Editor’s Notes

Happy New Year, dear readers!

To ring in 2013, we offer you a blockbuster January compendium with poetry by six current and former Ottawans plus rob mclennan's review of The Shell of the Tortoise: Four Essays & an Assemblage, Don McKay, 2011, Gaspereau Press. I hope you enjoy the issue.

Our 9th annual Cornerstone fundraiser reading will take place on Sunday, January 27 at 5pm at the Manx Pub. This year the amazing singer-songwriter Jill Zmud will be performing and we'll hear poetry by Dominique Bernier-Cormier, JC Bouchard, Heather Davidson, cb forrest, Cassandra Nykyforak and Catherine Ruth Taylor. We will pass the hat for donations to Cornerstone and each donor will receive a copy of the Bywords Quarterly Journal Volume 10-4. I hope you can attend but if you can't, please consider sending your donations directly to Cornerstone.

"Cornerstone provides emergency shelter and supportive housing for a diversity of women. Our services are offered in an environment which promotes dignity and a sense of hope. We are committed to public education and advocacy, and strive to increase safe, affordable housing and to end homelessness."

You can make your donations here.

Please note that this reading will mark the ten year anniversary of the Bywords Quarterly Journal. Ten years is a good run for any print publication, and we feel it is time to stop publication of the journal so that we can devote our attention to Bywords.ca, our monthly online publication. We have decided to end the BQJ on a high note with our fundraiser, great music and poetry. I hope you will join us in celebrating the Bywords Quarterly Journal.

Thank you to the cover artists, musicians, poets, venue hosts, vendors, distributors, editors, advisors, audiences, subscribers, libraries, printers, sound engineers, and the City of Ottawa for supporting our journal for ten years.

We will continue to publish poetry monthly on the Bywords.ca site and to host and administer the John Newlove Poetry Award with an annual reading as part of the Ottawa International Writers Festival.

Please join me in welcoming a new member of our team, writer and editor James Stuckey, formerly of Kingston, Ontario.

Thanks to our selection committee:

Janie Beriault
Pamela Mosher
Kemisha Newman
Claudia Coutu Radmore
Sarah-Grace Ross
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko

If you have comments, suggestions, or a wee dram of Scotch to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca. If you see me at a reading, please stop by to say hello. I'm always happy to meet Bywords readers and supporters.

For regular event updates, please follow us on Twitter or join our FaceBook fan page.

Amanda Earl