Join us for an unforgettable evening of poetry and music.

Amanda Earl hosts the 2025 John Newlove Poetry Award reading and ceremony. Bywords.ca will be launching After all this hurt , Mahaila Smith’s chapbook with readings by this year's John Newlove Poetry Award recipient and honourable mentions, and music by Benoît Christie.

After a short break, it’s music and poetry performed by Domina Eliahou and Stuart Ross. Fresh off a breathtaking, improvisational performance at the Hillside Festival, the duo make their first appearance in Ottawa, where Eliahou will improvise an ever-changing eclectic soundscape into which Ross will plug his poems, bend his poems, and spit out sound poetry.

Up next, ARC Poetry will announce the winner of The Archibald Lampman Award which recognizes an outstanding book of English-language poetry by an author living in the National Capital Region. The 2025 Lampman Award finalists are: Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin, Heliotropia by Manahil Bandukwala, and Crazy/Mad by AJ Dolman. The jury for the 2025 award were Simina Banu (Quebec), Jake Byrne (Ontario), and Jess Housty (British Columbia).

Our evening concludes with the Ottawa launch for Margo LaPierre’s second collection, Ajar . These poems navigate the physical and psychological dangers of womanhood through the flattening lens of mood disorder. Psychosis isn’t the opposite of reality—it’s another perceptual system. From the emergency room to the pharmacy to the fertility clinic to the dis/comfort of home and memory, this collection humanizes bipolar psychosis.