Editor's Notes

Greetings Dear Readers,

This month’s poetry gives us the urgency of an ambulance, the precariousness of life, the transformation of growth, and the shapeshifting of dreams. I hope you enjoy the issue as we all wait for spring with excitement and yearning.

One of the exciting prospects of spring that I always look forward to is VERSeFest, Ottawa’s poetry festival. This year it is taking place between March 25 and 29, 2025 at three different venues in the City, brought to you by twelve different literary series in Ottawa. If you are a poet yourself or a fan of poetry, this is your chance to be steeped in the stuff and to chat and engage with local and visiting poets from the Innu community of Pessamit, in the Côte-Nord region of Québec, California, Toronto, Montreal, Nova Scotia, Sudbury, Massachusetts, Edmonton, and Ireland. I plan to be there for every event and one of the workshops, and likely a few of the afterparties too! Hope to see you there. Don’t be shy, come up and say hi if you recognize me. Or even if not. Thanks to rob mclennan, Frances Boyle, Allison Armstrong, Stephen Brockwell, Ben Ladouceur, Michelle Desbarats, Jeffrey Richstone and Daniel Groleau Landry, the board members of the festival for all of the hard work of putting together this festival for poetry lovers once more this year. If there’s anything we need now, it’s poetry.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Dan Boland
Sarah Kabamba
Andrew Lafleche
Stephanie Mason
Kemisha Newman
Colin Quin
Jade Riordan
Marjorie Silverman
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
Kuna Zero

If you have comments, suggestions or just want to take a long walk with me to look for the first crocus in downtown Ottawa, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

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