Editor's Notes

Greetings Dear Readers,

Our final issue of 2024 features moon women, Mister Whiskers, dead flowers and Tom Thomson. I hope you enjoy the issue.

Every month, the Bywords.ca selection committee reads poems for the next issue. Some months we receive over one-hundred new submissions. I don’t say enough how grateful I am to them for doing this work. We have had numerous Ottawa and former Ottawa poets on the selection committee. Some stay for years, such as the dedicated Carol A Stephen, JC Sulzenko and Kemisha Newman, while others may be on the committee for a year or two. This month, we bid adieu to a supportive and dedicated selection committee member, Chris Johnson. Chris has been a hard-working and engaged member of the team since he first joined a few years ago, helping with the editing of the John Newlove Poetry Award series chapbooks, taking the time to fact check quotes on poems we publish and a host of other additional tasks that have been helpful to me as managing editor. You may know that Chris is also managing editor of Arc Poetry Magazine, so it’s not like he doesn’t have a lot to do already! We wish Chris well in his endeavours and hope he returns some day!

Please join me in welcoming two new members of the selection committee, local poets Maya Chorney and Colin Quin, who will begin reading poems for the January issue soon. Bywords.ca could not exist without our readers.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

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

I wish you all peace and delight for the holiday sason and a joyous and creative new year.

If you have questions, comments, suggestions or nutritional and delicious chaffle recipes to offer, please contact me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

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