About

Kathryn MacDonald’s poetry has been published in Room, FreeFall and other Canadian literary journals and anthologies, as well as internationally in the U.K., U.S., and other countries. Her new poetry collection, The Blue Gate is forthcoming Spring 2026 with Frontenac House. Wayside, a chapbook, is forthcoming Winter 2026 with Big Pond Rumours Press. Liminal Spaces is a chapbook anthology of ekphrastic poetry by Kathryn and three fellow-poets (2025). She is the author of Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (poetry chapbook, 2024), A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (2011) and Calla & Édourd (novel, 2009).

 

 

Member: The Writers’ Union of Canada, League of Canadian Poets, The Ontario Poetry Society, Spirit of the Hills Writers

Education: B.A., Univeristy of Windsor; MPA, Queen’s University, Kingston

A new poetry collection will be published by Frontenac House, Spring 2026.

What readers say:

“In The Blue Gate, leaves curl, seasons change, apple trees blossom, and “red-tail hawks carve circles in a clear sky”, but this poetry collection by Kathryn MacDonald is more than just an examination of nature. It is an examination of the poet’s imagination, what happens when one steps through The Blue Gate, and memory and restlessness intertwine to make sense of what? A trip to Africa? Moonlight? Human desire and longing? These things certainly, but also those other paths that lie just beyond our seeing.”
~ Chris Banks, author of Bonfires

Poems rich with fleeting life: an unlit candle, rain on heart-shaped leaves, a Red-Tailed Hawk sky dancing. Wild love in the first bite of an apple. Grief, a leaf perpetually falling. Poems that point us beyond the unseen. Poems that sing us home.
– Susan Musgrave, author of Hunger

From a shared life on the land in rural Ontario to an unexpected sojourn in Kenya and Tanzania in an attempt to outrun grief, Kathryn MacDonald’s The Blue Gate anchors itself in the tenderness of long love and the deep sadness that attends its passing. In finely wrought lines stitched to the land she loves, MacDonald confronts the reality that only way of navigating the blue gate of loss is to step through it at last.
– Jenna Butler author of Revery: A Year of Bees

My most recent chapbook:

 

 Liminal Spaces (Havelock: Glentula Press, 2025)

Excerpts from the cover:

How do you write the liminal as here and now? Begin, as these four poets do, by listening to a call and response between art forms…. Tanis MacDonald, Mobile: Poems.

Four poets. Four poems each. Each in conversation with a work of art. Poems that stop us in our tracks…. Antony Di Nardo, Forget-Sadness-Grass.

I so very much loved all the poetry in this book. And the backstory, in the intro, of how it al came about. Bruce Kauffman, Still arriving.

The beautiful ekphrastic poems in Liminal Spaces create vivid paintings that spring up in the reader’s imagination. Kim Fahner, Emptying the ocean.

Far Side of the Shadow Moon: Enchantments (Havelock: Glentula Press, 2024)

What readers say:

I like the originality of voice, subject, style, atmosphere and imagery of each poem…. Strider Marcus Jones, Editor, Lothlorien Poetry Journal.

As I’m reading, I kept asking, who are her influences? There’s a lilt to the poems I can’t place, but I’ll chance a guess and say, Yeats, perhaps Heaney.…But whoever [the] influences, it’s lovely poetry with a gentle, reflective voice and intensely lyrical one. And just at the right time…“gnarly.” Bruce Hunter, author of Galestro, the most recent of ten published books.

Please send queries to whiteoakstudio21@gmail.com.

 

A Breeze You Whisper: Poems (Brighton: Hidden Brook Press, 2011)

Review excerpt: “If I had to choose one word for [MacDonald’s] poetry, I’d say ‘sensuality.’ …A Breeze You Whisper entwines, with simplicity and smoothness, two major themes at the core of poetry: nature and love.” Professor Miguel Ángel Olivé Iglesias (“Whispers and Flames,” 131-134, In a Fragile Moment: A Landscape of Canadian Poetry, HBP, 2020).

 

 

Calla & Édourd (Brighton: Hidden Brook Press, 2009)

“This novella, set in Eastern Ontario, bubbles with the details of everyday life. The cycle of the seasons is reflected in the lives of the central characters. It is a hymn/lament for that which is passing and that which is past.” (Alistair MacLeod, author of Island and No Great Mischief.) 

For an excerpt, please click here.

 

 

…reflects the traditions of farm cooking, using fresh local foods, as well as the rich influences of many cultures on our cuisines….With wit and humour, the authors show how we can be both critical consumers of food and wonderful cooks.

The Farm & City Cookbook: Essays and recipes. (Toronto: Second Story Press, 2005)

 

 

Contests:

Her poem “Duty / Deon” won Arc Award of Awesomeness (shayne avec i grec, judge, January 2021). 

“Seduction” was shortlisted for the Freefall Annual Poetry Contest edited by Gary Barwin and was published in Freefall (Fall 2020).

 

 

Besides my website, other writing includes a blog Adventures Over Land and Sea, sailing the Caribbean from St. Martin to Cuba (for three seasons) and on to Isla Mujeres, Mexico, and finally to the north shore Lake Ontario (2014 through fall, 2017).

Visual Arts:

Kathryn’s photographs were shown in the Quinte Arts Council gallery November 2 through December 15, 2023. Her photographs and paintings were shown in “Because we are Equal: Rise,” Quinte Arts Council show, Mar 1-31 2020. The 8th Annual Fall SOTH Show, Art Emporium By the River, Port Hope (September 6-30, 2018), The Old Church Gallery, Bailieboro (Summer, 2018), and QAC’s Art in the Community, Bay of Quinte theme, (Summer 2018). Her photographs were accepted in “Liminal-Subliminal” a juried show at the John M. Parrott Gallery (May 3-31, 2018). Jumping back to January 1992-1993, “With a Woman’s Eye: A Photo Retrospective” was mounted at the Ban Righ Centre, Queen’s University. They also accompanied various published articles.

Other relevant information:

Kathryn earned a B.A. from the University of Windsor and an MPA from Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario. She studied with Alistair MacLeod and has taken many workshops. A few of the longer workshop-retreats include a weekend with Patrick Lane and John Newlove (Collingwood), through to a week-long workshop with Lorna Crozier (Wintergreen) and three-six week courses on the craft of poetry with Ellen Bass (online, 2021-2022), plus many shorter workshops on craft and presentation.

Presentations & Workshops:

Kathryn has enjoyed a varied career, including a stint (4-1/2 years) at Harrowsmith and Equinox magazines and Camden House Books. She has also been a managing editor of a small press, as well as the editor of a city magazine. Kathryn taught literature and writing courses through Ontario’s college system for a dozen years, along with short writing workshops in creative non-fiction, fiction, and memoir.

• Please contact Kathryn about a presentation or writing workshop for your group or for individual coaching.

Contact:

• Email: whiteoakstudio21@gmail.com