Editor’s Notes

Happy February, Readers,

At this time of year there is hope that spring will actually arrive soon. In the meantime, distract yourself with our featured poetry for February contributed by Spencer Gordon, Heather McLeod, and Marcus McCann. Note that Spencer is usually found at the helm of the wonderful literary prose magazine, the Puritan. Heather and Marcus are both poets we've published before, with Marcus also having served on our selection committee in the past. This month I've noticed a lot of submissions coming in from poets I haven't heard of, or those we haven't published before. It's good to see that we're getting the word out.

Please remember that if you know anyone who writes poetry and is a current or former Ottawa student, resident or worker, we would love to get a chance to see their work to consider for Bywords.ca.

Also in this month's issue is a feature article in the local scene by Catharine Carroll, who reports on our February 1 reading, Bywords Warms the Night, our annual fundraiser in support of Cornerstone Women's Shelter. Thanks to the kindness of everyone at the Dusty Owl, Swizzles and the excellent outside fundraising abilities of an angel who prefers to remain anonymous, we managed to raise $300 for Cornerstone. Hurray!

Thanks to this month's selection committee:

Andrew Faulkner, Gwen Guth, Megan McGrath, Sean Moreland, Leigh Nash, and Pearl Pirie.

And thanks to all of you for continuing to read and support Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal.

If you have kudos, comments, suggestions, cold meds, please e-mail me at editor@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl