Editor’s Notes

Greetings dear readers,

This month's issue offers the good, the bad and the ugly with poems on the peaceful promise of spring punctuated by contemplations on the betrayal of a friendship, revenge, booze and cigarettes, jazz and the devil. In other words, your typical spring. Hope you enjoy the issue.

March gave us both the lions of weather and the lions of poetry. I hope you had a chance to sample the poetry-packed VERSeFest and picked up numerous volumes from the Perfect Books festival store. If not, why not head over there soon to pick up some poetry.

April is National Poetry Month and Ottawa has plenty of readings to tempt your poetic palette. For those of you who are fans of more than just poetry, it's time to get your tickets and passes for the Ottawa International Writers Festival which takes place at the end of the month and features memoirs, fiction, politics and poetry by contemporary writers in North America and beyond. Check the Bywords.ca calendar for more information.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Wes Babcock
Robert Martin Evans
Jason Lamantia
Tanya Mead
Fiona Mitchell
Kemisha Newman
Leslie Smith
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
Rob Thomas

Please remember that if you are a current or former Ottawa student, resident or worker, we welcome your poems for our monthly issues of Bywords.ca. If your poem is published, you will receive an honorarium of forty dollars and the poem will be considered for the 2017 John Newlove Poetry Award.

John Newlove was a Saskatchewan poet who lived in Ottawa for the last twenty years of his life and he continues to be recognized as one of Canada's greatest poets. The prize comes with a financial award, the opportunity to read at the Ottawa International Writers Festival and a chance to have your chapbook published by Bywords, complete with a thorough going-over by our editors. We began the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2004 after his death in 2003 as a way to continue to celebrate his great work and to support poets, both emerging and established, in the spirit of this great writing.

As a way to celebrate National Poetry Month, I encourage you to pick up "A Long Continual Argument, the Selected Poems of John Newlove," published in 2007 by Ottawa's beloved publisher, Chaudiere Books. When you submit poems to Bywords.ca you are not only attempting to share your own words, you are honouring the spirit of this great maker of poems, a poet who tackled the difficult subjects, including his own failings. Please join us and share your poems.

I am very grateful to be at the helm of Bywords.ca. Thank you for your ongoing support and interest. You are part of our family.

If you have comments, questions, suggestions or a lovely, sunlit afternoon chat over a pot of tea or a pitcher of sangria to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

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