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!

12 or 20 (second series) questions with Misha Solomon

Misha Solomon is a homosexual poet in and of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. His work has twice appeared in Best Canadian Poetry and in journals across Canada. He is a student in Concordia's Interdisciplinary PhD program. His debut full-length collection, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, appears with Brick Books in March 2026, and his third chapbook, Misha Solomon's Biodôme: A Bestiary after Stephanie Bolster, follows with above/ground press in April 2026.

1 - How did your first book or chapbook change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

My first chapbook, FLORALS (above/ground press, 2020), made me feel like I was actually a poet. It changed my life in that it opened up the possibility of pursuing poetry in a real and public way. My upcoming first full-length book, My Great-Grandfather Dance Ballet (Brick Books, 2026), feels different from FLORALS in that it has a strong central concept/narrative. But it also feels like a natural extension of some of the things I’ve been exploring since before FLORALS came out, a sort of closing of this first long chapter of my poetic “journey.”

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction or non-fiction?

I happened to take a Quebec Writers’ Federation poetry workshop taught by Derek Webster and just liked it. I had been taking QWF prose workshops for a few years, just as a hobby, but it wasn’t until the poetry workshop that I found something I felt like I could really do. The contained, brief nature of a poem (or at least of the poems I wrote back then) was appealing to me. They were things both with and without rules, and I like applying structure to creativity and creativity to structure.

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’m not sure how long it takes me to start a project. Sometimes projects starts before I know they’ve started. My writing comes quickly and first drafts are reasonably close to final drafts, for me. I edit, of course, but I write quickly and when I write a poem I write to completion. I think my poems can sometimes trick me into thinking they’re done because I am good at having a beginning, middle, and end all figured it out, so that’s why I like to write in some sort of community to get early feedback.

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 begin with a prompt of some kind, maybe one I’ve been given or one I’ve given myself. Sometimes they come out of just an idea, a feeling, a thesis, but that’s usually once I already have a project on the go. In the past I’ve been an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, but these days I’m more focused on working on a “book” right away.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

Public readings are an essential part of my creative process. I love them. I would do them all the time. They are my favourite part of being a poet. I write to an audience.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Yes! Or at least I hope so! In My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, I think my editor, Leah Horlick, really nailed the questions I was asking in the back cover copy she kindly wrote for the book: "What if the queer ancestor you always wondered about had really existed—and could speak to you across all time? When there’s only one document to be found in the archive, can our misheard or half-remembered family stories be enough?” In my new work, I’m focused on questions of (non-)reproduction, of what it means to be an animal, of what it means to be a human with an animal in your house.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

Writers certainly have a role. Different writers have different roles. I think, at my core, I see myself as an entertainer? That sounds vaudevillian, song-and-dance-y, but what I mean is that I want my writing (or my performances of my writing) to provide distraction and engagement. I want people to enjoy my writing, even if I also want my writing to shift a political consciousness or evoke negative emotions.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I love working with an outside editor. I had an incredible experience working with Leah Horlick on this book. I don’t find it difficult. I really enjoy seeing how my work is landing for someone else. In my non-poetic employment, I give notes to screenwriters, so I’ve very used to the process, and it’s fun to be on the other side of it.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

What does it say about me that I cannot for the life of me think of an answer to this question?

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry to critical prose)? What do you see as the appeal?

I haven’t really moved between genres in a public-facing way yet. My current project involves a lot more prose and lyric essay and academic writing, and the shift has been fluid. It has felt like the right time, especially since so much of my poetry is prose-y already. The appeal for me is the ability to dig further into ideas in a single work. There’s also the appeal of the potential of a wider audience, since readers are for some reason more “comfortable” with prose than with poetry.

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 do not have a writing routine of any kind. A typical day begins with my fiancé, Guillaume, and my dog, Mugcake.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

Frank O’Hara. And Mugcake.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?

Of my current home? Mugcake. A mostly pleasing doggy odour.

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?

I’m influenced by science. My BA is in biological anthropology, and I grew up wanting to be a zoologist. My current work is interdisciplinary and heavily influenced by thinking about primates, biological reproduction, animal studies, etc. In My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet, I was influenced by ballet, which isn’t something I knew (or know) very much about, but I’ve always been interested in it and loved being able to research it and write about it. There are also a few ekphrastic poems about the art in my home, so I suppose I am influenced by visual art on occasion.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Oh wow. So many! I am fortunate to have many writer friends. Allegra Kaplan, a fantastic Victoria-based poet and friend, recently said something about how so much of my poetics is about community, which I thought was a very nice way of putting it. Sarah Burgoyne, my poetry fairy godmother, has been a fundamental source of inspiration, support, encouragement, and friendship. Stephanie Bolster, my MA and PhD thesis supervisor, whose work (especially her zoo-related work) has been an inspiration (stay tuned for a new above/ground press chapbook…). My generative writing group (currently mostly on pause), with André Babyn, Sasha Manoli, and (previously) Lauren Peat. My current writing/workshop group in Montreal, with Robin Durnford, Madelaine Caritas Longman, Domenica Martinello, Melanie Power, Sarah Wolfson (we miss you, Patrick O’Reilly and Carlos Pittella!). Other poetry mentors/teachers I’ve had over the years, including Liz Howard, Sina Queyras, Lisa Richter, and Danez Smith. I could go on and on, truly. And I haven’t even gotten to poetic inspirations like Frank O’Hara.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

There are lots of things I haven’t done that I’d like to do, but I feel like I can’t quite put them into words. That’s not true — I just don’t want to put them into words, for fear of their not happening.

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?

If I hadn’t been a writer, I would have surely continued working full-time in scripted television development, which I still do as a freelancer. But going back to my childhood dream of zoology would be fun. Hosting an animal-centric documentary series. 

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I wanted to express myself artistically and publicly in some way, and this is the way I enjoy most and am best at.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

I just finished Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin and found it fascinating and moving. I also loved his previous book, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out. I also just mostly completed by annual year-end film catch-up — I think The Secret Agent may be my favourite film from 2025.

20 - What are you currently working on?

I’m currently putting the finishing touches on my spring above/ground press chapbook. Kinda sorta putting together a second full-length collection while working on my PhD project.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

 

Misha Solomon, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet

 

            Do you remember the Phantom of the Opera original cast recording? That white mask, that red rose? Of course you do, you were probably gay once too. The “Overture”—that’s what this is, get it? I’m setting the scene. I used to listen on cassette. My mother took me to see the production in Toronto—her friend worked with a theatre producer who later went to prison for fraud and so we got great seats, right under where the chandelier swings cinematically. I want you to be hearing a pipe organ. I want you to be waiting for a chandelier to fall.

I am very pleased to see the smart, self-aware and delightfully-playful full-length debut by Montreal poet Misha Solomon, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2026). Following the chapbooks FLORALS (Ottawa ON: above/ground press, 2020) and Full Sentences (Montreal QC: Turret House Press, 2022), My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet utilizes as its central prompt the real fact of the author’s great-grandfather having danced ballet, and jumping from there to an expansive and even explosive exploration on Jewish identity, possibility, history and queer desire. “In a hotel room in Burlington, Vermont,” the poem “The Limits of Fiction” begins, “I try to get my grandfather to tell me if his parents ever told him stories about the old country, but he just wants to tell me about Lill St. Cyr at the Gayety.” As the back cover offers, the collection “is a daring, erotic, and humorous exploration of queer longing and Jewish possibility at the turn of two centuries. In a captivating series of narrative poems, Misha Solomon entwines an alternate memoir of his great-grandfather in pre-Holocaust Romania with a contemporary gay life in Montreal.” The poems unfold around the central core of that lifted fact, swirling a structure that might hold elements of narrative scaffolding and narrative building tools, but also elements of sound, repetition, visual gesture and playful chant into something far larger than anything pure narrative could ever provide. “the man man man man man men men / men men men men” he writes, as part of “OVERTURE,” a stretch of repetitions that flow into “men men men men were / in love, are in love, I move them across a / stage and their love seems so true I / convince myself for a moment that I really / do exist [.]” Earlier, in the same poem-section, writing:

a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
a man a man a man a man a man a man
came here and they changed his name

The collection isn’t structured into sections per se, but there are poems highlit in the table of contents that suggest themselves the openings of new groupings, new directions, across Solomon’s book-length suite: “OVERTURE,” “THIS ISN’T A GAY POEM.,” “THIS IS A POLITICAL POEM.” and “THIS IS A CULTURALLY JEWISH POEM.” As opposed to offering distinct, separated sections, Solomon composes a book-length suite with an ebb and flow, a rhythm across the book as a whole. “I was supposed to be the mayor at minimum and now my daily / achievement is holding off on jerking off until I can write an / erotic poem about my great-grandfather,” begins the poem “Belongings III,” “or some made-up / version of him, writing this poem instead of that one, even, / because googling ‘1940s name for male sex worker’ felt a / little too close to ‘old-fashioned word for semen,’ the search / that was on my screen when Guillaume walked into our home / office the other day […].” The poems accumulate together into something large, built purposefully from a series of disparate and different parts, all circling that central core as a kind of mosaic or narrative collage.

Certainly, My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet follows a trajectory of other recent full-length poetry debuts through Brick Books that play off and through family archive, offering book-length explorations through new and unusual structures, and allowing the shapes of the poems to provide startlingly fresh perspectives on the otherwise-familiar complications of family, cultural collisions and the disappearance of stories. I’m specifically thinking of titles such as Montreal poet, editor and translator Darby Minott Bradford’s Dream of No One but Myself (2021) [see my review of such here], Vancouver poet and editor Andrea Actis’ Grey All Over (Brick Books, 2021) [see my review of such here] and Nova Scotia poet Nanci Lee’s Hsin (Kingston ON: Brick Books, 2022) [see my review of such here], although Solomon’s My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet offers the added layer of fictionalizing elements of family story, for the sake of doing something simultaneously more specific and far more expansive. “You asked why I liked / you,” the poem “To my colleague Ernest, for his eyes only, in response to his confidential queries, 1934,” “or in fact you asked why I was wasting my time with / you, and when I rolled my eyes, you rephrased, but the reason / I didn’t answer isn’t because I don’t know the reasons. I know / the reasons. I like you with all of my senses.” Solomon offers a heart and a lyric that flows, naturally, carefully, delicate and precise, writing family elements as an entry point to a larger exploration on Jewish and queer themes between the past and the present, and all the glorious complications, lovely patter and potential dangers that surround. Or, as the poem “Yoo-Hoo” writes:

Yoo-hoo, do you see me, do you see me over here? I wore this tomato-red shirt so you could see me, yoo-hoo, you with the well-dressed baby, you look like you know nice shirts, yoo-hoo, do you want to tell me you like my shirt?

Over there, you over there, yoo-hoo, do you want to ask me what I’m working on? I just bought this new notebook to write one poem per day, but, yoo-hoo, I’ve only written the date and my name and now I’m staring thoughtfully past you hoping you’ll think I’m actually staring at you and you could say “yoo-hoo, why are you staring at me” and I’d say “how embarrassing, yoo-hoo, I’m actually staring past you, thoughtfully, thinking thoughts, by the way, do you have the time, I didn’t bring my phone, I’m trying to be more present?”

Yoo-hoo, do you have the time? Yoo-hoo, do you want to know why I need the time? I don’t look like someone who needs to yoo-hoo for the time, isn’t that intriguing?

Yoo-hoo, do you want to know?

 

filling Station #84 : let slip the dogs

 

Hey America, How Are Your Stones?

Sometimes the bicycle swirl of a landscape unfurls hot
butter – edge – white – wax – smear – mushed 

into cloud          //          there’s a mountain out there

catches the eye even from a semi
barrel-rocket of goods boxed into a flare jean 

the urgency makes you solution-oriented

                        // 

Every time you leave like a video game (Meredith MacLeod Davidson)

It has been a while since I’ve more regularly discussed an issue of Calgary’s legendary literary journal filling Station [see my review of #83 here; my review of #81 here; see my review of #57: showcase of experimental writing by women here, etc], but I am trying to get better at it. Did you see all the posts up at The Typescript celebrating filling Station’s thirtieth anniversary? Thirty years is a long time for a journal, despite the handful of journals that have made it far longer (Arc Poetry Magazine is well over one hundred issues, for example), but always worth acknowledging a birthday, especially for a journal founded by scrappy youths passionate about experimental writing, and producing a journal that has continued entirely with that founding aesthetic. Yes, I said it: filling Station is and always has been run by scrappy youths passionate about experimental writing, both in Canada and well beyond. Built with their usual array of “poetry, fiction, non-fic, review, interview, project, art,” filling Station #84 provides a showcase of established and emerging, some of whom I know well and others I’ve never heard of. Virginia-born Scotland-based Meredith MacLeod Davidson, for example, is a poet entirely new to me through these pages, as is Northern Ontario poet Erin Wilson [although a quick search provides that I actually interviewed her two years ago], who has two poems in this particular issue, including the poem “Tenebrae,” that begins:

The watering can beads with rain.
Slugs slowly ruin the gibbous rind of the pumpkin. 

Put your black nylon socks on your cold black feet.
Think think think, charcoal, in darkness.

Further, there’s Calgary-based poet, fiction writer and editor Chimedum Ohaegbu, and her poem “Culpable, Too, the Minutes,” that begins: “My innocence on the abacus / although you’ve already deemed me / wolf. Courtroom drama / as directed by Internet questionnaire: / How often do you feel seen?” Otherwise, I think everyone should be reading the work of Montreal poet Misha Solomon (who has a couple of chapbooks out, with a full-length poetry debut out next year, you know, with Brick Books), or Brooklyn-based Canadian poet Michael Chang [see my review of their latest here], both of whom have new work in this particular issue. Or there is Toronto writer Sneha Subramanian Kanta, with the three-stanza/paragraph piece “Three Broken Sonnets: Escape Room City,” a lyric and narrative swirl of layer upon layer that includes: “Two cups of hot chocolate arrive in / ceramic glasses like we were drinking a warm beverage in the home / of a friend. No one befriends another in this city because they don’t / have time. The evening streets are quiet although hours are porous. / I have begun to understand the concept of time as not being finite.” As ever, if you wish to know what is happening on the ground when it comes to contemporary writing, one could not do much better than paying attention to the little magazine, and filling Station (alongside The Capilano Review, Geist and FENCE magazine) remains high on my list.

Touch the Donkey : new interviews with Straumsvåg, ryan, Solomon, Lockhart, Dulin, Davis + Higgins,

Anticipating the release next week of the forty-sixth issue of Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], why not check out the interviews that have appeared over the past few weeks with contributors to the forty-fifth issue: Dag T. Straumsvåg, brandy ryan, Misha Solomon, D. A. Lockhart, Dominic Dulin, Jordan Davis and Larkin Maureen Higgins.

Interviews with contributors to the first forty-four issues (more than two hundred and eighty interviews to date) remain online, including: J-T Kelly, Jennifer Firestone, Austin Miles, Alice Burdick, Henry Gould, Leesa Dean, Tom Jenks, Sandra Doller, Scott Inniss, John Levy, Taylor Brown, Grant Wilkins, Lori Anderson Moseman, russell carisse, Ariana Nadia Nash, Wanda Praamsma, Michael Harman, Terri Witek, Laynie Browne, Noah Berlatsky, Robyn Schelenz, Andy Weaver, Dessa Bayrock, Anselm Berrigan, Alana Solin, Michael Betancourt, Monty Reid, Heather Cadsby, R Kolewe, Samuel Amadon, Meghan Kemp-Gee, Miranda Mellis, kevin mcpherson eckhoff and Kimberley Dyck, Junie Désil, Micah Ballard, Devon Rae, Barbara Tomash, Ben Meyerson, Pam Brown, Shane Kowalski, Kathy Lou Schultz, Hilary Clark, Ted Byrne, Garrett Caples, Brenda Coultas, Sheila Murphy, Chris Turnbull and Elee Kraljii Gardiner, Stuart Ross, Leah Sandals, Tamara Best, Nathan Austin, Jade Wallace, Monica Mody, Barry McKinnon, Katie Naughton, Cecilia Stuart, Benjamin Niespodziany, Jérôme Melançon, Margo LaPierre, Sarah Pinder, Genevieve Kaplan, Maw Shein Win, Carrie Hunter, Lillian Nećakov, Nate Logan, Hugh Thomas, Emily Brandt, David Buuck, Jessi MacEachern, Sue Bracken, Melissa Eleftherion, Valerie Witte, Brandon Brown, Yoyo Comay, Stephen Brockwell, Jack Jung, Amanda Auerbach, IAN MARTIN, Paige Carabello, Emma Tilley, Dana Teen Lomax, Cat Tyc, Michael Turner, Sarah Alcaide-Escue, Colby Clair Stolson, Tom Prime, Bill Carty, Christina Vega-Westhoff, Robert Hogg, Simina Banu, MLA Chernoff, Geoffrey Olsen, Douglas Barbour, Hamish Ballantyne, JoAnna Novak, Allyson Paty, Lisa Fishman, Kate Feld, Isabel Sobral Campos, Jay MillAr, Lisa Samuels, Prathna Lor, George Bowering, natalie hanna, Jill Magi, Amelia Does, Orchid Tierney, katie o’brien, Lily Brown, Tessa Bolsover, émilie kneifel, Hasan Namir, Khashayar Mohammadi, Naomi Cohn, Tom Snarsky, Guy Birchard, Mark Cunningham, Lydia Unsworth, Zane Koss, Nicole Raziya Fong, Ben Robinson, Asher Ghaffar, Clara Daneri, Ava Hofmann, Robert R. Thurman, Alyse Knorr, Denise Newman, Shelly Harder, Franco Cortese, Dale Tracy, Biswamit Dwibedy, Emily Izsak, Aja Couchois Duncan, José Felipe Alvergue, Conyer Clayton, Roxanna Bennett, Julia Drescher, Michael Cavuto, Michael Sikkema, Bronwen Tate, Emilia Nielsen, Hailey Higdon, Trish Salah, Adam Strauss, Katy Lederer, Taryn Hubbard, Michael Boughn, David Dowker, Marie Larson, Lauren Haldeman, Kate Siklosi, robert majzels, Michael Robins, Rae Armantrout, Stephanie Strickland, Ken Hunt, Rob Manery, Ryan Eckes, Stephen Cain, Dani Spinosa, Samuel Ace, Howie Good, Rusty Morrison, Allison Cardon, Jon Boisvert, Laura Theobald, Suzanne Wise, Sean Braune, Dale Smith, Valerie Coulton, Phil Hall, Sarah MacDonell, Janet Kaplan, Kyle Flemmer, Julia Polyck-O’Neill, A.M. O’Malley, Catriona Strang, Anthony Etherin, Claire Lacey, Sacha Archer, Michael e. Casteels, Harold Abramowitz, Cindy Savett, Tessy Ward, Christine Stewart, David James Miller, Jonathan Ball, Cody-Rose Clevidence, mwpm, Andrew McEwan, Brynne Rebele-Henry, Joseph Mosconi, Douglas Barbour and Sheila Murphy, Oliver Cusimano, Sue Landers, Marthe Reed, Colin Smith, Nathaniel G. Moore, David Buuck, Kate Greenstreet, Kate Hargreaves, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Erín Moure, Sarah Swan, Buck Downs, Kemeny Babineau, Ryan Murphy, Norma Cole, Lea Graham, kevin mcpherson eckhoff, Oana Avasilichioaei, Meredith Quartermain, Amanda Earl, Luke Kennard, Shane Rhodes, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Sarah Cook, François Turcot, Gregory Betts, Eric Schmaltz, Paul Zits, Laura Sims, Stephen Collis, Mary Kasimor, Billy Mavreas, damian lopes, Pete Smith, Sonnet L’Abbé, Katie L. Price, a rawlings, Suzanne Zelazo, Helen Hajnoczky, Kathryn MacLeod, Shannon Maguire, Sarah Mangold, Amish Trivedi, Lola Lemire Tostevin, Aaron Tucker, Kayla Czaga, Jason Christie, Jennifer Kronovet, Jordan Abel, Deborah Poe, Edward Smallfield, ryan fitzpatrick, Elizabeth Robinson, nathan dueck, Paige Taggart, Christine McNair, Stan Rogal, Jessica Smith, Nikki Sheppy, Kirsten Kaschock, Lise Downe, Lisa Jarnot, Chris Turnbull, Gary Barwin, Susan Briante, derek beaulieu, Megan Kaminski, Roland Prevost, Emily Ursuliak, j/j hastain, Catherine Wagner, Susanne Dyckman, Susan Holbrook, Julie Carr, David Peter Clark, Pearl Pirie, Eric Baus, Pattie McCarthy, Camille Martin and Gil McElroy.

The forthcoming forty-sixth issue features new writing by: Kirstin Allio, kemeny babineau, Joseph Donato, Beatriz Hausner, Matthew Walsh, Nicole Markotić, Lisa Pasold, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas and Emily Izsak.

And of course, copies of the first forty-five issues are still very much available. Why not subscribe?

Included, as well, as part of the above/ground press annual subscription! Which you should get right now for 2025! And you know about the above/ground press 32nd anniversary reading/launch/party happening in Ottawa on August 7th? tickets are available!

We even have our own Facebook group, and a growing (new) above/ground press substack. It’s remarkably easy.

Spotlight series #107 : Misha Solomon

The one hundred and seventh in my monthly "spotlight" series, each featuring a different poet with a short statement and a new poem or two, is now online, featuring Montreal poet Misha Solomon.

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, Quebec City-area poet and translator Simon Brown, Ottawa poet Jennifer Baker, Rwandese Canadian Brooklyn-based writer Victoria Mbabazi, Nova Scotia-based poet and facilitator Nanci Lee, Irish-American poet Nathanael O'Reilly, Canadian poet Tom Prime, Regina-based poet and translator Jérôme Melançon, New York-based poet Emmalea Russo, Toronto-based poet, editor and critic Eric Schmaltz, San Francisco poet Maw Shein Win, Toronto-based writer, playwright and editor Daniel Sarah Karasik, Ottawa poet and editor Dessa Bayrock, Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick, poet, writer and editor Jade Wallace, San Francisco-based poet Jennifer Hasegawa, California poet Kyla Houbolt, Toronto poet and editor Emma Rhodes, Canadian-in-Iowa writer Jon Cone, Edmonton/Sicily-based poet, educator, translator, researcher, editor and publisher Adriana Oniță, California-based poet, scholar and teacher Monica Mody, Ottawa poet and editor AJ Dolman, Sudbury poet, critic and fiction writer Kim Fahner, Canadian poet Kemeny Babineau, Indiana poet Nate Logan, Toronto poet and editor Michael Boughn, North Georgia poet and editor Gale Marie Thompson, award-winning poet Ellen Chang-Richardson, Montreal-based poet, professor and scholar of feminist poetics, Jessi MacEachern, Toronto poet and physician Dr. Conor Mc Donnell and San Francisco poet Micah Ballard.
 
The whole series can be found online here.

new from above/ground press: Maloukis, Burgoyne, Touch the Donkey, Downs, eckhoff, tierney, Beaulieu, Drescher, Solomon, Spinosa + Cantrell,

Cloud Game with Plums
Rose Maloukis
$5
See link here for more information

TENTACULUM SONNETS
Sarah Burgoyne
$4
See link here for more information

Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal] #26
with new poems by Tessa Bolsover, Jill Magi, Orchid Tierney, Amelia Does, Stan Rogal, katie o’brien, Chus Pato (trans. Erín Moure), Erín Moure and Lily Brown.
$7
See link here for more information

Another Tricky Day
Buck Downs
$5
See link here for more information

dieting Herb Wit
kevin mcpherson eckhoff
$5
See link here for more information

my beatrice
orchid tierney
$5
See link here for more information

CABARET
Derek Beaulieu
$4
See link here for more information

BLATTA
Julia Drescher
$5
See link here for more information

FLORALS
Misha Solomon
$5
See link here for more information

Civilization
Dani Spinosa
$4
See link here for more information

Year Zero
Andrew Cantrell
$5
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
June/July 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy of each

To order, send cheques (add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) 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). Scroll down here to see various backlist titles, or click on any of the extensive list of names on the sidebar (many, many things are still in print).

Review copies of any title (while supplies last) also available, upon request. and don't forget the Black Lives Matter above/ground press chapbook give-away!

Forthcoming chapbooks by: Ava Hofmann, Billy Mavreas, ryan fitzpatrick, Paul Perry, Franco Cortese, Zane Koss, Julia Drescher (another chapbook!), Dennis Cooley, a collaboration between Sarah Burgoyne and her mother, Barry McKinnon, Jérôme Melançon and Kemeny Babineau (and probably others!) as well as new issues of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] guest-edited by Jim Johnstone, Karen Schindler and Michael Sikkema [did you see his call for submissions here?]! above/ground press is now twenty-seven years old! (but you probably already knew that, right?);

STAY HOME! STAY SAFE! WASH YOUR DAMNED HANDS! WEAR A MASK! etcetera. we will see you again in person once we've the all-clear.