Mahaila Smith wins this year's John Newlove Poetry Award

Congratulations to Ottawa poet (and above/ground press author) Mahaila Smith, who last night was announced as the winner of the 21st annual John Newlove Poetry Award (hosted by the ottawa international writers festival; catch the recorded livestream here, in case you missed it), as run through and by Bywords.ca, with this year's judge Toronto poet Jim Johnstone. Very nice! From her author biography: Mahaila Smith (any pronouns) is a young femme writer, living and working on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They are one of the co-editors for The Sprawl Mag. They like learning theory and writing speculative poetry. Their recent chapbooks include Water-Kin (Metatron Press 2024) and Enter the Hyperreal (above/ground press 2024). Their novelette in verse, Seed Beetle, is forthcoming with Stelliform Press. As Jim's judge's comments read:

"In this year's John Newlove Award winning poem word building becomes world building, a powerful meditation deftly stitched together with a seamless, serotonin-inducing hand."

The annual John Newlove Poetry award, launched in the fall of 2004, commemorates the honest, poignant and well-written poetry of John Newlove, an Ottawa resident for almost twenty years and poet who died in 2003. Smith won for her poem "Ugly, Red: A Cento," and now has the opportunity for a chapbook of her work to appear through Bywords.ca next year! And did you hear that another above/ground press author, BC-based poet Dale Tracy, was the honourable mention for this year's award for her poem "Run"? Oh, what a year this has been.

some author activity: mclennan, Saklikar, Bowering, Newlove, Niespodziany, Abel + Turnbull,

rob mclennan offers write-ups on works by Susan Howe, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Joshua Beckman and John Newlove, as well as an anthology edited by George Bowering and Jean Baird, and an anthology edited by Eli Mandel, and has two new poems as well, up at Katie Naughton's Etcetera ; Benjamin Niespodziany has two new poems up at Rejection Letters; Jordan Abel is interviewed by Joseph Shea-Carter for The Puritan; and Chris Turnbull has some new work up at Pamenar Press.

Fucking Poetry : guest edited by rob mclennan,

The British e-newsletter Fucking Poetry solicited me as a guest-editor recently, and I thought it would be interesting to include, as my issue, poems from five recent above/ground press titles: Natalie Lyalin's Short Cloud (2019), Alice Burdick's A Holiday for Molecules (2019), Jane Virginia Rohrer's Fake Floating (2019), Stuart Ross' 10 TINY POEMS (2019) and John Newlove's THE TASMANIAN DEVIL and other poems: Twentieth Anniversary Edition (2019). You can find a web version of the issue here, with the five poems, as well as an excerpt of my needlessly-long introduction, which I include in full, below (why would you include that? ugh):

Given my chapbook press, above/ground press, recently celebrated twenty-six years, I thought it would be interesting to select five poems from titles that have appeared with the press throughout this year. This was tricky, given I’ve already produced some three dozen titles or more since January. For the length and breadth of the press, it has run entirely around my enthusiasms as a reader, with new titles appearing as often as my energies and cash-flow might allow. I produce works that excite me, so I can then distribute them to others, in the hopes that they, too, will become excited.

2018, the press’ twenty-fifth year, saw the publication of sixty-seven chapbooks, as well as four issues of the quarterly Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal], an issue of The Peter F. Yacht Club, and the debut issue of G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] (a new issue of which appears every two months), as well as further bits of ephemera. With the press some three dozen titles away from an accumulated one thousand titles, I would offer that my enthusiasms are more than most, and I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to produce numerous first chapbooks by now well-known writers, as well as new publications by an array of established poets, with half the titles any given year by Canadian authors, and the remaining by American authors (with the occasional further-flung poet appearing as well).

In 2019, alone, I’ve felt incredibly fortunate to be able to produce chapbooks by poets such as Natalie Lyalin, Zane Koss, Michael Dennis, Jane Virginia Rohrer, Pearl Pirie, Stuart Ross, Marilyn Irwin, Conyer Clayton, Michael Sikkema, Julia Polyck-O'Neill, Gary Barwin, Kate Siklosi, Mairéad Byrne, Kimberly Campanello, Stephen Cain, Kyle Kinaschuk, Paul Perry, Gregory Betts, Gil McElroy, Renée Sarojini Saklikar, Stephanie Gray, Billy Mavreas, Alice Burdick, Heather Sweeney, Franco Cortese, Dale Smith, Virginia Konchan and Laura Farina, with forthcoming titles soon by John Newlove, Jessica Smith, Ben Robinson, N.W. Lea, Lydia Unsworth, Allyson Paty, Guy Birchard, Simina Banu, Hawad (trans. Jake Syersak), Susanne Dyckman, Dennis Cooley, Ben Meyerson, Isabel Sobral Campos, Mary Kasimor, Amanda Earl and Andrew K Peterson.

There is an incredible amount of great writing that exists out there in the world. Is it any wonder I’m enthused?

new from above/ground press: THE TASMANIAN DEVIL & other poems: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, by John Newlove

THE TASMANIAN DEVIL & other poems
Twentieth Anniversary Edition
John Newlove
with an introduction by J.A. Weingarten
$5

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.

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
September 2019
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

originally published in an edition of 300 copies by above/ground press, September 1999 as John Newlove's final publication of new work, after The Night the Dog Smiled (ECW Press, 1986).

The publisher wishes to thank Susan Newlove, and the estate of John Newlove for permission to reissue this title.

John Newlove (1938-2003) was born and raised in Saskatchewan. He began publishing while working various jobs in Vancouver in the 1960s. His many honours included the 1972 Governor General’s Award for his book Lies, and the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild Founders’ Award. His works have been internationally published and translated. His posthumous collection, A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poetry of John Newlove, edited by Robert McTavish with an Afterword by Jeff Derksen, appeared through Chaudiere Books in 2007, and is now available through Invisible Publishing.

J.A. Weingarten is a Professor of Language and Liberal Studies at Fanshawe College. His first book, Sharing the Past, was published by the University of Toronto Press in 2019. He is currently completing work on The Selected Letters of John Newlove.

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

“poem” broadside #343 : “IT'S WINTER IN OTTAWA” by John Newlove

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.

IT’S WINTER IN OTTAWA

by John Newlove

produced in part as a handout during the first

Arc Poetry Walk, curated and hosted by rob mclennan,

walking around Centretown as part of WORLD POETRY DAY,

March 21, 2018

above/ground press broadside #343

Canadian lyric poet John Newlove (1938-2003) has been called a “powerfully influential presence” in the Canadian poetry scene, and is respected for the scrupulous honestly of his bare-bones poetics. And although Newlove lived in BC and Ontario for much of his life, he was always considered a Saskatchewan poet. He lived in Ottawa for seventeen years, longer than he lived anywhere, residing at 105 Rochester Street in Chinatown until his death.

Reprinted from A Long Continual Argument: The Selected Poems of John Newlove

edited by Robert McTavish; Ottawa ON: Chaudiere Books, 2007

Courtesy of Chaudiere Books

some author activity: Newlove, Clarke, Earl + Best,

Both John Newlove (by Shazia Hafiz Ramji) and George Elliott Clarke (by Jeffrey Mackie) have new write-ups on their work as part of the Brick Books Celebration of Canadian Poetry; Amanda Earl is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Ashley-Elizabeth Best is interviewed over at The Town Crier.

the chaudiere books 2014 (our rebuilding year) indiegogo campaign!

In case you weren't aware, Chaudiere Books exists as the trade extension of above/ground press (given that both are edited/published by myself), and we're in the midst of a big Indiegogo Campagin as part of our rebuilding year. Rebuilding, re-structuring and renewing the press since last summer, when Christine McNair became the other half of the press, we're two titles into our renewal (the Ground Rules anthology, and my recent collection of short fiction), with three more this fall: a second Chaudiere poetry title by Ottawa poet Monty Reid as well as first trade poetry collections by Ottawa poets Amanda Earl and Roland Prevost (all three have had multiple publications over the years through above/ground press), with a first title by Kemptville poet Chris Turnbull due out sometime in 2015. 

If and when you are able, go through the incredible list of perks by a variety of Chaudiere Books authors, including the recent documentary on John Newlove, signed first editions of David W. McFadden titles, and subscription packages, including a joint above/ground and Chaudiere package.