The word “aubade” means a song or poem greeting the dawn. Aubades—verses of the inner dawn—is a Canada-based, biannual online poetry journal that invites contributions from around the globe.

Please click here for submission and honorarium details.

Themes
Our poetry embraces universal consciousness reflecting in human unity and the transcendence of divisions. We welcome works that embody compassion and explore attributes of spirituality such as sincerity, humility, gratitude, perseverance, aspiration, and peace.

Mission
Aubades champions authentic poetry, unbound by elitism, trends, and mechanical formulas. Its mission is to advance Sri Aurobindo’s vision of future poetry that helps forward spiritual realization—giving to it its “eye of sight,” “shape of aesthetic beauty,” and “revealing tongue.”

Contributors are not required to follow any particular school of thought, nor any spiritual or religious tradition.

The Journal strives to echo Sri Aurobindo’s contemplation on the future poetry:

It is in effect a larger cosmic vision, a realizing of the godhead in the world and in man, of his divine possibilities as well as of the greatness of the power that manifests in what he is, a spiritualized uplifting of his thought and feeling and sense and action, a more developed psychic mind and heart, a truer and a deeper insight into his nature and the meaning of the world, a calling of diviner potentialities and more spiritual values into the intention and structure of his life that is the call upon humanity…(p. 307).

About the Founding Editor
Dr. Romi Jain, based in British Columbia, Canada, has published poems in literary journals such as Off the Coast (Maine, USA), Penwood Review (California,USA), Transition (Canada), Journal of Poetry Society (India), The Tower Journal, Touch: The Journal of Healing, and The Bombay Review (India), and in international anthologies such as Veils, Halos and Shackles, San Diego Poetry Annual, Family Matters, and Poems from Conflicted Hearts. Jain’s poem “India: From the Lens of History” appeared in Harvard Asia Quarterly (Summer 2014), Harvard University Asia Center.

Jain’s poem “Poetry has a Complaint”—written in response to the apparent mechanization of poetry—served as a quiet undercurrent of inspiration for Aubades, which aspires to offer a home for the verse that originates from the soul.

Click here to access Jain’s select poems on this website.