Editor’s Notes

Greetings Dear Readers,

This month’s issue features death, war, pestilence, famine, loss and saying yes. I hope you enjoy the poems.

It is nearly halfway through another year of Covid 19. I hope you are finding ways to cope. I am taking solace in good reading from books to chapbooks. In August, local chapbook publisher above/ground press will celebrate its twenty-ninth anniversary. For twenty-nine years, its proprietor, rob mclennan has been receiving manuscripts, selecting work, communicating with and promoting the authors, cutting and pasting, photocopying, folding and stapling, and mailing chapbooks to subscribers in Ottawa and beyond. I first learned of chapbooks, a stapled or sewn booklet of 40 pages or fewer at the first ottawa small press book fair I attended. I fell in love with the form, and I was particularly taken with the chapbooks published by above/ground press, which represented a vast range of styles from some writers I had read before and many more that I hadn’t.

Before Covid, at this time of year, Bywords.ca and other local and not-so-local presses would be preparing for the forthcoming fair, getting ready to sell copies of the John Newlove Poetry Award Series chapbooks and chat with fellow vendors and chapbook purchasers. We began attending the ottawa small press book fair in 2001 and only missed one when I was recently out of hospital in 2009, but even then, friends made sure Bywords was represented by attending the fair on our behalf and selling chapbooks. I look forward to the days when we can once more return to gathering together at the ottawa small press book fair. In the meantime, I highly recommend you subscribe to above/ground press for a plethora of chapbooks in your mailbox.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Jesse Aubin
Dan Boland
Chris Johnson
Sarah Kabamba
Margo Lapierre
Stephanie Mason
Kemisha Newman
Jade Riordan
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko

Next month, I am pleased to announce we will be joined by Sonia Saikaley and Jagjeet Sharma, two local poets that have been published by Bywords.ca.

If you have comments, questions, suggestions or a steady arm to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

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