Honoured to know that my poem "consolation prize" was longlisted for the Rabindranath Tagore Poetry Competition. As the work remains unpublished, I won't post it here so that it will be free to send out in the world again!
Tuesday, June 03, 2025
Whiptail: Journal of the Single-line Poem, Issue 13, June 2025
wind-whipped mourning clothes a murmuration of blackbirds
Waka Society of America, Petals Journal (Waka in English), Premier Edition, May 2025
Honoured to have the following waka selected by the editor, an'ya, for the inaugural issue of Petals:
I watched you
riding over bare hills
toward home
your palomino's mane
sifting the last sunrays
this glass bowl
of mollusc fragments
you showed me
how to catch the light
and how to let it go
chinook winds
keening your name
I am stung
by gusts of grief
and helplessness
pale bodies
glistening with sand
and water
the skin of our youth
sculpted by sunlight
Quail Eggs: A Tanka Journal, Issue 1, June 2025
Honoured to have had the following two tanka selected by the editor, Alison Williams, for the inaugural issue:
a gull's shriek
carries me elsewhere . . .
images
of unborn children splashing
at the edges of my mind
icy clusters
of sumac berries droop
and shrivel
small flames doused
before they had a chance
Our Best Haiga: Black & White Haiga/Haisha, May 2025
Curated by Lavana Kray
May 21, 2025
(note: this haiga first appeared in colour in Chrysanthemum 32, 2024)
New Zealand Poetry Society, Online Feature, February 2025
Grateful to have had an online feature (social media) on February 28, 2025. My thanks to Kim Martins for the honour!
meadowlarks
the grace notes that follow
me home
Blithe Spirit, Number 26.2
weathered oars
we fold our worries
into the river
Acorn, Number 42
New Zealand Poetry Society, Member Monday Online Feature, January 25
Honoured to be the featured poet for the New Zealand Poetry Society's online (social media) Member Monday feature on January 13, 2025. My thanks to Kim Martins for the invitation!
Debbie lives in Manitoba, Canada. She has made her home in rural and urban communities in each of the four western Canadian provinces, from the prairies to the ocean. Poetry of place features in much of her haiku and tanka. Debbie’s daily creative practice is a form of meditation and healing, helping to mitigate the effects of chronic illness, and connecting her more closely to the world, to others, and to herself.
Debbie’s third-floor writing room looks out onto a gorgeous row of lindens, fragrant in summer, and frosted in winter. Their branches are often filled with chickadees and finches, punctuating the days with song.
Debbie loves:
.
playing guitar, singing, songwriting
.
wind & waves, fog & frost, sunsets & aurora
.
camping, birdwatching, gardening
.
making haiga using watercolours, inks, acrylics
.
collage, paper crafts, miniatures
.
visiting with her sisters
. Scrabble with her husband
Debbie’s camera is her constant companion. She has been making photographs for decades, whilst exploring the wilds with her husband and their dogs in a 1978 lime-green VW campervan named “Ludwig”. Her photography exhibition, “The Poetry of Light”, explores the subtle and flamboyant nuances of light, reflection, and refraction. Now that Debbie’s vision is compromised, she often uses intentional camera movement and diffusion techniques to create dreamlike images.
At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, Debbie invited 50 emerging and established short-form poets to collaborate on an online haiga project for healing. She enjoys creating haiga galleries and films for The Haiku Foundation, and recently contributed an essay discussing colour and the ways in which it impacts her work.
Debbie’s full-length haiku collection, “Random Blue Sparks”, winner of the 2020 Snapshot Press Book Award, has just been released:
dead orchard
the
random blue sparks
of woolly aphids
3rd
Place, Irish Haiku Society Int’l Contest, 2018
Creatrix: Poetry and Haiku Journal, Number 69, June 2025
street piano
the pigeon pecks
a few notes
off-grid cabin
we undo the mischief
of mice
leaf shadow
a ladybug loses
one spot
Blithe Spirit, Volume 35, Number 2, May 2025
a fairy door
at the willow's base . . .
sun-glade
I turn
my gaze inward
how dark
this long journey
back into the light
Akita International Haiku Network, 2025
Honoured to be included in the Haiku Beyond Earth Series, with five haiku selected from my chapbook "A Year Unfolding" (Folded Word, 2017) on March 17, 2025. I'm grateful to Hidenori Hiruta for translating these haiku into Japanese:
white bells
ringing the changes
lily of the valley
muddy jeans
the pasture speckled
with crocuses
in the hills
cattle lowing between
silences
wind gusts
a rotten burl full
of wild plums
in the pond
a white begonia
and old news
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