New Chapbook: Ordinary Annals

I received the utterly beautiful copies of my new chapbook ORDINARY ANNALS a few days ago, with the marvelous artwork of Palija Shrestha on the cover and made with love by Rob McLennan and the small but mighty above/ground press.

I wrote these poems moving through uncertainty, anger, grief—as we all were, collectively, in so many different ways, last year. The violence targeting Muslims that broke out in northeast Delhi. State brutality against certain categories of bodies. California fires. Anthropogenic climate change. Lockdowns. Through this period, I was contending with the contingency of my own stay/status in the United States as I applied for a visa. These poems think about the role of the poet and the language of poetry in a world where neither has power, on the face of it, to change the world—yet it is a world in which both language and the poet find themselves complicit. How then might we participate, and what might we enact? Without looking away from this gap where we do not know if our speaking is effective (could it be that we need to fall?), these poems falter towards a ripple, a ground of healing.  

With the hope that you might enjoy these poems. To order a copy of the chapbook, send cheques (in Canada, add $1 for postage; in US, add $2; outside North America, add $5) to: rob mclennan, 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa ON K1H 7M9. E-transfer or PayPal at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com or the PayPal button here.

https://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/2021/07/new-from-aboveground-press-ordinary.html

In a few months, my full-length poetry collection BRIGHT PARALLEL comes out as well from Copper Coin Press—please stay tuned, community.