Editor’s Notes

Greetings dear readers,

April's issue features slices of life and fantasy. I hope you enjoy the poems.

One of the many consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is the cancellation of events, such as festivals and readings. For the Bywords.ca calendar, you'll see a note that says "assume cancelled unless online." I'm doing my best to find out about events that are being held virtually. There are two storytelling series taking place every week. One is the 8th Generation Storytelling Series run by Jacqui DuToit and available through her Instagram account for adults and children. The other is the Irridescent Robot Storytelling Series run by Daniel K.L. Grégoire on Thursday evenings for adults on Zoom. Urban Legends is holding its Youth Speak open mic via Discord on Mondays, and has started to resume its regular slams online on Zoom. The Tree Reading Series held an online poetry workshop with Stephen Brockwell on Zoom. Check the Bywords.ca calendar of events for updates and additional information. If you are organizing a virtual event and you're an Ottawa resident, please let me know and I'll include it in the calendar.

The Festival of Literary Diversity, which is normally held in Brampton, Ontario is now taking place free online from April 30 to May 3, 2020. To register for each event, visit thefoldcanada.org.

rob mclennan is curating a virtual reading series, which features local poets and poets from elsewhere online, along with a bunch of interesting poetry-related content: periodicityjournal.blogspot.com.

The Dead Poets Reading Series in Vancouver, BC has started a virtual reading series as well, which you can access on Youtube: www.youtube.com/channel/UCwf14_7V200shhNEAmThrEw

If you're not writing these days, that's ok. No one expects you to produce creative work at this time, but if you are, I hope you remember to submit poetry for Bywords.ca. We publish poems monthly and pay $30 for the poem. Guidelines are on the site.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Jesse Aubin
Wes Babcock
Robert Martin Evans
Margo Lapierre
Kemisha Newman
Ashley Prince
Jade Riordan
Helen Robertson
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
Rob Thomas

If you have questions, comments, suggestions or a kind and comforting word to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca. Take care of you and yours and everyone else too.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

For regular event updates, please follow us on Twitter or join our FaceBook fan page.