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,

Ongoing notes: the ottawa small press book fair (part three: Jamie Sharpe + Monty Reid,

Here are some further items I recently picked up as part of our thirtieth anniversary ottawa small press book fair [see part one of my notes ; part two of my notes]. So many things! Maybe you should come out for the next one in June?

Comox BC/QC: Curious to see a new phafours chapbook by Comox, British Columbia poet Jamie Sharpe, his Michael Hofmann: Poems (QC: phafours, 2024), following a small cluster of titles, including five full-length poetry titles through ECW Press. As the opening note of the small collection offers: “I was forty. I lived in an unassuming, but comfortable, vinyl-clad box in a small Vancouver Island town. I’d completed an English degree, then an MFA. Somehow, I authored five books. Then I became Michael Hofmann. […] Six-months after this puzzling transformation, as abruptly as it began, it ended. A modest sheaf of poems, written while I existed as Michael Hofmann, remained the residue of altered days.” As he describes living an ordinary enough life with wife and two small children, there’s a curious element of this apologia that might seem entirely familiar to anyone feeling the accumulation of life-shifts, no longer who they once were; an evolution of being and becoming, entirely natural through moments of wondering whatever became of one’s errant, fleeting youth. Or perhaps a writer with a handful of books, wondering if an evolution is required; if the writing requires a shift into or towards something other, else (this is all speculation, possibly; or overthinking on my part. Perhaps I take his framing too seriously). Is this Sharpe attempting to adapt certain elements of style from the German-born translator, critic and poet Michael Hofmann, working to step into a voice beyond his own? As a writer, an artist, one needs to evolve, certainly. Is a change as good as a rest?

One in a Row

The Northern Lights are gone, leaving
Streets as the stars scar..

As insects increase, Southerners
Fall on boulevards. Even my kids try,

With disgusting, sincere voices, to make names
With their awkwardness.

I first turned to night, as coincidence.
Succumbed to the census by accident.

Saw our constellation in a hospital,
Free. Mutilation, flash your whip

With its two golden hooks: one in vain,
The other, across dumb distance, in lace.

The poems offer a curious shift on the work from his prior publications, one that might be less of a singular shift than part of a larger move into or towards other structures, one step following another. It will be interesting to see where this particular direction might lead.

Ottawa ON/Montreal QC: Ottawa poet Monty Reid’s latest is Vertebrata (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2024), a chapbook-length sequence on some of the makings and doings of some of his inner workings of late, including issues he’s had with his back, one shoulder, arm: enough that he’s no longer able to play or perform music. “Articulates at the Luschka joints.” begins the small poem “CV3,” “Little Germanic teeth / subject to degeneration. // And the foramen / little Latinate windows / gradually closing themselves. // And the nerves die / twitching with their languages. / Their little languages.” Composed as short, compartmentalized and numbered sections: seven poems in a sequence titled “Cervical Vertebra,” twelve poems in the “Thoracic Vertebra” sequence, and five poems in the “Lumbar Vertebra” sequence, followed by the singular poems “Sacrum” and “Coccyx,” the penultimate of which reads, in full:

The federated bones have a single voice.
They do now.

Sacred bone, buttocks bone, broad bone
The bone that survives.

You sit there
and I am there for you

like a shovel in your pelvic girdle
to shovel all the shit

out of your sedentary life.

Reid has long had an attention to the smallest detail, and the ability to extend a particular thought or sequence of thoughts, offering sequences and even collections that feel akin to a single, extended sentence-thought, holding a balance between the minutae of cause and effect, the physical and the metaphysical, bone against bone and the abstract idea. “Sit on the disc / of collagen,” writes the poem “T6,” “where the metaphysical arteries / don’t penetrate // until you become / yourself. // Every bone / needs its cushion // which you are now.”

 

Spotlight series #75 : Jamie Sharpe

The seventy-fifth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Comox, British Columbia poet Jamie Sharpe.

The first eleven in the series were attached to the Drunken Boat blog, and the series has so far featured poets including Seattle, Washington poet Sarah Mangold, Colborne, Ontario poet Gil McElroy, Vancouver poet Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Ottawa poet Jason Christie, Montreal poet and performer Kaie Kellough, Ottawa poet Amanda Earl, American poet Elizabeth Robinson, American poet Jennifer Kronovet, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis, Vancouver poet Sonnet L’Abbé, Montreal writer Sarah Burgoyne, Fredericton poet Joe Blades, American poet Genève Chao, Northampton MA poet Brittany Billmeyer-Finn, Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer from Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1 territory) poet, critic and editor Joshua Whitehead, American expat/Barcelona poet, editor and publisher Edward Smallfield, Kentucky poet Amelia Martens, Ottawa poet Pearl Pirie, Burlington, Ontario poet Sacha Archer, Washington DC poet Buck Downs, Toronto poet Shannon Bramer, Vancouver poet and editor Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Vancouver poet Geoffrey Nilson, Oakland, California poets and editors Rusty Morrison and Jamie Townsend, Ottawa poet and editor Manahil Bandukwala, Toronto poet and editor Dani Spinosa, Kingston writer and editor Trish Salah, Calgary poet, editor and publisher Kyle Flemmer, Vancouver poet Adrienne Gruber, California poet and editor Susanne Dyckman, Brooklyn poet-filmmaker Stephanie Gray, Vernon, BC poet Kerry Gilbert, South Carolina poet and translator Lindsay Turner, Vancouver poet and editor Adèle Barclay, Thorold, Ontario poet Franco Cortese, Ottawa poet Conyer Clayton, Lawrence, Kansas poet Megan Kaminski, Ottawa poet and fiction writer Frances Boyle, Ithica, NY poet, editor and publisher Marty Cain, New York City poet Amanda Deutch, Iranian-born and Toronto-based writer/translator Khashayar Mohammadi, Mendocino County writer, librarian, and a visual artist Melissa Eleftherion, Ottawa poet and editor Sarah MacDonell, Montreal poet Simina Banu, Canadian-born UK-based artist, writer, and practice-led researcher J. R. Carpenter, Toronto poet MLA Chernoff, Boise, Idaho poet and critic Martin Corless-Smith, Canadian poet and fiction writer Erin Emily Ann Vance, Toronto poet, editor and publisher Kate Siklosi, Fredericton poet Matthew Gwathmey, Canadian poet Peter Jaeger, Birmingham, Alabama poet and editor Alina Stefanescu, Waterloo, Ontario poet Chris Banks, Chicago poet and editor Carrie Olivia Adams, Vancouver poet and editor Danielle Lafrance, Toronto-based poet and literary critic Dale Martin Smith, American poet, scholar and book-maker Genevieve Kaplan, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic ryan fitzpatrick, American poet and editor Carleen Tibbetts, British Columbia poet nathan dueck, Tiohtiá:ke-based sick slick, poet/critic em/ilie kneifel, writer, translator and lecturer Mark Tardi, New Mexico poet Kōan Anne Brink, Winnipeg poet, editor and critic Melanie Dennis Unrau, Vancouver poet, editor and critic Stephen Collis, poet and social justice coach Aja Couchois Duncan, Colorado poet Sara Renee Marshall, Toronto writer Bahar Orang, Ottawa writer Matthew Firth, Victoria poet Saba Pakdel, Winnipeg poet Julian Day and Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

Jamie Sharpe, Cut-Up Apologetic

My short review of Jamie Sharpe's Cut-Up Apologetic (ECW Press, 2015) is now online at Arc Poetry Magazine.

Jamie Sharpe, Animal Husbandry Today

My short review of Jamie Sharpe's Animal Husbandry Today (ECW Press, 2012) is now online at Arc Poetry Magazine.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jamie Sharpe

Jamie Sharpe’s first book of poetry, Animal Husbandry Today, is now out from ECW Press. His writing and art has appeared in magazines throughout Canada and the U.S. He is the chief editor of the Associative Press (http://www.theassociativepress.com), a literary and arts journal, printed annually.

1 - How did your first book change your life?
There’s a relief in letting poems go. I’m no longer compelled to tinker with them or find a place they can reside. Life goes on pretty much the same, but I’m free to focus elsewhere. Maybe the book will allow for new opportunities? Maybe not. I’m happy the work is out there.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?
I’ve published some short fiction and non-fiction also. What form a piece takes is largely intuitive. The boundaries of poetry and prose have become pretty indistinct to me.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
I think of myself as a slow but steady writer. Animal Husbandry Today represents about five years of work (others might see this as steadily slow).

Most meaningful edits happen pretty close to a poem’s conception. Once something sits for too long I find it less malleable. Months (or years) later I’ll still chip away at work, but the changes are small: a moved comma or erased word.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?
Often poems come to me in the form of experiments: what happens when I take idea “A” and mash it with “B”? Other times I explore overheard phrases, lines from books, scraps from life. More than once a poem has spontaneously materialized, complete in my mind, while I shower.

Although my poems are composed as autonomous entities, once corralled together they share a (sometimes frightening) similitude—like family members gathered around Thanksgiving dinner.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
Readings aren’t part of my creative process. From the oral history tradition onward, through people like Ginsberg to modern Slam, a lot of poetry demands to be heard. Then there’s poetry made for the page. I want my work to exist disembodied from me. Instead of doing a reading I’d much prefer something akin to a gallery opening with poetry broadsides taped to the wall.

My hesitancy around readings stems from shortcomings: I have trouble following the spoken word (have to read work myself for full appreciation) & I’m too anxious when doing a reading to enjoy it.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work?
Sometimes I want poetry to be wonderfully useless in the way I imagine yoga is. When was the last time you Downward Facing Dog-ed at work? The pose is ridiculous. If only I could make a ridiculous poem that stretched the brain, allowing for a slightly greater range of potential thought.

7 - What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Does s/he even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
A writer’s job is to write: to be a cartographer of thought. What direction, if any, people then take with the writing is beyond control.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
Essential. I feel very fortunate to have been published by ECW. ECW had both in-house and external editors scour my work, making it a better collection than I could on my own.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
Two pieces of advice come to mind, especially when taken in conjunction. The comic illustrator, Wallace Wood, remarked, “never draw what you can copy, never copy what you can trace, never trace what you can cut.” Dean Young said, “your genius is your error.” I try to rip everyone off but, in my enthusiastic haste, create my own thing.
   
10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (writing to art)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s the same genre to me. I approach whatever medium I’m working in through poetry. I see my visual art as poems. My prose aspires to poetry. I try to sweep floors with a poetic flourish.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I build my days around coffee, vibrating words from the keyboard with caffeine.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?
I’m not too concerned with output. Writing is a way for me to process life as needed. I’m not in the poem manufacturing business. There are no quotas to reach. That said, I find reading outside my usual sphere often prompts new work.

13 – What fragrance reminds you of home?
Since my wife returned from India our place smells like a bazaar. Somehow cumin or green cardamom works its way into most meals.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Everything is fair game; open season began yesterday.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?
Too many to list. I’ve been reading a lot of Lydia Davis lately.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
Spend autumn in the Maritimes. Play a World Series of Poker event.

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
One of my notable traits is I’m incapable of boredom. Because of this I’m well suited to repetitive tasks. I spent a fall happily picking grapes (unfortunately this isn’t a viable career in Whitehorse—their aren’t many grape varietals that thrive under two feet of snow).

I was close to completing the Master of Teaching program at the University of Calgary and still spend most summers as an English as a second language instructor.

Growing up, I worked in a lot of record stores. How’s the music industry doing these days?

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing was/is a compulsion, not a rationalized decision.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
Books: Craig Boyko’s Psychology and Other Stories (prose); Ben Mirov's Hider Roser (poetry).

Films: Chinatown & Network (Faye Dunaway!).

20 - What are you currently working on?
There’s always lots of things on the go: my MFA; a series of visual poems, similar to the images in Animal Husbandry Today, designed to stand without accompanying text; a novella; a chapbook of poems, all six lines or less, entitled Uncomfortable Glances, Insignificant Men.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;