Editor’s Notes

Greetings Readers,

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season. Our issue this month features poems by two current and one former resident. Monet, Sylvia Legris and ghosts don't have anything in common per se, so there's no point in writing an editorial that connects them. Just to say that as you can see, we publish an eclectic mix of poetry each month.

2010 has been another productive and creative year for Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal. We've held 5 readings, published twelve issues of Bywords.ca and 4 issues of the Bywords Quarterly Journal and raised money for the Cornerstone Women's Shelter. We held our first Think Ink Secondary School Poetry Contest in conjunction with the Ottawa International Writers Festival. We've sold numerous chapbooks and subscriptions at the ottawa small press book fair, on line at our store and in local book and magazine stores. We've posted so many readings, book signings on our calendar and workshops, conferences, calls for submission, publisher news on our news section, links and blogs on the site that I've lost count. And now we're on Twitter, tweeting out events daily via @bywordsdotca.

Thanks to you: readers, writers, photographers, musicians, event organizers, bookstore owners and workers for contributing to making Ottawa a vibrant literary city and to making Bywords the main resource for Ottawa's literary scene. And a special thanks to the City of Ottawa for its on-going support of Bywords.

Finally, thank you to the year's selection committee who have seen and voted on more than 500 poems this year. They vote in Ottawa, Toronto, Australia, wherever they happen to be. They work hard and Bywords wouldn't be anywhere without them. Thanks to the selection committee this month

Jamie Bradley
Gwen Guth
Christine McNair
Kemisha Newman
Claudia Coutu Radmore
Sarah-Grace Ross
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
Lindsey Woodward

If you have comments, suggestions or chocolate covered candy canes to send me, please contact me at amanda@bywords.ca. On behalf of myself and the Bywords team, I wish you happiness and good fortune in 2011.

Amanda Earl