March 15, Events and Editor's Note for New Issue
Bywords.ca - Submissions
Web: www.bywords.ca
Monthly online magazine featuring emerging and established poets residing, studying or working in Ottawa. Please submit poems and events by the 15th of each month. Events calendars distributed monthly. Please submit events to events@bywords.ca, and previously unpublished poetry to submissions@bywords.ca in Word or RTF format. Please no PDFS. Read guidelines on site.
Urban Legends Poetry Collective
Time and Place: 7:00 pm. Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue
Email: urbanlegendspoetry@gmail.com
Ottawa's spoken word poetry collective. open mic, slam and features. PWYC. Covid regulations followed. register in advance for the open mic/slam. Covid Safety Plan: bit.ly/ULPCcovidSafetyPlan
March 15 - ULPC Slam #7 ft. Apollo the Child www.eventbrite.ca/e/ulpc-slam-7-ft-apollo-the-child-tickets
Greetings Dear Readers,
The poems in this month’s issue celebrate life’s ephemerality, through glimpses of final moments, sassy talk to death, and cloud musing. I hope you enjoy the issue.
As I write this note, Ottawa is about to enjoy the splendour of four days of poetry, and twenty-seven poets, most of them local, thanks to VERSeFest, which begins on March 21. Unlike previous festivals, when most of the events occurred at one venue, this year’s festival is a poetry crawl, with events happening at four different spaces: the Avant-Garde Bar in Lower Town, Red Bird in Old Ottawa South, the Happy Goat Café in Hintonburg and Sparks Beer in Chinatown. VERSeFest 2024 is therefore a celebration of Ottawa, its wonderful cafes and pubs and its poets. I find it remarkable and happy-making that we have so many poets. There are also some Gatineau, Toronto and Montreal poets who will take part as well.
I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to spend time with poets, hear them read and buy their books. Thanks to a successful crowd funding campaign, which I’m sure many of you contributed to, most of the events are free. Small press publishers donated books, chapbooks and broadsides, and poets donated their time in the form of editing and workshops. I plan to attend all four nights, and I’m reading at one event on March 22. I hope to see you there. If you come, please say hi and feel free to pick my brain about poetry, poets, submitting your work or whatever literary subject appeals. Hats off to rob mclennan and the board of directors for this wonderful festival.
Thanks to our selection committee this month:
Jesse Aubin
Dan Boland
Chris Johnson
Sarah Kabamba
Andrew Lafleche
Margo Lapierre
Stephanie Mason
Jade Riordan
Jagjeet Sharma
Marjorie Silverman
Carol A. Stephen
JC Sulzenko
If you have comments, suggestions, questions or conversations over coffee to offer, please e-mail me at amanda@bywords.ca.
Amanda Earl
Managing Editor
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