows his boyhood’s galloping adoration for Hollywood cowboy Roy Rogers to examine the simple “good against evil” doctrine of America’s wild west:

the colorful black and white dazzle of your perfect horsemanship riding

full speed the reins wrapped around the horn those mother of pearl six guns

twirling round your index fingers and firing so perfectly the outlaws seemed

to fall and die but not really it was just like the make-believe we also played

Jesus Roy did you know all that when you practiced your squint in the mirror and 

yodelled all those songs on the radio nights we were too young to know any better and

thought it was real romance?

Later, in "Summer of sixty-three", he steadies a romanticized image of his “bohemian goodfornothing but love and lovemaking friends” upon the dulling of years passed:

1325

West Pender

Coal Harbour

place itself

nervous and precarious as this pad

perched on its stilts above a steep ravine

and below near the shoreline the rail yard

abyss we all knew

time was or would be

Tight, conservative stanzas like the above excerpt follow wooly, run-on yarns – sometimes within the same poem – as though the writer is torn between rose-tinted nostalgia and the dislocation of trying to categorize certain memories, decades on. Yet these poems aren’t so much conflicted by age as they are counterbalanced, the wild and restrained Robert Hogg appearing on page in roughly equal measure. The tone’s just right – good natured but deeply felt.

With “Ahead (in memoriam, Bob Creeley” and “Synapse, Mid-Morning, January”, the chapbook takes on true existential colours; the former poem aiding a good friend in traveling the mysteries of afterlife and the latter finding Hogg at present day, kindling a wood stove. There’s no sentiment in this last poem, just small observations on the present moment. And given so much space to interpret, I wonder if "Synapse, Mid-Morning, January" provides such a contrast from the bulk of from Lamentations because it signals the sort of insight one's left with after seventy-odd years on Earth. There's no ego; just a new memory, cut at the root.