Now I have made the decision to stop accepting new submissions for blue skies poetry. Currently I am responsible for the creation of a new library in Fort Saskatchewan and must give this wonderful project my full attention.

While this website will remain live for the foreseeable future, to allow access to the archives, no new poems will be posted. I hope you will take this opportunity to look back at some earlier poems that you may have missed.

House of Blue Skies will continue its good work. If you have any questions, you can contact Dymphny Dronyk at dymphny@gmail.com.

Thank you for sharing your work with me, and for reading the magnificent poetry here.

Sincerely,
Angela Kublik

I imagine waves
moving fishermen’s boats,
the smell of salmon and tuna
wrapped in seaweed.

Sushi restaurants abound
on the winding streets
of this port town,
tiny gems behind indigo curtains.

Now I climb
the steps two at a time.
At last, I reach the Shiogama Shrine
structures painted in crimson
disciples swing thick ropes,
ring copper bells.

I clap my hands
bend my head in prayer and
later follow the red hakama of a priestess,
fresh snowflakes powder
the hem of her swaying skirt.

White ribbons in her hands,
she ties them to a branch
gives them to the wind.

She helps me unfold my fate
and translates: Best fortune.

~ Sonia Saikaley

Sonia Saikaley has lived in Japan, where she taught English and found the solitude to write. She has also gotten lost in the alleys of Venice but found an amazing pizzeria. Now, in Ottawa, she finds herself surrounded by her big Lebanese family and amidst the chaos and joy, she writes. Her writing has been published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Monday’s Poem, The Caterpillar Chronicles, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, the anthology Lavandería - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word, and other publications. She hopes someday to find a home for her poetry collection Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter.

Read more of Sonia Saikaley’s poetry:
- The Island School
- Foreigner’s Etiquette

I soak in midnight baths,
avoid curious stares at my full breasts,
my desert dune hips, my olive skin.

The Mediterranean Sea in my bones
ripples as an unexpected body
sinks in the hot spring.
I glance at the folded skin.
Gomen nasai, a woman’s voice cracks.
She gets out quickly but I insist,
It’s okay. Please stay.

I squint and see
melted flesh grown hard with age,
the woman gives me a small smile.

Deep-green woods rise around us.
Autumn swirls the mist like leaves,
up and down,
back and forth.

I close my eyes
and beyond the trees,
whispering leaves,
Nagasaki weeps.

~ Sonia Saikaley

Sonia Saikaley has lived in Japan, where she taught English and found the solitude to write. She has also gotten lost in the alleys of Venice but found an amazing pizzeria. Now, in Ottawa, she finds herself surrounded by her big Lebanese family and amidst the chaos and joy, she writes. Her writing has been published in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Monday’s Poem, The Caterpillar Chronicles, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, the anthology Lavandería - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word, and other publications. She hopes someday to find a home for her poetry collection Turkish Delight, Montreal Winter.

Read more of Sonia Saikaley’s poetry:
- The Island School
- Foreigner’s Etiquette

~ Andrée Levie-Warrilow

“Poetry has been a way for me to make sense of events in my life. Published poems include 2 Honourable Mentions for poems submitted to the Dorothy Shoemaker Literary Awards Contest (chosen from entries across South Western Ontario), and a poem printed in Mozaic Magazine, published out of Durham, Ontario.”

the small white flowers
of that Elizabethan herb

‘mignonette’, a name
to conjure dainty love
small secret kisses
demure eyes and smile

the dance of light
and a faint fragrance
a touch of petals
on my cheek

~ Joanna M. Weston

Joanna M. Weston has had poetry, reviews, and short stories published in anthologies and journals for twenty-five years. Her middle-reader, Those Blue Shoes, published by Clarity House Press; and poetry, A Summer Father, published by Frontenac House of Calgary.

the falls
enticing
perilous if I lean to look
my balance precarious
on this new pink bike
bought in my seventieth year

the sun dapples leaf patterns
on my shoulders
a deer arches across the path
a dragon fly competes for best time
tree to tree
making me smile
a butterfly flits near my helmet
a crow calls a greeting:
‘my territory that you
are privileged to share’

~ Rose-Marie Lohnes

Rose-Marie Lohnes is the author of two educational publications for challenged students, a “Farm Kid” story in the anthology, Country Roads [Nimbus Publishing], wrote the column, “Be a Better Bookworm,” for the local weekly newspaper for two years, and has been writing poetry for family and friends since she was nine years old. Three of her pieces of prose are presently “under consideration” for publication. She is a member of Scribblers, a local writing group of published authors in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia.

Rose-Marie has worked in various locations as an educator; Nova Scotia, Québec [the South Shore of Montréal, Matagami] as well as in Barbados, St Lucia and Bolivia under the auspices of CUSO. Her writing is inspired by her life on a farm in the 40s and 50s, her interest in people from all walks of life, overcoming personal challenges, and her love of nature—particularly beaches and water. Rose-Marie has a variety of interests: reading, writing, playing the ukulele in a senior band, dabbling in paints, bicycling, camping, Scrabble, gardening, beach walking, snow shoeing, and knitting for charity.

Such is this thing maternal that
turns these scrawny matrons into tigers
lying still, with narrowed eyes
prepared to fight, if needs to die
for the careless bundles that suck them dry
and it’s a pendulum swing this mother-love
that draws a constant arc until the point
of aging when the young are not so
and it’s now, at the quiver point of returning
when time draws with it only the inevitable
that I scratch about for a grit of hope to offer.

~ Jenni Blackmore

Jenni writes: “A couple of years ago I decided to write a poem a day for a year. Not necessarily one of my most brilliant schemes. However stubborn is as stubborn does and so 365 poems later I ended up with a eclectic collection which I am now shopping around under the title, The Books of Everyday. I am originally from Manchester, England, but now live my dream on a small island east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I write poetry and fiction for all ages, paint and practice sustainable living with a variety of critters. I have written and illustrated several books for children and a collection of my short stories and poetry was published under the title, Counting Crows.

lay hair thin leeks in trenches primed
rich with humus and dreams of distant soup
pot shared by the white earth-eggs that already
creep first fingers from the wizened skin of kin
snugged warm under an eelgrass quilt which will
reveal a bounty, harvested with no complaints
in this less fertile corner of the lot where tomatoes
would flatly refuse and zucchini would dither
demanding more and onions would sulk in limbo
but where potatoes silent, secretly, prodigiously produce
never loved or lauded half as much as they deserve

~ Jenni Blackmore

Jenni writes: “A couple of years ago I decided to write a poem a day for a year. Not necessarily one of my most brilliant schemes. However stubborn is as stubborn does and so 365 poems later I ended up with a eclectic collection which I am now shopping around under the title, The Books of Everyday. I am originally from Manchester, England, but now live my dream on a small island east of Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I write poetry and fiction for all ages, paint and practice sustainable living with a variety of critters. I have written and illustrated several books for children and a collection of my short stories and poetry was published under the title, Counting Crows.

While I have lots of interesting new work lined up, there are still several gaps in the summer schedule. Submissions of poetry on all topics are welcome. Just send up to 3 poems in the body of an email message to me at akublik@blueskiespoetry.ca. Simultaneous submissions are accepted, but please do not send previously published material. Remember to include a short bio with your submission.

I look forward to an in-box filled with new submissions, and I hope you enjoy the summer line-up.

Have a great summer,
Angela Kublik
Editor

His passing gutted me – it felt so wrong, so unfair. Perhaps more so because we’d reconnected at the Literary Awards Gala, and he’d gone from virtual to tangible. So very much alive, larger than life, his generous spirit a magnet in that packed room. How could he be gone, when he still had so many stories to tell?

Our conversation inspired me to have faith, that my struggle to make time to write in the cracks was a worthy one. He was funny, and charming. I held his cane as he flirted with another writer and signed her book. She was also clearly in awe. His warm attention a benediction for each new admirer.

For years I’d wanted to tell him the story of how he saved my mother’s life, but each time I had the opportunity I was too shy. That night I did.

“I have a story for you,” I said, “My mother says you saved her life.”

He looked a little wary, but I took a deep breath and plunged on. “When I was a teenager she was very ill, in intensive care, all hooked up to machines. We didn’t think she was going to make it. And every afternoon I drove two hours to see her, and I’d read to her from your book. She lived for the next chapter! And it made us howl with laughter. We laughed so hard the nurses would come see what was going on, and then they’d laugh too, they couldn’t help it. We were giddy. So, thank you!”

Robert smiled. “That’s a good story. Usually when people tell me I changed their lives, the stories aren’t so good,” he said gently. “Which book was it?”

“Alibi.”

“Ah, Alibi! I like that one. One of my favourites.”

The magic of story. I knew I could trust his novels because in Alibi he wrote about where I lived, and his words were vivid and true.

I didn’t grow up on the prairie, but fell in love with it through his words, long before I ever saw it, and when I married my Alberta boy and followed him home to northern Alberta, the place seemed familiar and right.

May we cherish that magic. May his words continue to teach us our landscapes, and our foibles. May we aspire to pass the magic of story on, to weave spells of our own passionate words, and to believe that our stories matter.

~ Dymphny Dronyk

Dymphny Dronyk is a writer, artist, mediator and mother. She is passionate about the magic of story and has woven words for money (journalism, corporate writing) and for love (poetry, fiction, drama, mystery novels) for over 25 years. Her first volume of poetry Contrary Infatuations, (Frontenac House, Quartet 2007) was short listed for two prestigious awards in 2008. She is also the author of the memoir Bibi – A Life in Clay (Prairie Art Gallery, 2009). She is the co-founder/publisher of House of Blue Skies, Alberta’s newest micropublisher, and co-editor of the best-selling anthology Writing the Land: Alberta through its Poets, with Angela Kublik. The anthology is currently in its third printing.

Read some of Dymphny Dronyk’s poetry:
- Blue Sky Seeks No Definition
- The Mothers
- Christmas Eve
- Extinction
- A World Without Bees
- Colony Collapse Disorder
- A Sunday Poem
- Our Empty, Empty Bed
- Ode to Al Purdy - A Litter of Poets