Editor’s Notes

Greetings dear readers,

October's issue features Sudbury poet Kim Fahner's review of David James Brock's Ten-Headed Alien and three poems. In the few weeks after the tornado, it is coincidental but serendipitous that all three poems in this month's issue deal with the consequences of great change, either survival during a war or after a natural disaster or support of a loved one's change. On behalf of Bywords.ca I offer support and concern for all who dealt with the consequences of the tornado, whether it was the people of Dunrobin who lost homes, business owners and families who had to deal with loss of business and food during the outages or the hydro workers who got the city up and running as quickly as they could.

A week after this issue goes live, we will have an election in which we have a chance to determine the direction and priorities of the City of Ottawa. I hope you will join me in casting your vote for a council that supports the arts, affordable housing, and public transport. See you at the polls.

Ten days after this issue goes live, you are invited to the 2018 John Newlove Poetry Award Reading and Ceremony to launch Doris Fiszer's chapbook, Sasanka (Wild Flowers) and to celebrate the recipient and honourable mentions for this year's award. We will begin and end with the music of troubadour, Subhraj Singh. The event is free and last for only one hour. I hope you can come join me in the celebration. It's going to be great fun and it will show your support for Bywords.ca and commemorate the poetry of John Newlove. This will be the 15th celebration.

Finally, I urge poets with a connection to Ottawa (you are a current or former Ottawa student, resident or worker) to please remember to send us your unpublished poems and to let other people know about the call. This time of year is a little low for submissions for some reason, so your work has a higher chance of being published, not to mention that you receive $40 per published poem and the opportunity to have the poem considered for the 2019 John Newlove Poetry Award. Read the guidelines on the site and send us a submission today.

We are also looking for reviews of recent Canadian poetry books and chapbooks. You don't have to have an Ottawa connection, you just have to be a Canadian resident to send us a review. Reviews should be between 500 and 1,000 words. We pay $75 per review. Further information is available via the above Guidelines link.

Thanks to our selection committee this month:

Robert Martin Evans
Margo Lapierre
Tanya Mead
Kemisha Newman
Catina Noble
Jade Riordan
Carol A. Stephen
Ben Toner
Rob Thomas

If you have comments, questions, suggestions or a walk through the colourful leaves to offer, please contact me at amanda@bywords.ca.

Amanda Earl
Managing Editor

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