Meet Kayla
In Atlantic Canada, we take a kitchen table approach
to things. This relaxed, friendly world-view is part of what I do.
Clients often call just to chat.
Kayla Geitzler
is from Moncton, New Brunswick, within Siknikt, of Mi’kma’ki, Mi’kmaq traditional territory.
By age five, Kayla knew what she wanted to do with her life: write. Named “A Rad Woman of Canadian Poetry”, Kayla was Moncton’s first Anglophone Poet Laureate. She & Francophone Poet Laureate Jean-Philippe Raîche co-created Poésie Moncton Poetry, a living archive of video poetry from Moncton region & Mi’kmaq poets. She is a writing advice columnist for The Miramichi Reader, & organizes the Attic Owl Reading Series. She has performed her poetry with accomplished NB musicians & co-wrote an original poem with Jean-Philippe Raîche which they performed with the NB Youth Orchestra.
Her first book That Light Feeling Under Your Feet was a Calgary Bestseller & finalist for two poetry awards. Kayla is co-editor of Cadence Voix Feminines Female Voices, a multilingual poetry anthology, the first publication of its kind in NB.
She holds an MA in English, Creative Writing & a Diploma in University Teaching. She has worked as a technical editor on Canada’s largest pipeline projects & written National & Regional courseware for Air Traffic Controllers.
Kayla regularly pursues professional development. She has mentored with Griffin Poetry Award Winner Anne Simpson & Dr. Ross Leckie, taken workshops by acclaimed writers Terese Marie Mailhot, Shoshanna Wingate & others & seeks multidisciplinary collaboration with visual artists, photographers & more.
Kayla has been awarded Creation & Professional Development grants from ArtsNB as well as a Literary Writer grant from Canada Council for the Arts.
A passionate leader in the Atlantic Canadian literary arts, Kayla fosters inclusive, healthy writing communities. In 2021, she received a Top 20 Under 40 Award for her outstanding dedication to the literary arts in her community.
an east coast entrepreneur
My home, Moncton, is a writer’s refuge. Small & natural, fluid in landscape & tongue, life is slower here; we are hardworking, friendly & caring. These values are a part of my business. I care.
My clients are writers of all levels & genres, self-publishers, women in business & public life, entrepreneurs & small businesses, non-profits, academics & students—anyone who needs assistance with documentation or writing projects. I’m here so that you can write you.
It’s an amazing experience to be honoured by your city & community, but it’s even better when you can celebrate with the fabulous Zina Aljaratli of Surreal Design & Claire Kelly-Orozco of Claire & the World Immigration Consulting Inc.
Winner of the 2021 Moncton Chamber
of Commerce Top 20 Under 40 Award!
Honouring young leaders & innovators who are making
a difference in Greater Moncton’s economy, arts & culture!
INTERVIEWS
L.E.A.D. with Reem – April 2020
My “We Are Diamonds” interview with fellow writer, Lebanese-Canadian poet, brilliant Life Coach & community leader, Reem Fayyad Abdel Samad. We talked about my experiences in the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic & my perspective of the pandemic as a writer. “OMG I wish I could be as bored as everyone else!” may have been a really accurate account of what Covid-19 has been like for me.
NB Poet Laureate says pandemic proving to be ‘Kind of Renaissance for Writers in Canada’ – Aya Al-Hakim, Global News
Poetry Grrrowl: THAT LIGHT FEELING UNDER YOUR FEET + Kayla Geitzler – All Lit Up
Performances & ATTIC OWL READING SERIES EVENTS
“CONFINEMENT”
festival Frye Festival Opening – April 2020
During April & August each year of our mandates, Jean-Philippe Raiche and I transformed from Poets Laureate to Poets Flyee to compose & co-host for the Frye Festival. The Frye was one of the first literary festivals to transition to a virtual format in 2020 & we were tasked with exploring the changes & anxieties the pandemic had brought to our communities.
“Mr. Sexy, The Giraffe”
One of my oldest & dearest friends, artist Amy Miller, took this video of me reading my teenage poetry at Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids. She remembered my teenage dreams of becoming “a real poet”.
Attic Owl, December 2020 Open mic
The Attic Owl Reading Series closed 2020 with an Open Mic event featuring writers from the UK, Quebec, Nova Scotia & New Brunswick. I read last. Click on the Facebook link to watch!
A moving Attic Owl Event
During 2020, one of the things we missed most as writers was the interaction we receive from our audiences. I was so pleased that this was such a special & moving evening (despite my technical inexperience). Click on the Facebook link to watch!
Publications
CADENCE VOIX FEMININES FEMALE VOICES
FROG HOLLOW PRESS, 2020
As a high school student, I wanted to one day publish a bilingual anthology of female New Brunswick poets. Eighteen years later, my good friend Elizabeth Blanchard partnered with me & we expanded my original vision to create Cadence, a multilingual translation anthology of female New Brunswick poets. The first publication of its kind in our province, it features the art of the incredible Nancy King Schofield.
Cadence is a poetry anthology featuring twenty-five accomplished women, non-binary, trans-writers & translators who are indigenous to, or have settled, in the land now known as New Brunswick, Canada. This edition features poetry in Arabic, English, French, German & Vietnamese. Cadence is about the energy & movement of language in NB. Even the word itself, cadence, possesses an interlingual fluidity….
a word that in French is feminine, as is the word langue, as are the voices in this collection, des voix féminines…voices of women poets who, like their “many-a-mothers” before them, have always been here, or who, by desire or circumstance, have settled here. Each write from a unique linguistic, social & cultural perspective. Our literature is this “being”, a cadence of threads & currents, blood & culture, history tangled in future. We live in & on the tongue.
Co-editors Kayla Geitzler & Elizabeth Blanchard
Cadence took 18 months to complete & despite the pandemic, we were determined to celebrate our incredible achievement with all the women who had so generously contributed their work. We were thrilled that the Frye Festival partnered with us for the launch.
THAT LIGHT FEELING UNDER YOUR FEET
NeWest Press, 2018
Finalist: 2018 AB Publishers’ award
finalist: 2018 nb book awards poetry prize
bestseller: city of calgary
That Light Feeling Under Your Feet plunges headfirst into the surreal and slogging world of cruise ship workers. These masterfully crafted poems challenge perpetuating colonial and class relations, as well as the hedonistic lifestyle attributed to the employees of these floating resorts. Kayla Geitzler’s debut collection interprets isolation, alienation, racism, and assimilation into the margins as inevitable consequences for the seafaring workforce of the most profitable sector of the tourism industry.
No mere three-hour tour, That Light Feeling Under Your Feet is an unflinching portrait of life at sea, and the discrimination, racism, and misogyny inherent in the tourism industry. Darkly humorous and deftly realized, the poems in That Light Feeling Under Your Feet stick in the mind like ‘endless leviathans’ harnessing the controlled chaos of the world. ~ Jim Johnstone, author of The Chemical Life
Like a workaday Virgil, Kayla Geitzler takes us from the upper decks of cocktails, jackpot bingo, and conga lines into the underworkings of cruise ships—the sail-to-sail palliative powers of the simulacrum, the trinket-exhausted ports, and the forced smiles of deck staff under a manager’s beady gaze. In poem after startling poem, Geitzler’s sustained meditation forces our attention back to this absurd microcosm, proving herself a provocative emissary to frantic mass tourism. ~ Tammy Armstrong, author of Take Us Quietly
Reviews:
- All Lit Up: Chappy Hour & Rad Women of Canadian Poetry
- Something in the Water: Kayla Geitzler’s That Light Feeling Under Your Feet
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