Elee Kraljii Gardiner is a writer, editor, and creative mentor living in Vancouver, Canada.

She is the author of three poetry books and editor of two anthologies: sometimes, forest (May 2026 Talonbooks); Trauma Head (2018, Anvil Press); serpentine loop (2016, Anvil Press), Against Death: 35 Essays on Living (2019, Anvil Press) and V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside with John Asfour (2012, Arsenal Pulp Press). In 2027 ECW Press will publish Take Rain, a poetry collection co-written with Gary Barwin.

A frequent collaborator with choreographers, musicians, sound and visual artists, Elee is currently collaborating with nature via a series of durational art installations that investigate the law of thermodynamics and cultural ideas regarding the passing of time. She directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors and runs the Warland Award for hybrid literature. In 2025 Elee became Poet Laureate of Vancouver.

sometimes, forest

Published in 2026 by Talonbooks

sometimes, forest alternatively rails at and desires a fluid beloved, sometimes forest, sometimes lover, friend, mother, or an absence the speaker yearns for in herself. But the coastal temperate rainforest continues foresting, existing independently of the speaker’s wants or needs, a place of both refuge and harm. Returning daily to the same woods, the speaker notices minute seasonal changes and considers her own internal changes too.

Meanwhile, fires, heat domes, and landslides mirror the hormonal heat and biological surges compelling these urgent conversations. Considering how networks of lateral support mitigate and challenge hierarchical, individualistic structures, sometimes, forest develops a theory of hylofeminism (“hylo” from the Greek meaning “woods” or “forest matter”) that attends to a deep, communal connection with nature as a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world. For a review copy, contact Talonbooks.

After and alongside catastrophe, sometimes, forest rots grammar at the root. We too become forest, as new languaging starts seeping through our dank and composty places. ‘This won’t take long,’ Kraljii Gardiner tells us, ‘but I promise / it will hurt.’ And still: I could walk this book’s desire paths for days.

— Astrida Neimanis

Written in collaboration with a pulsating forest, sometimes, forest, simulates an alternate, and at times synesthesiac, perception of the natural world. These poems subvert flat human narratives of ecosystem function, beauty, or even wonder, asking us instead to sit uncomfortably at the edge of expression, where ‘all … patterns of growth and season come crashing.

— MADHUR ANAND

Trauma Head

Published in 2018 (1st and 2nd printing) by Anvil Press

“A startling and exquisite sequence of poems. The ‘unspeakable’ reflected is intensely fierce and sublimely sensual. Difficult, devastating, and meticulously crafted, this work is a rewarding chronicle of persistence through the trauma of recovery and return.” – Sandra Ridley

“A collection of poems you don’t dip in and out of, but fall fully into, read from beginning to end, go back and read again.” – BC Booklook

“Remarkable second collection” – Toronto Star

  • Winner of 2019 Fred Cogswell Award for Literary Excellence 
  • Nominated for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award

Reviewed in: Ottawa Review of Books, Rob Mclennan’s blog, Toronto Star, BC Review

serpentine loop

Published in 2016 (1st ed), 2017 (2nd ed) by by Anvil Press

“The ice itself becomes a character in the poems, acting both as antagonist (when the poet falls through the ice) and as muse (the precise joy of skating).” – Canadian Literature review

“…an exploration of the form’s expressions in unexpected ways, both visually and sensually, in emotion and language, to say the shape of a poem deepens, taking on all these levels at once, becomes a singular experience in itself.” – Debutantes

“[this] lush, piercing collection is layered with climatological subtext and personal history.” – Amber Tamblyn

“In its empathy and compassion, the collection elevates readers to touch and grasp their own “defiant act of communion,” to weave magic until the desire for recip- rocal, meaningful connection transcends isolation. Insightful and concise all at once.” – Canadian Poetry Review

“The poetry itself has a serpentine quality, moving around and twisting back upon itself in a way that is both jarring and graceful…cooly poignant.” – Pacific Rim Review of Poetry

Reviewed by: Bust, Canadian Literature, Canadian Poetry Review, Herizons

Against Death Anthology

Published in 2019 (1st ed), 2020 (2nd ed) by Anvil Press

“An upending and beautifully curated anthology of personal essays and poetry that focus on the bravery and grit needed to accept life and death.” – Sad Mag

  • Finalist for the 2019 Montaigne Medal (US)
  • Finalist for the 2019 Eric Stamper Award (US)

Reviewed by: Under Review CiTR, Sad Mag, BC Review, Vancouver Magazine

V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

Coedited with John Mikhail Asfour
Published 2012 (1st ed. and 2nd printing) by Arsenal Pulp Press

  • Finalist for City of Vancouver Book Award, 2012

Reviewed by: Rabble, BC Studies, Vancouver is Awesome, Spacing, Jacket 2, The Tyee