Launch of Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013

Saturday, December 7, 2013 - 5:00pm

Manx Pub
370 Elgin Street
Ottawa, ON
K2P 1N1

Ground rules: the best of the second decade of above/ground press 2003-2013

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 books
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 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 VehiculePress, 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
decades 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, Nathanal, 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.
http://www.writersfestival.org/events/fall-2013/untitled-resource