Synkroniciti is excited to welcome Canadian poet Angela Waldie, the winner of our “Recovery” Poetry Contest, with three stunning poems about humanity and nature. Sometimes we forget that humans are part of nature–her seasons and rhythms are embedded in our psyche and body–and that we are not in a position to outlive our beautiful green home.
The winning poem was “Song for Winter Solstice,” subtitled “Poecile atricapillus (Black-capped Chickadee) .” This is very elegant and spare poem with an unexpected emotional punch that resonates with an intuitive understanding of the cyclical nature of recovery that lies coiled beneath the surface. After the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, chickadees sing in the morning: “Some might say they are merely marking territory,/ a song to claim a small expanse of sky.// I like to think they know these notes// can crack the long smooth edge of sadness.” Touching on difficult seasons and the meaning and purpose of song and story in the face of such seasons, this song anticipates not only the dawn, but the coming spring, a season of new growth. Angela becomes subtly one with the birds, singing the song for Mother Earth and for her own mother, for whom the poem was written. Her use of alliteration and assonance is masterful and spellbinding while remaining achingly understated–creating a delicate sense of simplicity and balance which is quite difficult to produce. Such beauty takes a great deal of pruning.
“Cascade” is, unusually for Synkroniciti, a poem governed by rhyme and rhythm. It is about the Cascade River, which was diverted for a Canadian electrical project in 1942 and re-emerged eight decades later in the floods of 2013. The regularity of its form recalls not only the sound of water, but the river’s persistence. “Trapped storm, river maker/ centenary channel changer/ brown and hungry ghost river/ asphalt eating shape shifter.// Unrestrained wild river/ resurrected breath giver/ scouring secrets fierce and deep/ river tamers could not keep.” The alliteration and assonance is magical and we can hear the water moving over stones.
Finally, “How to Summon Rain” is an evocative invitation to commune with nature and to feel how rain and water are part of our being. “Meditate on the leaves of lupines./ Remember how they hold a drop of water/ as if it were a world.” Again the alliterative music is astounding but never indulgent, always serving the meaning of the poetry. The final stanza is transcendent as nature becomes a refuge.
Read Angela’s powerful poetry in Synkroniciti’s “Recovery” issue, available for purchase here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Angela Waldie is a writer, editor, and university instructor, living in Treaty 7 Territory, in Calgary. As she grew up in Creston, BC, her poetry often crosses and recrosses the Continental Divide. Her first poetry collection, A Single Syllable of Wild, will be published by Frontenac House in spring 2026. Her poetry has also appeared in Prairie Fire, Grain, Event, Feral, Freefall, Willows Wept Review, The Goose, The Antigonish Review and various anthologies.