January 15, 2024 Events and New Issue Announcement
Bywords.ca deadline for poems for February 2024 issue is today by midnight. Read guidelines on site, send poems, bio, current address and connection to Ottawa, if address not in Ottawa.
Art House Cafe Open Mic
Time and Place: Every Monday at 7:00 pm. 555 Somerset W
Web: www.thearthousecafe.ca/events
musicians, vocalists, poets, and comedians. weekly on Mondays. stairs leading up to cafe and down to open mic area
Leveller Story Meeting
Time and Place: 7:00 pm. virtual
Email: editors@leveller.ca
pitch article ideas, help brainstorm content, or be assigned a story. e-mail editor for link to meeting.
January 15 - meet.jit.si/LevellerMeetingRoom
Editor’s Notes
Greetings Dear Readers,
It’s a fresh year with fresh poems. The January issue of Bywords.ca features poems of beauty, murder, memory, love and silence. I hope you enjoy the issue.
The folks at VERSeFest, Ottawa’s annual poetry festival have launched a crowdfunding campaign to ensure that we have a festival this year. As they say in their description of the campaign, VERseFest has been knocked around somewhat in the Covid era and needs a rebuilding year. This year’s festival will focus on the local community of poets. There are many great perks to be had, such a workshop on invective poetry with Stephen Brockwell, manuscript editing with Stephanie Bolster, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, bundles of books and chapbooks, broadsides from Arc Poetry Magazine, magazine subscriptions and even hardback editions of poetry books from House of Anansi Press. If you can donate any amount of money or choose a perk to help support VERSeFest, it would be a great help.
After the holiday lull and still dealing with the caprices of Ottawa’s winter weather, we are beginning to see new events on the calendar again. The Factory Reading Series has an event at Ten Toes Café on Somerset later this month with readings by local poets. Riverbed Reading Series has joined forces with the University of Ottawa to hold an event with readers from their creative writing program. Urban Legends, Ottawa’s spoken word poetry organization, is holding a qualifier slam for the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam competition. I hope to see you at one of these events.
This is a good time to stop by an independent bookstore to pick up some poetry to get you through the dark winter nights. Perfect Books, Books on Beechwood, The Spaniel’s Tale and Octopus Books have great selections of contemporary and classic titles. You can also go to second-hand bookstores such as Black Squirrel Books and the Book Bazaar. I don’t know if you made any resolutions this year, but reading more poetry would be a good one to start with.
Reading inspires writing. We are always in need of poetry for our monthly poetry magazine. Please read the guidelines on the site and send us poems. There’s an honorarium and the chance to have your Bywords-published poem considered for this year’s John Newlove Poetry Award, judged by Toronto poet, Jim Johnstone.
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
Jagjeet Sharma
Marjorie Silverman
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
If you have questions, suggestions, comments or a warm mug of Irish Breakfast tea to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.
I wish all of you happy holidays and a joyous 2024.
Amanda Earl
Managing Editor
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