book launch: rob mclennan + Garth Martens (w Jennifer Baker + Margo LaPierre) : Oct 21, Perfect Books, Ottawa

hey, Ottawa! come out on Wednesday, October 21 to Perfect Books on Elgin Street to catch Victoria poet Garth Martens and myself launching new poetry titles! alongside Ottawa poets Jennifer Baker and Margo LaPierre.

hosted by David O'Meara, Ottawa (English language) Poet Laureate
Wednesday, October 21, 7-8pm, Perfect Books (258A Elgin Street)

Garth Martens, launching Who Else in the Dark Headed There (Biblioasis, 2026)
rob mclennan, launching edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026)

Garth Martens is the author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence and Who Else in the Dark Headed There. For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is also a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poetry appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is also a member of Palabra Flamenco, a literary flamenco ensemble that joins traditional flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria, BC.

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. His most recent titles include the poetry collections the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and edgeless (Caitlin Press, 2026), the book-length essay A river runs through it: a writing diary, collaborating with Julie Carr (Spuyten Duyvil, 2026), On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

Margo LaPierre is a freelance book editor and poet. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, was published by Guernica Editions, and is currently nominated for the 2026 Ottawa Book Award for Fiction. She has won national awards for her editing, fiction, and poetry and seeks to destigmatize bipolar disorder and psychosis.

Jennifer Baker is a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Ottawa, and the author of four chapbooks: Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014), Groundling (Trainwreck Press, 2021 & above/ground press, 2023), Memento Mishka (with David Currie, Apt. 9 Press, 2023) and Wee Walk (above/ground press, 2026). She is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to experimental poetics, and her material poetics appears in Delisted Project (Third Thing Press, 2026). She is the former Poetry Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine from 2023-2025, including a special Winter 2025 guest issue on The New Material Ecopoetics.

two new chapbooks, the uAlberta writer-in-residence (online) showcase, an interview + an above/ground press (zoom) conversation,

So, ryan fitzpatrick interviewed me across those early days of the pandemic, a selection of such is now available online via his MODEL Press as a free pdf download (check out further titles here, of course), in case such intrigues. As well, I've two recent chapbooks through above/ground press: an excerpt of my work-in-progress poetry manuscript, Origin Stories, in which I responded across 2025 to Benjamin Niespodziany's weekly "Sunday poem + prompt" substack, and an excerpt of "the green notebook," a prose writing and reading journal composed across a full calendar year (a number of which I'd been posting-as-excerpts across my substack). Watch, also, as I've got forthcoming chapbooks through Broke Press and Subpress, which is pretty cool.

I'm doing two online events over the next little bit. This Friday evening I'm part of the online Writer-in-Residence 50th Anniversary Alumni Showcase (well, online unless you are in Banff, Alberta): May 15, 2026 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM, Clvb 33, St. Julien Way, Banff, AB and online. REGISTER HERE. "The Writer-in-Residence program in the Department of English and Film Studies is delighted to invite you to attend our 50th anniversary Writer-in-Residence Alumni Showcase at the Banff Centre's Clvb 33. All are welcome to attend either in person or virtually. There will be readings from Thomas Wharton, Fred Wah, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Cody Caetano, JR Carpenter, rob mclennan, Daphne Marlatt, Jana Pruden, Hiromi Goto, and Marilyn Dumont." 

A week or so later, American poet and translator Cole Swensen will be interviewing myself, Jennifer Baker and Misha Solomon as part of "Publishing in-Transit: above/ground press," a whole conversation on and around above/ground through Brooklyn Rail. Wednesday, May 20, 2026 1pm Eastern/10am Pacific, via Zoom. REGISTER HERE. Oh, what an exciting week or so of things!

Spotlight series #78 : Jennifer Baker

The seventy-eighth in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker.

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, Ottawa poet, writer and performer nina jane drystek, Comox BC poet Jamie Sharpe, Canadian visual artist and poet Laura Kerr and Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

Ongoing notes: mid-December 2021: Pearl Pirie + Jennifer Baker,

You can’t keep a good chapbook reviewer down, it would seem. 

Don’t forget: 2022 subscriptions are available for above/ground press, yes? Can you believe the press turns twenty-nine next year? Gadzooks!

Ottawa ON: The latest from Pearl Pirie (formerly of Ottawa but now living in the wilds of Quebec, somewhere just across the river and provincial border) is RAIN’S SMALL GESTURES: POEMS (Ottawa ON: Apt. 9 Press, 2021), a small and graceful edition of eighty copies produced by Cameron Anstee’s Apt. 9 Press in September. Over the space of four full-length collections and “dozens of chapbooks,” Pirie has long been attentive to the small and condensed poem, in part through her engagement through Ottawa’s KaDo haiku poets. She has long been attentive to the shape and the scope of such small works, but this is one of the few times she’s put together a collection deliberately leaning into the gesture of the small moment. Or, as she writes as part of her notes at the back of the collection, citing a list of influences and inspirations “who model how to keep it small but meaningful.”

IN THE KITCHEN

the doors
are open as if
the cabinets are poised
to fly away from the house

The poems here are short and sharp, requiring a measure of attention. Reread these, please.

Victoria BC/Ottawa ON: It is good to see a new chapbook of poems from Ottawa poet and critic Jennifer Baker, following her debut, Abject Lessons (above/ground press, 2014): her Groundling (Victoria BC: Trainwreck Press, 2021). Baker’s poems in Groundling utilize erasure and open/empty space a bit more than her work has prior, at least from what I’ve been aware. The poems here offer halt and hesitation, pause and the myriad possibilities of the unwritten/unspoken. “know that my gods are / patience      distance       & hunker down,” she writes, as part of the four-page accumulation, “imbibition.” In certain ways, Baker appears to sharpen poems out of cobbled-notes, erasures, accumulated fragments and salvaged correspondence, including three poems, according to her own notes at the back, produced as “erasure poems generated from apology letters, personally received or sent.” One of those is the sequence “how it ended,” which opens with a fractured lyric that, as the sections progress, erase down to smaller points, opening with:

Thanks for accepting                     I was going through some
Stuff                                                          you                     got me
Thinking about the past      I wanted to apologize
            I know it’s ancient history              I still wanted
I           wanted to see          you
  hope

And progressing, by the third section:

                                                               I was going through
                                                                            you
Thinking                            I wanted
                                                         I still wanted      

Given how she suggests this work a project of different iterations, I am hoping that this short collection of pieces might be but a teaser towards something further, down the road.

Arc walks, 2018 : centretown

[official Arc Poetry Magazine twitter photo by Chris Johnson] On Tuesday, I hosted the first of a series of “Arc walks” that Arc Poetry Magazine approached me to curate on their behalf, aiming for a series of hour-long literary (poetry specific) walks around various Ottawa neighbourhoods, to showcase a series of known and unknown landmarks, sites and whatnots. The first walk focused on a fragment of Centretown, walking along a stretch of Bank Street to Parliament Hill, before ending up on Sparks Street, just at Elgin. One of the challenges of these walks is not only to find a series of spots that might be interesting enough to discuss, but that would fit into the space of an hour’s walk (Lowertown, I think, might be a bit of a challenge, given how scattered around some of the research seems, so far). With this one completed, I’m now looking around on figuring out my Glebe walk, and then a potential Lowertown walk, with six to be completed this year in total, including a French walk and an Aboriginal walk (the curators/hosts of such as yet to be determined). For information on the days/locations of the further walks, either check out Bywords.ca or the website for Arc Poetry Magazine (or, like, just come back here). Thanks to Arc Poetry Magazine, Frances Boyle and Chris Johnson, and everyone involved for the opportunity! It was more fun than I might have thought (the walking part, I mean). And we even ended with a pint at D’Arcy McGee’s.

Here’s a slightly edited version of the script I read from on Tuesday (with a guest-appearance by poet Jennifer Baker, who read a poem by John Newlove as well as one of her own).

WALK ONE:

For this series of walks, I’ve deliberately aimed to be more contemporary than much of the information on Ottawa’s literary history, forgoing much of the facts of the Confederation Poets Archibald Lampman and Duncan Campbell Scott, for example, for more contemporary examples such as John Newlove, Michael Dennis and jwcurry, among others. Some have claimed the history of the city is made up of examples of those who have moved through the city but chose not to remain, and writers in this category are numerous, from Norman Levine, Al Purdy, Raymond Souster, Hugh MacLennan and George Elliott Clarke to Joan Finnigan, Stephanie Bolster, Robin Hannah, Elizabeth Smart, Robert Fontaine, Carol Shields and John Barton. While elements of this might be true (I’m not convinced this occurs more in Ottawa, as suggested, than any other city), there are lots of people and activities that have existed here for years, some of whom continue to inspire activity.

FIRST STOP: 248 Bank Street: In the early 1960s, 248 Bank Street was the second of three locations of Ottawa’s infamous Le Hibou coffeehouse, which would have been run at the time by William and Sheila Hawkins. From 1960 to 61, it lived at 544 Rideau, relocating here until 1965, when it moved 521 Sussex for Le Hibou’s final decade. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, William Hawkins [archival photo provided by Cameron Anstee] was known as Ottawa’s most dangerous poet, and easily one of the most well-known Ottawa poets of the period, publishing numerous poetry books, organizing readings and generally causing trouble. It would have been here that Hawkins ran fundraisers for himself and Roy MacSkimming to be the only poets east of the Rocky Mountains to make it out to the Vancouver Poetry Conference of 1963, asking friends and enemies alike for cash to help him get out of town (Toronto poet Victor Coleman was apparently offered the opportunity to ride with them, but didn't trust their car to make the trip). And when their car broke down on the way home, it was Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley who paid for the repairs, preventing them from being stranded in the interior of British Columbia.

Le Hibou in the first half of the 1960s included numerous readings alongside the musical performances, and some of the literary activity in and around the coffeehouse included poet Harry Howith and his short-lived Bytown Books, designer/printer Robert Rosewarne and his Nil Press, poets Roy MacSkimming and George Johnston, and the single issue of Something Else, edited by William Hawkins and Denis Faulker. It was only later on that Le Hibou moved over to Sussex Avenue, where it continued to host poets and musicians alike, including Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell, bpNichol, Victor Coleman, Robert Hogg and many, many, many others. In 2013, VERSe Ottawa made William Hawkins one of the first two inductees of the Hall of Honour, and he died three years later.

SECOND STOP: 231 Bank Street/319 Lisgar: While the space above has hosted living and studio spaces for numerous artists and illustrators over the years, including Adrian Gollner, David Cation, Jennifer Dickson and Dave Cooper, Ottawa poet Michael Dennis also lived upstairs for a number of years, roughly from 1985 to 1988, and again from 1994 to 2002. Originally sharing the space with artist Daniel Sharp, he moved out when Sharp got married, and moved back in to replace the Sharps, once Dan and his wife started having children.

Michael Dennis came to Ottawa from Peterborough in 1984 to attend Carleton University, and became one of the most published poets in the city, having managed some two hundred journal publications by the end of the decade, as well as multiple chapbooks and books, culminating in Fade to Blue from Pulp Press. He was also one of a small handful of writers and artist that appeared in Ottawa in the early 1980s from Peterborough, arriving in conjunction with poet Riley Tench, and writer and visual artist Dennis Tourbin.

There are those that might recall that 319 Lisgar Street used to host Invisible Cinema, after years of hosting Gallery 101, where readings were held throughout the late 1980s and into the 1990s by Rob Manery and Louis Cabri’s The Transparency Machine, back in the days when Dennis Tourbin ran the gallery. The Transparency Machine existed under the umbrella of the experimental writers group, a group loosely based on bpNichol and Steve McCaffery’s Toronto Research Group. Focusing on formally innovative English-language poetry, The Transparency Machine hosted a series of readings and talks by a variety of North American poets, including Steve McCaffery, Jorge Etcheverry, Robert Hogg, Lisa Robertson and Tom Raworth, focusing their attention on the Vancouver Kootenay School of Writing, as well as various American and British language writers. Later on, the series rebranded as the N400 Series at the Manx Pub, which existed until Rob Manery moved to Vancouver in 1996, two years after Cabri had left for Philadelphia. Further into the 1990s, Gallery 101 also hosted my poetry 101 series, the short-lived name of what ended up becoming The Factory Reading Series. Subsequent locations of Gallery 101 also hosted Max Middle’s now-defunct performance series, The AB Series.

Another occupant of the same space at 319 Lisgar, prior to Gallery 101, was legendary Ottawa curator and bookseller Richard Simmins, who operated a used bookstore there for many years. Author of the early 1980s novel Sweet Marie, published through Vancouver’s Pulp Press, the precursor to Arsenal Pulp Press, Simmins was also the father of British Columbia poet Zoe Landale.

THIRD STOP: L’Esplanade Laurier Building (140 O’Connor Street/Bank): Despite living in Ottawa longer than he lived anywhere, John Newlove always considered himself to be a Saskatchewan poet. He worked for years as an editor for Official Languages in one of the office towers at L’Esplanade Laurier, originally moving to Ottawa in 1986 from Nelson, British Columbia, after John Metcalf’s wife Myrna (owner of the Elgin Street Diner) helped secure him an interview. Years later, Newlove would joke that moving from permanent job to renewable contract, he had become a government whore as opposed to merely a slave. Here’s a poem he wrote during that period, composed around his experience with government service, originally published as “LEONARD, IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” in a festshrift for the Montreal poet and musician in 1994.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

The streets are full of overweight corporals,

of sad grey computer captains, the impedimentia

of a capital city, struggling through the snow.

There is a cold gel on my belly, an instrument

is stroking it incisively, the machine

in the half-lit room is scribbling my future.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

A shadowy technician says alternately,

Breathe, and, You may stop now.

It is not illegal to be unhappy.

[Jennifer Baker, reading John Newlove] Across the street, I used to see John Newlove quite regularly, as I sat daily in the Dunkin’ Donuts window to write, from 10am to 3pm, six days a week, from May 1994 through to June 2000, existing in the space for the entire lifespan of the donut chain, living in the space now occupied by Tim Hortons. Newlove would step off the bus at the stop outside my window, nod and wave his cane at me as he would head off to the office. While sitting in my daily space, one that became quite well-known after a few years, I hosted numerous writers and artists who came in to visit me as I worked, including John Barton, John Metcalf, Dennis Tourbin, b stephen harding, Victor Coleman, John Boyle, Tom Fowler and even Newlove himself.

FOURTH STOP: Parliament Hill: There is a great deal of literary conversation one could have around Parliament Hill, much of which has been covered multiple times over. When the public service was moved from Quebec City to Ottawa in 1865, we gained numerous writers in both languages, including well-known Quebec poets Antoine Gérin-Lajoie, Joseph Marmette, and Alfred Garneau. Prince Edward Island poet Milton Acorn sold copies of his poetry books on the grounds to tourists in 1970. George Elliott Clarke claimed to host the first poetry reading on Parliament Hill in 2016 [see my report on such here], a claim I’d rather do more research on before repeating too often. Clarke himself launched his 1990 collection Whylah Falls as part of an event in the Parliament Buildings through Southwestern Ontario Member of Parliament (for Windsor-Tecumseh) Howard McCurdy, for whom Clarke had worked previously as a parliamentary assistant.

Instead, I’d like to focus on the late poet Judith Fitzgerald, who wrote a poem on Paul Chartier, the man who attempted to bomb Parliament in 1966. Imagine: he attempted to throw explosives from the second floor gallery into the sitting house, which would have easily killed Prime Minster Lester B. Pearson, Official Leader of the Opposition, John Diefenbaker, and dozens of other sitting Members. Fortunately, the second floor gallery was filled with a school group that included a thirteen-year-old Fitzgerald, forcing him up another floor, and the fuse he lit was too short, causing his death in the third floor men’s room. It is through Fitzgerald I first heard of this at all, from her 1977 collection lacerating heartwood:

ottawa

he descended the fire escape

with the coffee in my hand

and a guitar in his

was running down

my white wrist

you are sleeping

in ottawa

it’s another hot night

after the fashion

of steam and tendrils

the humidity and stains

hamper the delight

you take in your fingers

the audience has claims

on these hands

paul chartier

was on the steps

of the commons

while i was thirteen

in a gallery chair

his face was red

it was april and the washroom

was the high note

in his history

for that split second

stains and humidity

hang in this air

resembling war wreaths

the dried blood

angles its journey

down the porcelain wall

the body was changed

by its explosion

he jacked off with a bomb

the prime minister went white

the arm was holding

the back of the head splinter style

in perfect vertical symmetry

you are sleeping in ottawa

were sweating in fine hair

it gets god-awful hot

sometimes in those bars

and directly above

the spick and span urinals

paul chartier’s body comes violently to rest

I could also point out that on July 29, 2006, Ottawa poet, publisher and editor jwcurry held a marathon public reading of bpNichol’s nine-volume The Martyrology in the gazebo behind the Parliament Buildings [see my brief report on such here]. The bibliographer of bpNichol since the 1980s, this event was held secretly, and promoted almost exclusively by word-of-mouth. As curry said at the time, in what other country could you simply arrive and read poetry for hours publicly outside the seat of parliament?

FIFTH STOP: Sparks Street: Most people know that on April 7, 1868, poet, Father of Confederation and Member of Parliament Thomas D’Arcy McGee was walking home after a particularly late session when he was shot dead while walking down Sparks Street. Tried, convicted and executed for the crime was Fenian sympathizer Patrick James Whelan, who many believe was falsely accused to be a scapegoat for the murder. Known as Canada’s first (and hopefully only) political assassination, a plaque has been erected since in front of the Royal Bank Building at 142 Sparks, identifying the location of Mrs. Trotter’s boarding house where D’Arcy McGee was killed.

What few might know is that the boarding house was owned by George-Édouard Desbarats (forebear of journalist Peter Desbarats and his daughter, Ottawa poet Michelle Desbarats), one of a long line of influential printers running the family business. It was during George-Édouard’s tenure that Prime Minister John A. Macdonald made the Desberats the first official printer of the Dominion of Canada in 1869. The first plaque for D’Arcy McGee was put in place by George-Édouard, but soon after, he received an anonymous warning that his printing establishment in the Desberats Building, at what is now 152-54 Sparks Street, the first building to sit on that corner, would be destroyed. The building was, indeed, lost to a fire in 1869, barely a year after McGee's assassination. Currently, D'Arcy McGee’s Irish Pub sits at the corner of Elgin and Sparks Streets.

The author of over a dozen books and some three hundred poems, his work is still being read, and discussed. One of his poems was read by former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney at the funeral of former U.S. president Ronald Reagan.

[end of walk one; this is where we went to the pub]

Arc Walk Ottawa #1 : Centretown : curator/guide: rob mclennan

Arc Walks Ottawa is a series of guided walks based on poetry themes and capitalizing on the rich poetry history of Canada’s capital. Residents and visitors alike are welcome to join in on the walks to learn and revel in Ottawa’s poetry. 

Join in the first walk on World Poetry Day (Wednesday, March 21^st). This walk, led by rob mclennan, will be a contemporary introduction to Ottawa’s literary history, visiting sites significant to poets of the National Capital Region such as John Newlove, William Hawkins, Judith Fitzgerald, Thomas D’arcy McGee, Michael Dennis and jwcurry, among others. 

The walk will begin at 4:30PM in front of 248 Bank Street, and it will continue to visit sites in Centretown. During the hour-long walk, participants will visit five locations where they will hear about some of Ottawa’s contemporary poetry history, and hear from a special guest poet (Jennifer Baker!). Come prepared for rain or snow or shine!

Concluding around 5:30PM, there will be plenty of time and opportunity to grab a bite to eat before VERSeFest’s second day of scheduled events: http://versefest.ca/year/2018/schedule/?day=Mar21

See the Facebook event for such here.

For any questions or concerns, contact Chris Johnson: managingeditor@arcpoetry.ca 

Guide Bio: 
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 the brilliant and utterly delightful poet and book conservator Christine McNair. The author of more than thirty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the CAA/Most Promising Writer in Canada under 30 Award in 1999, the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, the Council for the Arts in Ottawa Mid-Career Award in 2014, and was twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012 and 2017. He has published books with Talonbooks, The Mercury Press, Black Moss Press, New Star Books, Insomniac Press, Broken Jaw Press, Stride, Salmon Publishing and others, and his most recent titles include notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014), The Uncertainty Principle: stories, (Chaudiere Books, 2014) and the poetry collection A perimeter (New Star Books, 2016). His next poetry title, Household items, is out later this spring from Salmon Publishing.

new from above/ground press: Schapira, Brockwell, Baker + Touch the Donkey #3

THE MOTIONS
Kate Schapira
$4
See link here for more information

Images from Declassified Nuclear Test Films
Stephen Brockwell
$4
See link here for more information

Abject Lessons
Jennifer Baker
$4
See link here for more information

Touch the Donkey #3
with new poems by Gil McElroy, j/j hastain, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, Susan Briante and D.G. Jones.
$6
See link here for more information

keep an eye on the above/ground press blog for author interviews, new writing, reviews, upcoming readings and tons of other material;

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September/October 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

and don’t forget about the 2015 above/ground press subscriptions; still available!

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; outside Canada, add $2) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9 or paypal (above). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request.

forthcoming items by derek beaulieu, Jason Christie, Pearl Pirie, Gil McElroy, Gregory Betts, Kemeny Babineau, ryan fitzpatrick and Elizabeth Robinson!

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 7, 2014: Baker, Dolman, Boyle, Currie + Ross

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series

pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Jennifer Baker (Ottawa)
Anita Dolman (Ottawa)
Frances Boyle (Ottawa)
Dave Currie (Ottawa)
+ Stuart Ross (Coburg)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 7, 2014;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

Jennifer Baker was raised in Exeter, Ontario, where she divided her time between town and her grandparents' farm. She is currently a part-time professor and PhD candidate at the University of Ottawa. Her new chapbook, her first, is Abject Lessons (above/ground press).

Anita Dolman is an Ottawa-based writer and editor. Her poetry and fiction have appeared throughout Canada and the United States, including, most recently, in On Spec: the Canadian magazine of the fantastic, Grain, Bywords.ca, The Antigonish Review, ottawater and Geist. Her short story “Happy Enough” is available as an e-novella from Morning Rain Publishing (2014). Follow Anita on Twitter @ajdolman. Her second poetry chapbook is Where No One Can See You (AngelHousePress, 2014).

Frances Boyle [photo credit: John W. MacDonald] is originally from Regina, and maintains a yearning for both the prairies and the west coast where she lived for a number of years. She is the author of Light-carved Passages (BuschekBooks, 2014) and the chapbook Portal Stones, winner of Tree Press’s chapbook contest. Among other awards, she’s received the Diana Brebner Prize, and first place in This Magazine’s Great Canadian Literary Hunt for poetry (with third place for fiction in the same year). Her poetry and short stories have appeared in Canadian and American literary magazines, both print and online, and anthologies on subjects from Hitchcock to form poetry to mother/daughter relationships. She serves on Arc Poetry Magazine’s editorial board.

Dave Currie’s Birds Facts is forthcoming from Apt. 9 Press, a sentence that fill him with bashful joy and quiet disbelief. His plays have been produced at the Ottawa Fringe Festival, Carleton University, Algonquin College and at small venues across the province. His origins in theatre transitioned into opportunities in television and film, most of which he accepted, performed adequately and then squandered.

He is currently working on a new play entitled “Clone-Hitler Goes To The Beach” set to be performed in 2015 and a film script simply entitled “Women.” His fiction will be available in magazines – some day.

Dave Currie is not now nor has he ever been a dog.

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. He is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, and is editor at Mansfield Press. He is the author of two collaborative novels, two story collections, eight poetry books, and the novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew. He has also published an essay collection, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer, and co-edited Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament. His most recent poetry book is Our Days in Vaudeville (Mansfield Press), collaborations with 29 other poets from across Canada. Stuart has had three chapbooks published this year: Nice Haircut, Fiddlehead (Puddles of Sky Press), A Pretty Good Year (Nose in Book Publishing) and In In My Dream (Bookthug). Stuart is a member of the improvisational noise trio Donkey Lopez, whose first CD is Juan Lonely Night. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

[And don’t forget the 20th anniversary of the ottawa small press book fair, being held the following day at the Jack Purcell Community Centre]

above/ground press: 2015 subscriptions now available!

Twenty-one years and counting. Can you believe it? There's been a ton of activity over the past year around above/ground press, from the rebuilding of Chaudiere Books (the trade extension, one might say, of above/ground) to the founding of the poetry journal Touch the Donkey (included as part of the above/ground press subscription!). Just what else might happen? Current and forthcoming items include works by Kate Schapira, Gil McElroy, Jennifer Baker, Gregory Betts, Stephen Brockwell and Kemeny Babineau (2014) and Elizabeth Robinson (2015), as well as a whole slew of publications that haven't even been decided on yet.

2015 annual subscriptions are now available: $50 (in the United States, $50 US; $80 international) for everything above/ground press makes from now until the end of 2015, including chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and Touch the Donkey (have you been keeping track of the array of interviews posted to the site?).

Anyone who subscribes before November 1st will also receive the last above/ground press package (or two) of 2014, including those exciting new titles by derek beaulieu, Kate Schapira, Jennifer Baker, Kemeny Babineau, Gregory Betts and Gil McElroy (plus whatever else the press happens to produce before the turn of the new year).

Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or utilize whichever paypal button that applies to you:

Canadian subscriptions:

American subscriptions:

International subscriptions:

And keep checking notices for The Factory Reading Series. There’s so much more to come.