Kindra McDonald
Poet, Teacher, Conservationist and Maker
Finding quiet in the wild and poetry everywhere.
Books
Teaching a Wild Thing
In the Meat Years
Fossils
Elements and Briars
Blurbs
“
Teaching a Wild Thing
Kindra McDonald is as vulnerable in her
experience of agony as she is in hope. If you have ever known a need that will not be answered,
as in an unworn onesie you can’t bring yourself to throw away, this collection may salve your
wound.
Angela Dribben,
Author of Everygirl
“
McDonald has given us a calendar as elemental as the very first one, 28 cuts nicked into bone. Poems move from winter to winter, tracked in flowers and fruit and the insects and birds of a garden “somewhere between jungle and Eden.” The natural world tells us what we need to know. The body persists through trials of lust and childrearing, decline and death, the tale of lumps and teeth and blood and bone.
In the Meat Years
“
McDonald turns periphery into centerpiece, and we wonder, with both longing and pleasure, how we could have missed so much detail, and the beauty in it, why we do not ourselves revolve around the thrush, the map, the wedding favor...How grateful we must be for this poet whose reverence for reality turns our senses into avenues of grace.
Fossils
Sophia Starnes, Author of The Consequence of Moonlight
Valerie Nieman,
Author of Leopard Lady: A life in verse
“
Elements and Briars
Reflecting a close examination of the stories in 1,001 Arabian Nights, this chapbook is filled with powerful imagery – relationships, womanhood, motherhood, home and hearth – as well as social commentary, irony, sarcasm and well-crafted language.
Sarah Hayes,
Editor in Chief
Redbird Chapbooks
About
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Kindra received her BA from Virginia Wesleyan University and her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte. She's an adjunct professor of Writing at University of Maryland Global Campus and teaches poetry at The Muse Writers Center. She served as Regional Vice President for the Poetry Society of Virginia from 2019 to 2022. She spent two years serving with the Virginia Service and Conservation Corps in Virginia State Parks and is a Master Naturalist.
I'm a poet, educator, freelance writer, and the Executive Director of a community non-profit. I'm a conservationist, a maker of cakes and collage and I can usually be found in the woods. A mountain gal in an ocean town chasing the "blood jet" of poetry.
I love goats, coffee, birdsong and exclamation points!
More than anything, I believe in the power of words. I believe poetry saves lives. It has saved me over and over again. I believe in following your dreams, especially if they scare you.
If you like orange cats, photos of trees and Jeopardy! chat, check out my social media, let's connect!
Contact
Drop by and say "hi!"
I'd love to do a reading, conduct a workshop, or lead a nature 'walk and write,' contact me!
If you need a hiking recommendation in Virginia, want to know what books are overflowing on my nightstand, chat about making the perfect buttercream or hear what
trouble my cats are getting into - I'm your gal!
