some author activity: Hawes, Ace, Williams, Coulton, Myers, Schapira + Bell,

James Hawes has a new poem up on the Chaudiere Books blog for National Poetry Month, as does Samuel Ace and forthcoming author Evan Williams, as well as Valerie Coulton; forthcoming author Peter Myers has a poem in the "Tuesday poem" series via dusie; Kate Schapira has new work in Anomaly; and Wade Bell has new work up at The Typescript.

some author activity: Schapira, Deutch, Davis + Jarvis,

Kate Schapira reads "Questions and Practice For Your Origin Story" for Ours Poetica; Amanda Deutch has some new work up at GASHER; forthcoming author Jordan Davis has a new essay on Ted Berrigan up via The Poetry Foundation; and Jenna Jarvis is interviewed over at poetry mini interviews.

some author activity: Bowering, mclennan, Gunnars, Baker + Schapira,

[photo of George Bowering by Colin Browne] rob mclennan answers "The DevilHouse Six" over at Amanda Earl's DevilHousePress, and has a poem posted at Mad Crab; above/ground press author Kristjana Gunnars interviews Anne Campbell for Queen Mob's Teahouse; Jennifer Baker has a new piece posted as part of Stuart Ross' 2017 Inaugural Poem; and Kate Schapira posts "Three Alternate Histories from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth."

some author activity: Ladouceur, beaulieu, Schapira, Reid + Hunter,

Ben Ladouceur was interviewed over at Nineteen Questions; "Derek Beaulieu Wrote a Poem for the Emerald Awards and You Have To Read It"; Kate Schapira and Valerie Witte interview each other over at Queen Mob's Teahouse; Monty Reid writes in the "Five Things Literary" series over at Open Book: Ontario; and Carrie Hunter has a new poem up in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

some author activity: Higdon, beaulieu, Waldrop, Schapira + Brockwell,

Hailey Higdon had some new work up at Bloof for the sake of National Poetry Month; derek beaulieu has a new visual poem up at h&; Rosmarie Waldrop has a new poem, with accompanying write-up by Ben Lerner, over at Harper's; Kate Schapira has some new work up at The Wanderer; and Stephen Brockwell (pictured) has a new poem (with audio) over at The Puritan.

Lyndsay Kirkham reviews Kate Schapira’s The Motions (2014) in Broken Pencil #69

Lyndsay Kirkham reviews Kate Schapira’s The Motions (2014) in Broken Pencil #69. Thanks so much! This is actually the first review of Schapira’s second above/ground press chapbook.

The 23 poems of The Motions are untitled, and all sit with a similar stubborn complacency against the edge of the white page. Similar in length and space-taking, these poems, on first glance, are interchangeable, when really, they tell a story when read as a collective tale of home, geography and minutiae.

            Despite a dedication to the verisimilitude of our lives, big themes waves to the reader when reflecting on the collection as a whole. These themes are then expertly whittled down to sharper points within the smaller and more nuanced pieces. The cohesion of Schapira’s work is one of its greatest features and calls one back inside the interior of these small glimpses of reflection.

            A reader is invited into the poet’s imagined spaces, to touch the “white comforters of her place” and linger in the crevices between the “local history” and the ephemera of a life-lived. Attention is paid to exacting an image, of creating perfect dioramas within each and every poem that fill The Motions. These precise snapshots are carried and crafted with a precise use of language that is without pretention or pomposity. They are words; they are doing work.

            Shapira’s collection repeatedly asks questions we are invited to use in disrupting the organized rooms of poetry offered throughout The Motions. It is in the questions – a patterned and obvious motif of the collection – where one detects a quiet but persistent rage; the questions swirl around the rest of the words, filling up the deliberately large white space. Readers feel magically observant, wanting to point toward the slipping mask of the landscapes that come to us as masked quiet and calm. This bubbling disquiet becomes a theme of its own with geographical, political and micro implications.

            The final poem in the 2014 collection doesn’t sew anything up for readers. The questions haven’t been answered and they are left with you in all their petite and crafted beauty: “I who wait/ on the rock hide my/ gravity, fail to remember/ filling with names. Caught/ as the stems of signs, pickets catch/ and resist”.

DUSIE #17 : Reed, Kaminksi, Poe, Prevost, Sand, Reid, Shapira, Simpson,

Dusie #17, lovingly guest-edited by Marthe Reed, features a slew of work by above/ground press authors, including Megan Kaminski, Deborah Poe, Roland Prevost, Kaia Sand, Monty Reid, Kate Shapira, Natalie Simpson and Reed herself, as well as a host of others.

some author activity: Schapira, Earl, Abel, Dyckman + Moritz,

Kate Schapira has a new poem posted as part of the dusie "Tuesday poem" series; Amanda Earl's "when love blooms, a visual poetry suite for Tom & Charles" is now online at Creative Thresholds; a short article on Jordan Abel appears at The Source; Susanne Dyckman has a new poem, "Hearing Loss," posted at the Kelsey Street Press Blog; and there's an audio interview with Rachel Moritz on her above/ground press chapbook over at New Books in Poetry.

some author activity: Schapira, Armantrout, Wilkinson, mclennan + Earl,

a new interview with Kate Schapira is now up at Coldfront magazine; Rae Armantrout reads Susan Wheeler as part of the poetry podcast over at The New Yorker; both Joshua Marie Wilkinson and rob mclennan have new work posted in the third issue of small po[r]tions; and Amanda Earl is interviewed by Sandra Ridley on pseudonyms, over at Open Book: Toronto.

new from above/ground press: THE MOTIONS, by Kate Schapira

THE MOTIONS
Kate Schapira
$4

What did I expect?
That things would rename.
I clambered and sank
in nature and in
houses, head of
the stairs pausing
me, suspended,
successful, in high dry
air. No fire anywhere.
Dispatcher warns of accident.
Demands an alternate route.
Ten-year-old kids duck,
dissolve and collapse,
face window after
window immersed
in their topography.
Brick and small-leafed
cluster, asphalt, ill-
traveled and steep: my
eye runs from creature to
dark burrow, runs
me into the ground.
Silences over the island.
Not island, peninsula.
Not surrounded, surrendered.

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

Produced, in part, as a handout for PHILALALIA, the three-day small press/art fair, September 25-27, 2014 in Philadelphia PA. Thanks much to Kevin Varrone for his help and support.

Kate Schapira is the author of four full-length books and nine other chapbooks of poetry. She lives in Providence, RI, USA, where she writes, teaches, and co-runs the Publicly Complex Reading Series. Learn more about her current project at climateanxietycounseling.wordpress.com.

This is her second above/ground press chapbook, after OVERHEARD WHILE HIDING FROM THE SUN (2014).

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 at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: Schapira, Hancock, Abel, McFadden + Reed,

Kate Schapira has a new essay in the "On Writing" series over at the ottawa poetry newsletter; Brecken Hancock responds to Open Book: Ontario's "dirty dozen" questionnaire; there's a new interview with Jordan Abel at Weird Canada; David W. McFadden writes on being diagnosed with Alzheimer's for Toronto Life; and Marthe Reed reviews Eye of Witness: A Jerome Rothenberg Reader over at Jacket2.

some author activity: Schapira, Armantrout, dueck, Abel, Adams + Samuels,

Kate Schapira sets up a booth to offer 'climate anxiety counseling', and even has a new poem up at Sink Review; Rae Armantrout has a new poem up at Poets.org; nathan dueck has some new work up at The Winnipeg Review; Jordan Abel on the technicalities of performing poetry; Carrie Olivia Adams has a new poem in  TYPO #20; and Lisa Samuels has a poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series.

Edric Mesmer discusses (briefly) six recent above/ground press chapbooks;

Edric Mesmer was good enough to mention six recent above/ground press titles in the new issue of YELLOW FIELD (#nine; spring 2014): An Overture in the Key of F by Carrie Olivia Adams; The State of Which by Hailey Higdon; Sugar Beach by Camille Martin; from Hark: a journal by rob mclennan; Overheard While Hiding from the Sun: post-notebook poems by Kate Schapira; and Albanian Suite by Hugh Thomas). Thanks, Edric! There are two previous reviews of Adams' title here and here, a previous review of Higdon's title here, two previous reviews of Martin's title here and here, two previous reviews of mclennan's title here and here, and a previous review of Thomas' title here, and copies of all are very much available! Also, you can pick up a copy of the new issue of YELLOW FIELD through: yellowedenwaldfield [at] yahoo [dot] com or by writing to 1217 Delaware Avenue, Apt. 802, Buffalo, New York 14209. For those who haven’t been able to pick up an issue yet, I reprint such here:

6 more from above/ground press        2013-2014

I love a small press, what it can say through its poetics—in this case, chapbooks answering the call of a contemporary lea. Consider a cache of birds, a quintet of strings; but the trope may or mayn’t be limited to birdsong, string, or color-tone…Sometimes there’s a poem in which Buffalo poet emeritus Bill Sylvester writes: “pepper linen incense lobster / lutes viols and ambergris […] what a messy party that would be!” And so we messily hear a great party of Darwinian diversity: “The formalist of formant when our lips make the vowel, it I the act of giving somewhere shape” (An Overture in the Key of F by Carrie Olivia Adams); “I did some trying to voice the regional things –accents and whatnot / I even tried to find that series of hybridized creatures, part person / part place that exist in the park” (The State of Which by Hailey Higdon); “viewing creation / / from a precisely-gauged periphery, clock ticking” (Sugar Beach by Camille Martin); “A stone made out of stone. The dream of people you can’t know. Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, Bay. We know you, myth. What lifestyle will not allow” (from Hark: a journal by rob mclennan); “Anyone can submit / a video to the Free Me Library. Can find / purchase for brilliance, can be avenged sevenfold or / touched relevantly. All that can be shelved in me” (Overheard While Hiding from the Sun: post-notebook poems by Kate Schapira); “cadence address catch dreams / pays and agree, chlorate of poems, / empathic, the old epidemic / things themselves” (Albanian Suite by Hugh Thomas).

some author activity: Armantrout, Schapira, Smith, Brockwell, Earl, Hancock, mclennan + hastain,

Some early recordings of Rae Armantrout reading are now posted up at PennSound; Newport Life Magazine features a selection of poems for poetry month, including new work by Kate Schapira and Jessica Smith, among others; Stephen Brockwell has a couple of new poems up at Maple Tree Literary Supplement; and Jessica Smith, Amanda Earl, Brecken Hancock, rob mclennan, j/j hastain all have new work up in the ninth issue of seventeen seconds: a journal of poetry and poetics.

new from above/ground press: OVERHEARD WHILE HIDING FROM THE SUN, by Kate Schapira

OVERHEARD WHILE HIDING FROM THE SUN
Kate Schapira
$4

#21: Subject: I Am a Thief


“You have a plot here?” To sprout
is to push. Materials come to
light sooner or later. “No,
I just like to walk through it,”
keeping herself in straws. Two
red and green apples form tiny
balls for a lamppost phallus; in elementary
school you learn about the Pilgrims,
the gold rush … Old documents look
like what you do with them to “age” them.
Leafing with gravitas, you say, “Mm.”


When is “house” apt? When it’s time
to pay your window tax, wearing
a chandelier drop for a pendant at
the end of the lax year. More
mattresses than anyone. More windows.


“I am a thief and would make
sure I deal with you financially.”
For love or money, taking Humanitarian
Architecture classes: “Guess who’s in it?
The boy who broke my heart,”
the heart a dolled-up woman who
can’t walk fast; how often does it compound?
The dump truck’s asphalt attachment



leaves a hot trail, a band of flaws.
Soak them in tea. Bake them in the oven.
The storyteller, she of the terrible
beauty and spandex patterns, says, “Mm.”

published in Ottawa by above/ground press
February 2014
a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy

Kate Schapira is the author of four full-length books of poetry, most recently The Soft Place (Horse Less Press), and eight other chapbooks, most recently The Ground / The Pass / The Wave (Grey Book Press). She lives in Providence, RI, USA, where she co-organizes the Publicly Complex Reading Series.

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 at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com

some author activity: McNair, Brockwell, Hancock, mclennan, Smith + Schapira,

above/ground press author Christine McNair gets a nice review (by Matthew Redmond) of her BookThug title over at The Bull Calf; the Plan 99 Reading Series in Ottawa has posted their spring schedule, including readings by Stephen Brockwell (March 29 - w/ Sounankham Thamavongsa and Kathryn Mockler), Brecken Hancock (April 27 - w/ Aisha Sasha John) and rob mclennan (May 10); and both Jessica Smith and Kate Schapira have new work in the second issue of La Vague Journal.