Since I always forget to do such things, I should mention that my latest poetry title, World’s End, (Winnipeg MB: ARP Books, 2023), is now available! You can order copies through the publisher directly (that might be easier, in certain ways), or through me if you wish [send $18 (via email or paypal to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com) ; obviously adding $5 for postage for Canadian orders; for orders to the United States, add $11 (for anything beyond that, send me an email and we can figure out postage); for current above/ground press subscribers, I’m basically already mailing you envelopes regularly, so I would only charge Canadians $3 for postage, and Americans $6 (that make sense?)]. Wanda Praamsma was good enough to review World’s End, in The Toronto Star (alongside collections by Sandra Ridley [which I reviewed here], Sonja Ruth Grekol and Nasser Hussain), and Billy Mills offered a brief review as well, over at his elliptical movements. And did you see that Hollay Ghadery interviewed me as well for same, in her one-question interview series? I’m reading from the collection soon in Toronto, as part of the Art Bar Reading Series: Monday, December 11th at 7pm at the Free Times Cafe (320 College Street, Toronto) alongside Armand Garnet Ruffo and James Nason. Might I see any of you there? Naturally, I’ll have an armload of books and chapbooks with me for sale (as I usually do). I’ll also have copies of the new above/ground press anthology, groundwork: The best of the third decade of above/ground press: 2013–2023 (Picton ON: Invisible Publishing, 2023). It is a very beautiful thing! My copies landed last week, with Canadian contributors receiving theirs over the past few days (I suspect the copies to American contributors will be landing somewhere over the next week). George Stanley! Brenda Iijima! Jordan Abel! Stuart Ross! Norma Cole! Julia Drescher! Alice Burdick! etc etc etc. The entire lineup is impressive, so I recommend you check out a copy of that. What might the next decade of above/ground press bring? I’ll be posting my introduction online at periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics in a few days as well, if such a thing appeals.
The audio of a summer interview RC Weslowski and Kevin Spenst did with me for Wax Poetics now lives as a podcast, and can be heard here. There’s also this interview Erin Bedford did with me for Pinhole Poetry back in July. I would point out newly-published poems here and there, but I’ve barely been doing any of that over the past year or so, having really only published this chapbook earlier this year composed in January/February, as dear spouse was away at Banff. I should mention that my call-and-response Covid-era collaboration with Denver poet Julie Carr is now available as a chapbook as well, and it is extremely cool. I do seem to have begun to different extended poem-sequences while in Florida a few weeks back, but it is a bit too early to speak of any of that. Not quite yet.
Oh, I’m also one of the jurors for the upcoming Montreal International Poetry Prize, which is pretty cool. They’ve been announcing jurors on their twitter feed for a few days now, and there I am. Apparently there’s an accompanying reading come spring at McGill for the jurors as part of such, which I’m looking forward to. Is there anything I’m missing?