Kayleigh Cline (she/her) has been published in several Canadian literary journals, including FreeFall, untethered, Prairie Fire, Funicular and CV2. Her work has appeared on buses¹* and beers². Her poem “American Robin” (FreeFall) won the Alberta Magazine Award for Poetry in 2022. She has been an active member of Edmonton’s Stroll of Poets Society for many years and is currently serving as President.

1. Edmonton Poetry Festival’s “Take the Poetry Route” Contest, 2015 ↩︎
2. Blindman Brewing’s Session Stories, curated by Jason Lee Norman, summer 2021 & winter 2023 ↩︎

I grow poems in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. I may be drawn to a variety of subjects (nature, technology, art), but the bones of each poem come from my experience of living here: a place composed of tumultuous, ever-changing seasons, where the natural world is constantly unmaking and remaking itself. Winter is razed to the ground to make summer, summer is torn down so winter can be built, in snow that falls layer by layer. And this a place where peoples have met on the banks of the river for far, far longer than I have been here: amiskwacîwâskahikan (Plains Cree, “Beaver Hills House”). Likewise, my poetry converges on a meeting point of subjects but remains fully aware that there are other poems here too. Writing is a way to carry community to each other: words insist on togetherness by creating a relationship between their speaker and their listener.