Editor’s Notes

This month's issue features the work of four poets and rob mclennan's review of Davie Street Translations by Daniel Zomparelli (Talonbooks, 2012).

I hope you are all enjoying a great spring. The weather has been up and down, but the Ottawa literary community has been consistently offering great events from the just past Ottawa International Writers Festival to the forthcoming readings at various series, including Tree, Dusty Owl, A B Series, the Factory Reading Series and In/Words. Bywords will have a table at the upcoming Ottawa Small Press Book Fair on June 15 and I hope to see you there.

This month we made our last rounds at local book and magazine shops, picking up money and returns of the final issue of the Bywords Quarterly Journal and having conversations with the booksellers, who've been friendly and supportive for ten years for which we are very grateful. Remember you can still obtain copies from the site via the Quarterly Journal or Store links.

Thanks to our selection committee:

Janie Beriault
Beth Ann Hubbert
Pamela Mosher
Kemisha Newman
Carol A. Stephen

Also I'd like to welcome new selector, Fiona Mitchell, an Ottawa resident who's been in Victoria working on her MFA in Creative Writing and is now finishing off her thesis. We have a great team of established and experienced poets, editors and scholars choosing poems. Thanks to all those who've submitted poems. Remember the deadline for the next issue is the fifteenth. Take a look at the guidelines and send some poetry our way. Poems published on Bywords.ca between September, 2012 and August, 2013 will be considered for the 2013 John Newlove Poetry Award. Our judge this year is Nova Scotia poet Alice Burdick.

I hope to see you at a reading this summer. If you have questions, comments or a warm plaid blanket & a wee dram of the strong stuff to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.

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Amanda Earl