About Me:

photo and design courtesy Zach Polis, then Poet Laureate of St. Albert; poetry by AMS, presented as part of a series of artist portraits commissioned by the Gov’t of Alberta.

Purchase SATB score for Journey Song here.

Purchase Humane as paperback, audiobook, or kobo e-book here. 

For the Changing Moon: Poems & Songs here.

Fifth World Drum here.

About this site

In the 10+ years I’ve had this blog, I’ve learned a lot. I’m proud to continue writing and posting, and delighted with my widespread, if modest, readership. Thank you for visiting me here. 

In 2008, I started a little blog, on a WordPress site set up for me by the lovely Frontenac House, who published my inaugural book of poetry, Fifth World Drum.

The blog, which i named Fifth World Journal, was great fun to write, for a time. Then, for reasons that would require too long a post, the site went off-line for a time. By the time everything was repaired and ready to get back blogging, two big things had changed.

One was, I found a group in another country had taken on the name ‘Fifth World Journal,’ for their site about ecumenical issues. Interesting, I thought, and felt both flattered and annoyed.

The second thing was, I became Poet Laureate of my city, Edmonton. For two years, all my writer energy has been taken up with that post, and with my writing facilitator job.

In 2013, my civic posting complete, I became a free-range blogger once again. So, this is my  Fifth World Journal at Prairiepomes.com

Prairiepomes? It’s been my handle for years and years, and this time, I figured out to register it! Pomes – in case you didn’t know – are a particular style of fruit, exemplified by apples, belonging to the rose family. But why?

Why? I could wax pretentious about how my work is the fruit of living in this particular northern prairie province for so much of my life – but, etymology aside, it sounds fun, right? prairiepomes. I like it.

So, I hope, will you.

This, by the way, is my listing as a proud member of  The Writers Union of Canada.

Finally, a note to educators, as someone who occasionally calls herself that, too:

Access to this blog is free. I get no pay for posting here. I’m okay with that, because this site supports, and sometimes leads to, paid work, and I may yet monetize it directly.

However, if you find yourself relying upon access to free sites for any substantial amount of the material you need for teaching, I ask you to consider supporting Access Copyright in the work to ensure that writers like me are paid for our intellectual labour, and for the ways that our work builds a more informed, civilized and interesting culture.