some author activity: Armantrout, Moure, Barton + beaulieu,

Rae Armantrout has a new poem in The New Yorker; Erín Moure is interviewed over at Ploughshares on translation; John Barton has a new poem in the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog; and derek beaulieu is interviewed by Entropy on No Press.

some author activity: mclennan, Cook, Archer + McCann,

rob mclennan has a new poem up at Tupelo Quarterly, and another up at his blog; Sarah Cook has a poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog, as well as a new essay posted at Black Warrior Review; upcoming author Sacha Archer has a new essay posted as part of the "On Writing" series; and Marcus McCann is interviewed over at Ploughshares.

some author activity: mclennan, Downs, Earl, Robertson + Deen,

rob mclennan has five new poems up at BRAVE NEW WORD; Buck Downs has a new essay in the "On Writing" series at the ottawa poetry newsletter; the second installment of Amanda Earl's "Lisa Robertson, A Reading Diary" is now online; and Faizal Deen [who reads next week at VERSeFest's Factory event] was interviewed by rob mclennan for the Ploughshares blog. And you're coming to VERSeFest, right?

some author activity: Higdon, mclennan, Downs + Braune,

did you know that Hailey Higdon has a blog? ; rob mclennan is now a monthly blogger for Ploughshares; Buck Downs is interviewed over at Touch the Donkey; and Sean Braune has a new poem posted as part of the "Tuesday poem" series over at the dusie blog.

Kimberly Ann Southwick reviews Sarah Mangold's A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert (2016)

Kimberly Ann Southwick reviewed three recent chapbooks over at the Ploughshares blog, including Sarah Mangold's A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert (above/ground press, 2016), a chapbook still very much available. Thanks so much! This is the second review of Mangold's latest, after Greg Bem reviewed such over at Queen Mob's Teahouse. You can see Southwick's full review here.

In A Copyist, an Astronomer, and a Calendar Expert (above/ground press, March 2016), Sarah Mangold deals mainly with landscape: clouds, mountains, trees, and how these, though so different from state to state, country to country, render themselves similar in ways that help connect, particularly to each other but also to art, as in “:Originality Is a Working Assumption:” when she writes, “cloud a punctuation / mark torn apart by a miracle: extract saint from common space.” The saint here is birthed by the mark of something common (a cloud) but simultaneously extraordinary (the miracle).

Mangold’s universals are most often found in nature and the idea of it as a system. In “Speak and I shall baptize you,” the poem containing the line that is the chapbook’s title, she writes: “the history of the system is itself a system / rent in human space / liberated from all lawns.” These lines help lead a reader to the understanding that when we look at and try to understand the earth and its creatures—including humans—no matter our expertise, education, or career choice, we can only ever do so from our own present reality.

some author activity: Ladouceur, Grayhurst, mclennan, McKinnon + Robertson

Ben Ladouceur has some poems in Dragnet #7; Alison Grayhurst posted a new poem up on her blog; rob mclennan has four prose poems in Talking Writing; part two of the four-part interview with Barry McKinnon, conducted by rob mclennan, is now online at the filling Station blog; Lisa Robertson has a bio up on The Poetry Foundation site (with various links to her activity); and above/ground press (along with many other local writers, publishers and events) are mentioned in Kelley Tish Baker's Ottawa article on the Ploughshares blog.