new from above/ground press: Sharpe, Saklikar, Heroux, Cone, Ladouceur, Ramos (trans. Greene), eckhoff, Sikkema, Browne, Gordon + Ross,

Premières Poésies by Eudore Évanturel (1878), Jamie Sharpe $6 ; Voices from Planet X ~ speculative verse from the THOTJBAP series, Renée Sarojini Saklikar $6 ; My Life as a Notebook, Jason Heroux $6 ; What's Left, Ken Norris $6 ; Against Perfectionism & other poems, Jon Cone $6 ; The Last Man, Ben Ladouceur $6 ; EL REY MURCIÉLAGO // THE BAT KING, by Yaxkin Melchy Ramos, translated by Ryan Greene $6 ; POEMS I DIDN’T WRITE, kevin mcpherson eckhoff $6 ; Just a Minute, Moon’s too Loud, Michael Sikkema $6 ; Daily Self-Portrait Valentine, Laynie Browne $6 ; COPIUM …or…The Audacity of Dope, Nada Gordon $6 ; AND THEN THE GENTILE LIT THE CANDLES: Seven Stories, Stuart Ross $6

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August-September 2025
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

And did you see my report on this summer's above/ground press 32nd anniversary event?

To order, send cheques (add $2 for postage; in US, add $3; outside North America, add $7) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button (above). See the prior list of recent titles here, scroll down here to see a further list of various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material; and you know above/ground press has a substack now? sign up (for free!) for announcements, and even new features! catch recent/forthcoming interviews with Guy Birchard, Jill Stengal, Lillian Nećakov, Cary Fagan, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ken Norris, Michael Sikkema, Ben Ladouceur, Nathanael O'Reilly, Micah Ballard, Lydia Unsworth, etc.

With forthcoming chapbooks by: Lance La Rocque, David Gaffney, russell carisse, Kevin Spenst, Lillian Nećakov, Jill Stengel, Cary Fagan and Rebecca Comay, Guy Birchard, Benjamin Niespodziany, Buck Downs, Jeremy Luke Hill, Eudore Évanturel (trans. by Jamie Sharpe, Charlotte Jung and Johannes S.H. Bjerg, Mrityunjay Mohan, David Phillips, and probably others! (yes: others, (I've actually been reading submissions lately, which is pretty exciting,

AND 2026 SUBSCRIPTIONS ARE NOW AVAILABLE (but you probably already know that,

above/ground press author spotlights : substack,

Over at the above/ground press substack [free to sign up for and free to leave] I've been posting a series of interviews with above/ground press authors with multiple titles through the press [as above/ground press authors with only a single title often get covered in the essays posted over at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics] with new interviews posted so far with Amish Trivedi, Brook Houglum, Orchid Tierney, Jason Christie, Steph Gray, Monty Reid and Lydia Unsworth, with further interviews scheduled with Micah Ballard, Nathanael O’Reilly and Michael Sikkema, and even further interview currently-in-progress (as well as new titles forthcoming) with Ben Ladouceur and Renée Sarojini Saklikar. Click the links to see the posted interviews so far, and even sign up to catch what might come next! The next few months of above/ground press really does have some exciting material coming through. And be sure to watch in a few weeks for the announcement for 2026 subscriptions!

VERSeFest (mini) 2024 : a report from the ground,

In case you hadn't heard, we did a mini-"fall into VERSeFest" in November, all part of our rebuilding period for our much beloved poetry festival, heading into our sixteenth year with current plans for spring 2025 programming. Can you believe it? And you know, we do have charitable status, if you are ever open to sending a donation our way. What might spring bring?

And you caught my report on our spring 2024 festival as well, yes?

Our November trio of nights opened on Thursday, November 28 at RedBird Live in Old Ottawa South with the delightful Madeleine Stratford as host, filling in for the scheduled host Stephen Brockwell, who was unable; she played up that she was Stephen Brockwell, "not feeling myself," and looking like another, a poet and translator. The evening held a quartet of stunning readings. Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick read from her new poetry title with Anvil Press, Ox Lost, Snow Deep (2024) [did you see my recent interview with her here], and it was interesting to hear her stretch the possibilities of her work through the long poem [catch my review of her new book here, in case you missed]. She even conducted a small afternoon in-person poetry workshop as part of the festival on Saturday afternoon,

Following Burdick, Ottawa/Burlington poet Manahil Bandukwala [catch my recent interview with her here] launched her second full-length title with Brick Books, Heliotropia (2024), a book I'm still waiting to get my hands on (perhaps as the mail starts up again), accompanied by her "electric guitar boyfriend," Liam Burke. Our French-language Ottawa poet laureate Véronique Sylvain followed, offering poems from her second collection, which launched only a few weeks prior through Éditions Prise de parole.

And, to close out our opening evening, Cobourg, Ontario poet, editor, writer, publisher, events organizer etcetera Stuart Ross (who had also edited Alice Burdick's latest collection, as well as her prior), launching his new poetry title with Coach House Books, a publisher he offered he'd been waiting decades to work with: The Sky Is a Sky in the Sky (2024) [see my review of such here; see my essay on his short fiction as well here]. The collection does seem a culmination of everything he's accomplished to date, and I'm curious to see where he might go with his work next.

Our second night, Friday, November 29, opened in the Arts Court Studio with an event celebrating fifteen years of Urban Legends (who have been running spoken word poetry workshops, in case you weren't aware), hosting performances by three of their current/former directors, opening with Billie Nell, who I thought stole the show. As they said as part of the event (and others have said over the past couple of years as well), spoken word in and around Ottawa is but a shadow of its former self, and I admire greatly that these folk are working to keep the form current, active and relevant (attend their workshops!).

Apollo the Child [above] is always a solid performer, one of the standards of the Ottawa scene for some time, and he even had copies of a recent publication, with a further publication to appear soon in the new year. Much like Billie Nell, the work of Playto aka Panos was entirely new to me, and he performed a handful of poems that focused on new and recent parenthood (with one of his small children in the crowd, also).

Our second event of the evening was hosted by Ottawa poet and newly-minted VERSe Ottawa board member (with a debut novel forthcoming, you know) Ben Ladouceur. The first reader was Ottawa-favourite Chuqiao Yang (clearly the lighting in the space changed, and these photos seem terrible, don't they?), reading from her long-awaited full-length poetry debut, The Last to the Party (Goose Lane Editions, 2024) [see my review of such here].

Admittedly, I was extra excited to hear from Montreal-based poet Faith Paré, who is doing remarkable work, and even moreso when one considers she hasn't yet a full-length book [see the interview I did with her earlier this year, prior to her winning the Bronwen Wallace Award].

It had been a while since I'd heard Vancouver poet Stephen Collis read in person (most likely in spring 2013; I have a recollection of him reading in Ottawa back then), here to launch his latest poetry title from Talonbooks, The Middle (2024) [see my review of such here]. It is interesting to hear how his work has progressed, becoming more expansive and thoughtful as he moves ever forward, extending his lyric reach ever outward, even as his work becomes more grounded, intimate.

Our final event came the following afternoon (including some attendees from Alice Burdick's afternoon poetry workshop) at The Manx Pub, hosted by Ottawa English-language Poet Laureate David O'Meara and his Plan 99 Reading Series, a packed house to hear our final trio of exceptional poets [catch my interview with O'Meara on his laureateship here]. To open the afternoon was Kingston-based poet, writer and filmmaker Armand Garnet Ruffo [see my recent interview with him here]. He used to live in Ottawa, you know, so a whole slew of audience was there to hear him, especially that he was launching a new title with Wolsak and Wynn, The Dialogues: The Song of Francis Pegahmagabow (2024).

Current Winnipeg Poet Laureate Chimwemwe Undi followed, reading from her Governor General's Award for Poetry winning (debut!) title, Scientific Marvel (Anansi, 2024) [see my review of such here], an award she won between announcing our line-up and her landing in Ottawa to read (so extra kudos to O'Meara's curation for this particular event). She did mention how unreal the award seemed to her, and expecting that she could still hear from them that the award was supposed to go to someone else instead, akin to Moonlight [the Academy Award "envelope-gate" debacle from 2017, in case you'd forgot]. I suggested that, no, she was not the La La Land of Canadian poetry.

It was good to have Dutch poet Erik Lindner back in Ottawa! He's read in town a few times over the past decade-plus, starting with an event years back through the Ottawa International Writers Festival. He read his poems in Dutch, and David O'Meara read from English translation, some of which came from his Words are the Worst: Selected Poems, as translated by Francis Jones (Vehicule Press, 2021).

Thank you to our host and our venues, and everyone who helped out! Thank you to the City of Ottawa and the Dutch Embassy for support! Thanks to Brian Pirie for his web design and ongoing assistance! And to the current VERSe Ottawa board, without whom this couldn't have happened at all.

Keep an eye on our website! We're hoping to announce an occasional series of in-person poetry workshops in the new year, and of course our spring festival! We've already been having meetings, you know. And did you hear we're hoping to announce the next nominees for our Hall of Honour come spring? Stay tuned!

Ben Ladouceur, Mad Long Emotion

THE UNTROUBLED MIND

before I came here I lived in the ground

therein I read the story of the artist on the mesa

her suffering formed a bloom she slid her tongue into

so faint her pencil work we could not see it in 260p resolution

I saw a vast white plane in her

the window bisected the snow from below

the frost flash-frozen flassine distributed evenly clear

last night of my lease can you see me

backlit by the Keurig its laser show begging us for water

if yes how whole is the form

Ottawa poet Ben Ladouceur’s second full-length poetry title is Mad Long Emotion (Toronto ON Coach House Books, 2019), a book that follows his award-nominated Otter (Coach House Books, 2015). In contrast to what his title suggests, Ladouceur’s is a poetry of emotional exactness, composed via a meditative grace of humour, odd turns and observation. His lines can be meaty, thick with sound and created with a lightness that allows for a gymnastic ability to bounce, such as the ending of “ASSINOBOINE PARK ZOO,” where he writes: “All monsters on earth were once like me, / adept at love, composed // of meat, silent with ongoingness, hydraulics well-greased / with blood that stays blue, so long as you / don’t let it out.”

As American poet CAConrad suggests, as part of the back cover blurb, Ladouceur’s work includes descriptors such as “precarious,” but his poems are also incredibly quick and smart, even clever, deftly making a series of playfully quick turns and re-turns, such as the opening of “THE GREEN CARNATION,” that writes: “Fashion is currently pineapples / and sending people // home with home- / made party favours. Fashion fades, // but also, fades are in. / My barber’s students want // to give each man on earth a killer / fade, to sort the men, to make men sort // of fade away.” Really, what I appreciate in Ladouceur’s poems, especially in poems longer than half a page or so, is the pacing; how he is able to pause and stretch out before moving forward, such as this fragment of the longer sequence “Lime Kiln Quay Road,” a piece originally produced as his bpNichol Chapbook Award-shortlisted chapbook:

If everyone around you

talks funny

then no they don’t.

It’s you.

You talk funny.

So,

I talk funny.

I take a call from home

outside.

Maybe reception is better.

The wind falls into the rapeseed

in stitches.

Reception is no better.

What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, edited by Rob Taylor

Thammavongsa: Describe an image of a place you’ve travelled, and why it’s important to you to have been there.

Brand: The Atacama Desert. It was the quiet of it as soon as I arrived. This quiet settled everything I had been experiencing before; it quelled several years of disturbance.

Thammavongsa: Deserts are examples of maximalism. The quiet can be so large, so weighted, it is louder than any disturbance. I say this because it’s how I like to think of my writing. The quiet, the silence, the nothing there is maximized. I make things bare and I amplify that.

Brand: It’s wonderful that you say deserts are examples of maximalism. I had strangely thought minimalism! I wanted to go someplace empty of noise. You are right, the silence crowded out the disturbance.

            You’ve been to a desert; what was it like for you?

Thammavongsa: Yes. In Marfa, Texas. The land was so flat. All I noticed was sky. It made me feel seasick. It was too much. And I loved the tumbleweeds. I was so happy to see them. I know that tumbleweeds began somewhere and they take the shape they have because nothing stood in the way of their tumbling-toward.

I’m impressed with the interviews (more specifically: the conversations) in the collection What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation, edited by Vancouver poet and critic Rob Taylor (Gibsons BC: Nightwood Editions, 2018). This book is self-described as a response and follow-up to another Nightwood title, Where the Words Come From (2002), edited by Tim Bowling, as Taylor explains in his introduction:

            The structure of this book mirrors the last, with a few key adjustments. We’ve added poems to the book—poems which, for the most part, are mentioned in the conversations themselves—in hopes they will deepen the reader’s experience. We’ve also set out to have these be true conversations as opposed to interviews, with both poets posing questions to one another and contributing equally. Tied to that, while the book does adhere to the structure of pairing established and up-and-coming poets, the qualifications for who fits in which category were amorphous and largely ignored while finalizing a pairing. There are poets in the up-and-coming slots who have published as many books, or are nearly as old, as some of the “established” poets. Oh rule sticklers, it’s a mess! Fortunately, you’re entering a party and not a coronation.

What the Poets are Doing: Canadian Poets in Conversation includes ten conversations between an intriguing array of paired currently-active Canadian poets—Steven Heighton and Ben Ladouceur, Armand Garnet Ruffo and Liz Howard, Sina Queyras and Canisia Lubrin, Dionne Brand and Souvankham Thammavongsa, Marilyn Dumont and Katherena Vermette, Sue Goyette and Linda Besner, Karen Solie and Amanda Jernigan, Russell Thornton and Phoebe Wang, Tim Bowling and Raoul Fernandes, and Elizabeth Bachinsky and Kayla Czaga, as well as an afterward co-written by Nick Thran and Sue Sinclair—running quite the range of engaged contemporary writers from emerging to established, and lyric to the more experimental. The highlights abound, but some of what struck included an utterly charming and illuminating sequence of seeming non-sequiturs between Dionne Brand and Souvankham, the conversational topography between Steven Heighton and Ben Ladouceur, and a fascinating conversation between Armand Garnet Ruffo and Liz Howard, two poets of similar heritage; born a generation apart, they were both raised in the village of Chapleau in Northern Ontario. As their conversation includes:

Howard: I think you’re exactly right that there is this all-too-steady gaze on the traumatic Indigenous experience. I also often wonder about what might be called Indigenous “futurisms,” or futures or possibilities, aesthetic potentials as you have said. I think I have made a way toward that in my work. At least that was the intention, the necessity. The fracturing, the hardship, the wound, whether within oneself and/or within one’s lineage as an Indigenous person is a fact. The question is what to do? Ultimately for myself as a writer, I discovered the figure of the infinite citizen of the shaking tent. Perhaps I am a kind of slippery, in-between, trickster spirit. I suppose this is the figure of myself as a writer that could compose in so many formally inventive and generative ways, pulling in neuroscience, the bush, Western philosophy, Nanabozho, dreams, calling down the sky, Toronto streets, ecological concerns and so on, and compressing them all together into my account, my gift, my book. The trauma, the silence, the absence is there too. But I think it is an ultimately joyful text. I see your work on Norval as being along the same lines. You don’t leave him with us as either a tragic or revelatory figure. He’s deeply human. I see the possibilities for Indigenous work as being an open and variegated as each of our stories.

Honestly, while going through this collection, I’m a bit surprised that there hasn’t been more talk around just how strong this assemblage of conversations actually is. This is, I would say, one of the examples of the follow-up surpassing the original, moving beyond the limitations of a particular aesthetic into a possibility of subject matter, one that is incredibly far-ranging and timely. Part of what this curated list of poets allows for is also the possibility for multiple conversations around race, representation and how a variety of violences have impacted individuals and communities, as well as writing, and how writing has been forced to adapt in response. Over the past decade or so, conversations around diversity, colonialism, #MeToo, #IdleNoMore and other topics that had long been bubbling under the surface have risen to the mainstream, and a series of shifts in publishing and possibility have allowed the same to emerge in writing as well, and this book does well to allow for those conversations, some of which might be seen as long overdue.