Tuesday, March 14, 2023

above/ground press 2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : five days in March,

As part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary (oh, there are some cool things coming up later this year as part of this), I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair, which I did, across the five days of the conference over at the above/ground press site. While I’ve never actually attended myself (being unaffiliated with any organization that might assist with funds to attend such a thing), it does seem like a pretty cool destination. An Ottawa one would be nice; should they just host an Ottawa one? And across those five days, I began to ask myself: just how offsite is offsite? What does it mean, exactly? One suspects that, in the end, we all might discover that the true meaning of #AWP was actually inside of us this whole time.

To see the whole series of participating videos, either link on the individual days’ posts via the above/ground press site, or even head over to the YouTube channel, which also includes more than one hundred videos of poets reading as part of the ‘virtual reading series’ via periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. Thanks to everyone who participated!


DAY ONE: Terri Witek/Cyriaco Lopes, Ben Robinson, Jérôme Melançon, Melanie Dennis Unrau + MLA Chernoff,

DAY TWO: Jessi MacEachern, Jason Heroux, William Vallières, Lindsey Webb + Julia Drescher,

DAY THREE: Lillian Nećakov, Amish Trivedi, Jason Christie, Laura Kelsey + Angela Rebrec,

DAY FOUR: Derek Beaulieu, Nathanael O'Reilly, Emily Izsak, Jenny Qi + Pete Smith,

DAY FIVE: Zane Koss, Robert van Vliet + Joanne Arnott,

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