Jérôme Melançon reviews Lori Anderson Moseman's OKAY? (2022) and too many words (2022) at The Ampersand Review

I'm not sure how I missed posting this, but our pal (and above/ground press author) Jérôme Melançon, poet, translator and critic, provided first reviews for two different Lori Anderson Moseman above/ground press titles--OKAY? (2022) and too many words (2022)--over at The Ampersand Review. Thanks so much! You should go here to see the whole review. Why didn't I post this earlier?

Jérôme Melançon is a Francopresse recognition award finalist!

Jérôme Melançon is one of the finalists of the Francopresse recognition award for the chronicle of the year alongside Guillaume Deschênes-Thériault and Julie Gillet! As they write via facebook: "To discover the pen of your reporters and your reporter, it is on page 32 of the finalists' notebook."

report: the above/ground press 30th anniversary reading/launch/party!

Can you believe three decades have come and gone already? As you probably know, I hosted a reading and launch and party on August 12, 2023 at the Clocktower Brew Pub in the Glebe as part of the glorious thirtieth anniversary of above/ground press, with readings by Jennifer Baker, nina jane drystek, Amanda Earl, Sophia Magliocca, Karen Massey, Jérôme Melançon, Monty Reid and Grant Wilkins. Unfortunately, Adrienne Ho Rose was unable to come in from Iowa City, but we all waved at one point to acknowledge her (I wonder if she saw us wave?). Her parents still live here, so I'm hoping there might be further opportunities for her to read in Ottawa at some point.

David Currie and Christine McNair

It was nice to finally have another in-person anniversary event, given the prior one was back in 2019 [see my report on such here]. And, naturally, brilliant thanks to my slate of attractive volunteers: Christine McNair and David Currie who ran the book table, and Brendan McNally who covered door duty. And did you see that Christine even dressed the same colours as the cover (which was originally temporary, but I wonder now if it may have stuck) for this fall's groundwork: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing)? Naturally, pre-orders are available now for this fine volume; and I think we're launching via the ottawa international writers festival this fall?

Amanda Earl

nina jane drystek [photo credit: Jérôme Melançon]

The first reader was Amanda Earl, who read from the latest issue of Touch the Donkey, which included some of her work. Having produced some ten chapbooks of her work-to-date through above/ground press [as well as a festschrift on her work], I always delight in hearing what she's been working on. Amanda really has been on fire the past few years. Have you heard that she's launching a new book soon? nina jane drystek launched her third chapbook and first with above/ground, missing matrilineal, a deeply intimate examination of loss that balances precision with open space, hesitation and clear patter.

Jennifer Baker [photo credit: David Currie]

Monty Reid

Jennifer Baker's Groundling: On Apology is a reissue of a chapbook she had in 2021 with the late John Goodman's Trainwreck Press, produced in a short enough run that she wanted to see it further out into the world. I know she works slowly, but I've been curious to see what else she's been working on. I was first introduced to her work through Phil Hall, from his time as writer-in-residence at the University of Ottawa, which resulted in the publication of Baker's chapbook debut, Abject Lessons (2014). Monty Reid's Where there's smoke emerged as a direct result of the ongoing fires, with smoke that stretched not only across Quebec and Ontario, but his prior landscape of Alberta [you saw the festschrift I produced on his work, yes?]. I told the story of meeting Monty for the first time when we both participated in a group reading for National Poetry Month through The League of Canadian Poets, back on April 1, 1999 (curated and hosted by Susan McMaster, I think it was). I was curious at him travelling all that way for the reading, and he said: No, I moved here yesterday.

Chris Johnson [photo credit: Jérôme Melançon]

Oh, and I suggested Chris Johnson bring along copies of the latest issue of Arc Poetry Magazine for potential sale, given the new issue has a good-sized essay on above/ground press by Jérôme Melançon. Make sure you pick up a copy!

Karen Massey [photo credit: Jérôme Melançon]

Sophia Magliocca

It does seem that every decade or so above/ground press produces a new chapbook by Karen Massey, a poet who is clearly long overdue for a first full-sized collection. When might that happen? If only we were still doing Chaudiere Books, honestly. Karen was one of the first people (and only participant younger than forty) that I met when I first started attending readings via The TREE Reading Series circa 1992. Where has the time gone? Her third chapbook, SONGS FROM THE DEMENTIA SUITCASE, is easily the strongest work I've seen from her so far. Next up was Montreal-based poet Sophia Magliocca, launching her chapbook debut and arriving with her parents in tow, all of whom were deeply supportive and absolutely adorable. Adorable! Sophia (one of a growing list of authors younger than the press) is a poet I first heard about through a recommendation by Montreal poet Sarah Burgoyne, who has offered a handful of poets with chapbook manuscripts my way over the past few years (Misha Solomon, Rose Maloukis and Vivian Lewin being others). Sarah clearly has an interesting eye. I am looking forward to seeing what Sophia does next.

Jérôme Melançon

Jérôme Melançon flew in from Regina (to visit family in Gatineau, but we coordinated) to launch his third above/ground press chapbook, Bridges under the water. There aren't that many attending English and French-language poetries the way he is, now having published works in both languages, as well as writing criticism on both French and English-language titles in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics. You should catch this interview I did with him last year over at Touch the Donkey on the two sides of his language/poetic: there's some interesting stuff in there.

rob mclennan [photo credit: Jérôme Melançon]

And he even pushed me to read a poem, saying that he came all this way and wanted to hear me read in person. So I did!

Grant Wilkins [photo credit: Jérôme Melançon]

The final reader of the evening was Ottawa poet and printer Grant Wilkins, who somehow exploded out of the woodwork a few years back, despite being around the Ottawa literary scene since the early 1990s (not long after I emerged). Grant always used to tell folk that he didn't write, no no, but I think it was his work with jwcurry and Messagio Galore that prompted something, whether a newfound interest or confidence, and now he's doing the most interesting combination of sound, visual and conceptual/response work around. We launched not one but two chapbooks of his as part of this event (with a prior above/ground press title earlier this year and even another one last year). What might be next?

Thanks so much for all who attended! It was such a great crowd, including natalie hanna, Charles Earl, Marilyn Irwin, Rob Fairchild, Jason Christie, Frances Boyle, Ellen Chang-Richardson, Cathy Macdonald-Zytveld, Marc Adornado, Susan Johnston, Senka Stankovic and a whole bunch more. Thanks again to the Clocktower Brew Pub! It was a pretty nice space. We clearly need to do this again next year.

Jérôme Melançon: 30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press : Arc Poetry Magazine #101

Regina poet, critic, translator and above/ground press author Jérôme Melançon was good enough to compose the essay "30 Years Above Ground: The Aesthetics of above/ground press" which was recently published in Arc Poetry Magazine #101! You should pick up a copy at your local/favourite magazine shop, or order a copy directly from them here! Thanks so much!

new from above/ground press: Bridges under the water, by Jérôme Melançon

Bridges under the Water
Jérôme Melançon
$5

word a single word ordering all things knowing thus willing
a rudder to seed the path, to drag the bed
that separation again touching all things
to break on all things    knowledge a placing
from this groove an order an ordering a word
a bulwark to defend
                          our feet within it and
                          within the river, external to their
                          depth, their length insufficient
                          to make an impression
never in the same tributary  ,  in the same boat
held upright  ,  throat open, but these millennial metaphors
river and ocean    word and speech    knowledge and will
length and depth    age and decay    current and fueling
floating and sinking the opposites of the slow downing
of the chest on the beach   rest   the thread from
water to earth   the string and the plucking
a tension between chests   sounding only in refusal
of the current borne by the other, bearing the other
plexus solar against plexus  ,  a curtain in the fall
the tension remains  ,  grave


published in Ottawa by above/ground press
July 2023
as part of above/ground press’ thirtieth anniversary
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy
[Jérôme Melançon will be launching this title in Ottawa as part of the above/ground press 30th anniversary reading/launch/party on August 12!]

Jérôme Melançon lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, Saskatchewan. His most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He regularly publishes poetry criticism, notably in the online journal periodicities, and his essay on above/ground press' thirty years of activity can be read in Arc Poetry Magazine #101. He has edited books and journal issues, mostly in political philosophy, and keeps publishing academic articles that marginally relate to these poems. He can be found on social media with the handle @lethejerome.

This is Melançon’s third above/ground press title, following Coup (2020) and Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022).

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Earl, Houbolt + Melançon,

Amanda Earl features at David O'Meara's Plan 99 Reading Series in Ottawa, alongside Gillian Sze and Adam Sol on Saturday, April 15, 2023; forthcoming author Kyla Houbolt has a new piece up at Sublunary Review, and another in IDLE INK; and Jérôme Melançon has a new poem up at the Chaudiere Books blog to open this year's National Poetry Month.

some author activity: Mellis, O'Reilly, Melançon + Dennis,

forthcoming author Miranda Mellis has a poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series via the dusie blog; Nathanael O'Reilly has new work up at axon; Jérôme Melançon has work featured in the Spotlight Series; and Amy Dennis is interviewed in the "12 or 20 questions" series

2023 #AWP (unofficial) offsite (virtual) readings : day one of five: Witek/Lopes, Robinson, Melançon, Unrau + Chernoff,

As part of the above/ground press thirtieth anniversary, I thought it would be both interesting and amusing to host a virtual (and unaffiliated) offsite reding as part of this year’s Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual Conference and Bookfair. While I’ve never actually attended myself (being unaffiliated with any organization that might assist with funds to attend such a thing), it does seem like a pretty cool destination. An Ottawa one would be cool; should they just host an Ottawa one? Until then, I suppose, something like this might have to suffice.

US poet Terri Witek (terriwitek.com) and Brazilian visual artist Cyriaco Lopes (cyriacolopes.com) have collaborated since 2005--their works together include museum and gallery shows, performance and site-specific projects featured internationally in New York, Seoul, Miami, Crete, Manchester, Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro, and Valencia. Witek holds the Sullivan Chair in Creative Writing at Stetson University in Florida, and Lopes is an art professor at CUNY John Jay in New York City. Together they teach Poetry in the Expanded Field in Stetson’s low-residency MFA of the Americas. Their collaborative projects are represented by the liminal (Valencia Spain).

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His most recent chapbook is with above/ground press, Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022, after 2020’s Coup), and his most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on Twitter mostly, and sometimeson Instagram, both at @lethejerome.

Ben Robinson is a poet, musician and librarian. His most recent publication is Without Form from The Blasted Tree and knife | fork | book. The Book of Benjamin is forthcoming from Palimpsest Press in the fall of 2023. He has only ever lived in Hamilton, Ontario on the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas. You can find him online at benrobinson.work.

Melanie Dennis Unrau is a poet of mixed European ancestry living on Treaty 1 territory in Winnipeg. A Research Affiliate and Visiting Fellow at the University of Manitoba, also a sessional instructor at the University of Winnipeg, Melanie studies oil poetry and the poetics of just transition. She is the author of the poetry collection Happiness Threads (Muses’ Company, 2013) and the poetry chapbook The Goose (above/ground, 2023), a co-editor of Seriality and Texts for Young People: The Compulsion to Repeat (Palgrave, 2014), and a former editor of The Goose journal and Geez magazine. Her forthcoming book “The Rough Poets: Petropoetics and the Tradition of Canadian Oil-Worker Poetry” is on contract with McGill-Queen's University Press. She is working on a poetry collection, “The Goose,” a literary-critical reading of “father of the tar sands” S.C. Ells’s Northland Trails. She recently co-edited a forthcoming issue of Canadian Literature journal on “Poetics and Extraction.” Melanie was a long-time participant in the Artist Mothers’ Collective at Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art in Winnipeg; she loves collaborating with visual artists and poets. This reading was first prepared for the Late Winter Writers Online Residency at the Banff Centre in February 2023.

MLA Chernoff is a poet, performance artist, meme enthusiast, and recovering academic. Their debut full-length poetry collection, [SQUELCH PROCEDURES], was released by Gordon Hill Press in Fall 2021. MLA is also the author of several chapbooks, including delet this, TERSE THIRSTY, SCRIED FUNDAMENTS, and I'M LIKE THE GREAT GRANDCHILD OF MARX & COCA-COLA (BUT NON-BINEY). They hope you are having a real nice day xo xo

some author activity: Brown, Mody, Tucker, Melançon + Dennis,

Simon Brown has some new poems and a short statement in the Spotlight series; Monica Mody is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Aaron Tucker is on the longlist for the CBC Non-Fiction Prize; Jérôme Melançon was interviewed for the Mauricie-Centre-du-Québec Views and Voices podcast series, to talk about poetry, translation, and living in French outside Québec, including a bonus reading of "Solidarité", from En d'sous d'la langue, as well as a bonus reading of "Irregularities" from Tomorrow's Going to Be Bright; the late Michael Dennis' "Shelf Portrait" (writ in 2019) is newly posted at The Richler Literary Project.

some author activity: Eleftherion, Hunter, Waldrop, Trivedi, Mohammadi + Melançon,

both Melissa Eleftherion and Carrie Hunter have new work in the bisexual issue of Hot Pink Magazine; Rosmarie Waldrop is interviewed on the Between the Covers podcast via Tin House by David Naimon; Amish Trivedi has four new poems up at The Brooklyn Rail; Khashayar Mohammadi has new work up at Iterant, and Jérôme Melançon reads in October at the Festival International de la Poésie, Trois-Rivières.

some author activity: Niespodziany, Brown, Unsworth, Melançon, Mody + Eleftherion,

Benjamin Niespodziany is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Simon Brown has some work in the eleventh and final issue of antilang; Lydia Unsworth has new work online at Pamenar Press; Jérôme Melançon is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Monica Mody is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews; and Melissa Eleftherion has new work up at The Hunger, hot pink mag and The Hopper.

new from above/ground press: Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright, by Jérôme Melançon

Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright
Jérôme Melançon
$5

Fifty-Three Kilometers

Emptied of the May snow
The branches across the highway
 – those branches still articulated
    without any exposure of cartilage –
Will find their place in this impatient
Thrust upwards of the Shield.
An ornament on its edges perhaps.
In the meantime the path winds,
Mattawa a distant memory: no one
Would even try to turn around. We come
Close to stopping to move one that had
Snapped – one branch that might have held me
And entire families, unlike those bent in a bow,
Ready to shoot back up and bury
Whatever leaves itself within reach.
The lack of agreement in seasons
Hides the reversal in the motives for this trip.
A coming death, spring already verified,
Leaves grabbing on to the snow out of curiosity
A desire to be transformed, exhaustion
Already. I see hares, living in a future
Landscape, foraging for what’s left of this
Forest’s promises in each other’s shade.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
April 2022
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His most recent poetry collection is En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). This chapbook is a supplement to that book. He is also the author of a bilingual chapbook with above/ground press, Coup (2020), and of two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018) and a bunch of different attempts at figuring out human coexistence in journals and books nobody reads. He’s on Twitter and Instagram at @lethejerome and sometimes there’s poetry happening on the latter.

This is Melançon’s second above/ground press title, after Coup (2020).

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 rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Ross, Melançon, Brockwell, Marshall + Pirie,

Stuart Ross offers his annual New Year's poem, over at his blog; Jérôme Melançon is interviewed via the Chaudiere Books "Six Questions" series; Stephen Brockwell is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; Sara Renee Marshall has a new poem and statement up in the Spotlight series; and Pearl Pirie wrote on E. Pauline Johnson for many gendered mothers.

Bryce Warnes reviews Jérôme Melançon's Coup (2020) at The Pamphleteer

Bryce Warnes was good enough to provide a first review for Jérôme Melançon's Coup (2020) over at his relatively new site, The Pamphleteer. Thanks so much! You can see his original review here. As he writes:

Jérôme Melançon | above/ground press | Ottawa, 2020

Staple bound, 20 pages | Purchase

Phenomena elemental and urban, the in-betweens of car seats and hotel coffee, come apart and rejoin, redisclose themselves. “Les racines sarclées, les mains pleines de tiges / Sudden desire to hear into everything,” to go underground, where “D’une douceur pressentie l’humidité suinte.” Above, “Le ciel s’incline,” and “Directions shift, pull the window in the storm’s way…” Disjointed, the world’s hidden forces fracture the body (“…cracked hands and brilliance”) and create blockages (“Enfermement des veines…”), tangling territories and sense. Is that a bird or a streetlight? A song or an error? Carried by Coup’s poem-logic of translingual rhyme, we drift into a dream—smack dab.

some author activity: o'brien, Robertson + Melançon,

forthcoming author katie o'brien has a poem up in the "poetry pause" series via The League of Canadian Poets; Elena Betros López interviews Lisa Robertson over at Cordite; and Jérôme Melançon is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.

new from above/ground press: Coup, by Jérôme Melançon

Coup
Jérôme Melançon
$5

The horizon split, the morning finds the mirror

Mes yeux s’ajustent lentement à la saveur

Essuie-glace et clignotant fondus en surprise
The wheels learn to crawl, the engine hardens with ease

I tilt the seat back, lie down in the aftertaste

Ma surface gelée aiguise les contrastes

La tension glisse vers l’ouest et le goût m’échappe

Under the rind, the scraping, the pulling happen

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
August 2020
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Jérôme Melançon est l’auteur de De perdre tes pas (2011) et Quelques pas quelque part (2016), aux Éditions des Plaines. Son écriture plus immédiate est trouvable via @lethejerome. Il vit en Saskatchewan et est professeur agrégé à l’Université de Regina.

He writes about political philosophy, phenomenology, popular music, and literature, and sometimes even teaches those things, with gratefulness to students for their willingness to try things and talk about them.

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 at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com