Editor’s Notes

Greetings Dear Readers,

This month's issue features Star Trek, the Next Generation, Kuai, barn owls, waning moons, iridescent bubbles that pop on your finger, and constellations. I hope you enjoy the issue.

On October 25, 2021 at 7:30pm please join us for the John Newlove Poetry Award. This will be our 18th year holding the event with the Ottawa International Writers Festival and our 2nd year on Zoom with the help of the Ottawa Public Library. As always, we will begin and end with music. This year's performer is John Ian. Megan Misztal, who won the award last year, will be launching her chapbook, Vestiges, which is available now on the Bywords.ca store. We will then announce and hear readings by those who received honourable mentions and the recipient of this year's award. Our judge was Elee Kraljii Gardiner, who had a great selection to choose from. Please register ASAP for the event via the Ottawa Public Library's Eventbrite page if you want to attend on Zoom live. You can also attend on FaceBook Live.

This annual event celebrates the poetry of John Newlove, a Prairie poet who lived in Ottawa for the last 20 years of his life. During the event, all the readers will read his poetry. We also celebrate the great work of our selection committee, which reads a lot of poetry every month, our advisors, the poets who send us work, and all the members of Ottawa's literary community from book sellers, event organizers, writers and performers, cultural workers, and audience members. We are grateful to the City of Ottawa for supporting us again this year.

I am pleased to welcome two new members to the selection committee: Chris Johnson and Sarah Kabamba. The selection committee is the heart of Bywords.ca. I really appreciate all their efforts and participation.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Jesse Aubin
Dan Boland
Ellen Chang-Richardson
Margo Lapierre
Kemisha Newman
Jade Riordan
Marjorie Silverman
Carol A. Stephen

If you have questions, comments, suggestions or anything but pumpkin spice to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl

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