Produced
to begin the re-launch of Ottawa literary publisher Chaudiere Books,
co-publishers rob mclennan and Christine McNair invite you to the launch of Ground Rules: the best of the second decade
of above/ground press 2003-2013.
Co-sponsored
by our friends at the Ottawa International Writers Festival and The Manx Pub,
the event will feature readings by three of the book’s contributors: Sharon
Harris (Toronto), Marilyn Irwin (Ottawa) and Stephen Brockwell (Ottawa). The
event will be (lovingly) hosted by Chaudiere Books co-founder, editor and
co-publisher rob mclennan.
5pm,
Saturday, December 7, 2013
The
Manx Pub
370
Elgin Street, Ottawa
Sharon Harris [pictured] is a Toronto
artist/writer whose poems have been anthologized in The Broadview Introduction to Literature, The Last Vispo, and Shift
& Switch: New Canadian Poetry. She is the author of chapbooks from
bookthug, In Case of Emergency Press, and above/ground, and her first
full-length collection, Avatar, was
published by The Mercury Press. She has written articles for Geist, The Globe & Mail, and Open Book Toronto; is a past contributor to Torontoist and Word
Magazine; and her work has been published in The National Post, dANDelion,
The Capilano Review, Drunken Boat, The Volta, broken pencil,
and Vallum. I Love You Toronto, her exhibition of photographs, appeared in
newspapers, magazines, and on radio and television across Canada.
Marilyn Irwin’s work has been published
by above/ground press, Arc, Bywords, and New American Writing. A graduate of Algonquin College’s Creative
Writing program, she has three chapbooks: for
when you pick daisies (2010), flicker
(2012), and little nothings
(2012). She won Arc Poetry Magazine’s
Diana Brebner Prize this year.
Stephen Brockwell cut his writing teeth
in the eighties in Montreal, appearing on French and English CBC Radio and in
the anthologies Cross/cut: Contemporary
English Quebec Poetry and The Insecurity of Art (both VéhiculePress, 1982).
George Woodcock described Brockwell's first book, The Wire in Fences (Balmuir, 1987) as having an extraordinary range
of empathies and perceptions. Harold Bloom wrote that Brockwell's second book, Cometology (ECW Press, 2001), held rare
and authentic promise. Fruitfly
Geographic won the Archibald Lampman award for best book of poetry in
Ottawa in 2005. His Complete Surprising
Fragments of Improbable Books is newly out from Mansfield Press. Brockwell
currently operates a small IT consulting company from the 7th floor of the
Chateau Laurier and lives in a house perpetually under construction.
Working out of Ottawa, poet and publisher rob
mclennan’s baby, above/ground press,
marks a second decade of the production of broadsheets, chapbooks, magazines,
and anthologies that trace out the best shapes of the best of contemporary
Canadian (and, increasingly, international) poetry. From the span of that
second ten of years, he has compiled this book of traceries: a selection of
work by writers ranging from the likes of the late Artie Gold, and Robert
Kroetsch, to the living derek beaulieu, Rachel Zolf, Eric Folsom, Natalie
Simpson, etc., all collected here as representative of a decade’s aesthetic
count.
from Gil McElroy’s
“Introduction: An Integral”
Edited
by rob mclennan, with an introduction by Gil McElroy, Ground Rules features writing from the second decade of one of the
most active micro publishers in Canada, selected from a series of hundreds of
publications lovingly edited, produced and distributed by editor/publisher rob
mclennan. A follow-up to Groundswell:
best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press, 2003), Ground Rules includes a wide range of
work by Artie Gold, Mark Cochrane, Suzanne Zelazo, derek beaulieu, Stephanie
Bolster, Amanda Earl, Nathanaël, Lisa Samuels, Rachel Zolf, Sharon Harris, D.
G. Jones, Julia Williams, Eric Folsom, Gregory Betts, Natalie Simpson, Aaron
Tucker, Monty Reid, William Hawkins, Emily Carr, Cameron Anstee, Helen
Hajnoczky, Marilyn Irwin, Stephen Brockwell, Robert Kroetsch and rob mclennan.
Copies
of the book will be available at the event. See the OIWF link to the event here.
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