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Here in New Brunswick, there are signs of spring everywhere, the snow is rapidly becoming a distant memory, the fiddlehead ferns are popping up along the riverbanks, and The Fiddlehead contest issue – no. 247 – is out!

The final UNB Reading Series event of the semester is both a launch of The Best Canadian Poetry 2010 (which includes five poems first published in The Fiddlehead) and a farewell reading by John Barton, the 2010/2011 UNB writer-in-residence and one of The Fiddlehead poetry judges for the 2010 contes

April is National Poetry Month and the League of Canadian Poets has organized a series of readings, performances, and displays that celebrate poets, libraries and twenty-five years of the Public Lending Right Commission. Check out the League’s National Poetry Month blog.

The Spring 2011 issue of The Fiddlehead (no. 247) will be hitting the newsstands and subscribers’ mailboxes in late April and early May. Featured in the issue are the winners and honourable mentions of our Twentieth Annual Literary Contest and new poetry and fiction from writers such as Darryl Whetter, Micheal Laverty, Richardo Pau-Llosa.

By Madeline Bassnett

I’ve been thinking lately about Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” It fits the current Fredericton landscape perfectly: the snow lies two feet thick on the ground and I have to strap on snowshoes just to feed the backyard birds. But I think about this poem for another reason too: it’s an old friend, the first poem I fully memorized.

By Madeline Bassnett

My life is all about revision — and that’s not just a metaphorical statement. It seems I’ve ceased writing anything new: my only task is to complete and repair the old. As if I’ve suddenly entered the field of furniture restoration, sanding the scratches, oiling the bumps, replacing worn nails — a deceptively satisfying comparison. As if revision were simply a matter of priming and primping, of returning to some earlier and idealised state.

Richard Cumyn’s most recent fiction collection, The Young in their Country and Other Stories, contains two stories that were first published in The Fiddlehead: “In the Wash” (no. 232 summer 2007) and “The Goddess Throws Down” (no. 240 summer 2009)

The Fiddlehead is a proud auction donor in support of Margaret Atwood in Vancouver, a fundraiser to benefit the Writer's Trust of Canada. Check out the Online Auction of Literary Collectibles, which runs from January 26th at 12:00 a.m.