It was night in Kyoto. In a grove on a mountain, in July 1995, as I was preparing to leave Japan, I received one of the great gifts of my life. It began with the Kyoto Connection, an international arts gathering. Over several months, I’d taken the stage at the Connection in various guises: as…
Author: prairiepomes
Writer, gardener, hopeful curmudgeon, free-range Aboriginal, lover of life, Poet Laureate of Edmonton 2011-13, traveller, Fifth World Drummer.
Late June Garden
Gratitude for the lilac white petunias tiny papyrus the boxes of garden, off-square the potato bathtub these hillbilly choices, my higgledy carpentry and green life that says yes nonetheless gratitude for the patio this ache in my back from the building of it that pile of bricks for the path yet to lay these eye…
Camino Edmonton Day 5:Implicated
It is not complicated: one foot and then another, swing along find your pace, and good companions under bright sun, the stories unravel each turn in the path reminding one then another of us of some song some place, and the way the world lies river, cradled ever more gently sweeps toward her namesake land…
Camino Edmonton Day 4: depths
In their black in dark hours, grandmothers crawl up the Way of the Cross, proclaiming by this deed, the immutable glory to come above Ajijic, knees raw, backs craggy, grandmothers and mountains bathe in Easter sunrise. Where the body shivers and aches, the spirit must step in. Where language and history differ, there too, spirit….
Camino Edmonton Day 3: the long curve (Solstice)
we trace the long curve rise and fall, shuffle uphill praising kinesiology painkillers, gumption who owns these ways? those teenage magpies underwear unpreened who try out strut and the sharpening of beaks perhaps broad poplars blanketing june in white cotton of tomorrow’s promise or the new comer family renting first bikes, unsure about english signage…
Camino Edmonton Day 2: Crossing
whitemud winds down brown and peaty, and on the boardwalk through willow breaks squirrel on a handrail, happy to eat offerings but quick to leap away – there is a line. below fort edmonton, in the forest, we discuss old names, dark histories how to teach and learn past potholes slippery with falling how to…
June 19, Camino Edmonton Day 1: Soft
Today was the first day of the Camino Edmonton, a light-hearted 5-day walk through our river valley via the network of pedestrian and multi-use trails available. I’m writing more indepth about it for a forthcoming magazine article, but thought I’d endeavour to capture each day in a poem. Day 1: Soft sand underfoot cleft between…
June 17: Mazurka
We are like storks in Mazury every year, returning our gaze to the heights allotted us; we are like mermaids and the Holy Mother watching over our own heart; we are broad and dark bold despite uncertainty like glacial lakes; and in us, let it be said that, epochally ancient light still dances. The Mazurka,…
June 15: step
time goes anyway, whether you pursue your heart’s desire, or cram distraction down your throat this gift of a body, built to hold music, will resonate to all and any sound, so you have a choice step into the great song.
Humane: Announcement and Trailer
This is it! I could not be more excited! Novel writing is both solo and entirely inter-dependent work. I could not have done this without: D and T, Edmonton Arts Council, MacEwan University, my extended family especially my sis, my Beta Readers over the past few years, and those friends and colleagues, human and…
Guest Post: Another Storm, by Ellen Kartz
Yet another morning after yet another rain, the alley shows the proof of last night’s storm— the puddles in the gravel, in the pavement’s recesses. Trees always look greener in the morning. They suffer the worst in storms, but somehow manage to recover—taller, stronger. It takes us longer to find our strength again. We get…
