Tell the Birds Your Body is not a Gun, is a book of minimalist poetry, prose poems and poetic essays exploring family grief, healing, and trauma through the female lens. Tell the Birds Your Body is not a Gun is a visceral narrative that questions our relationship with religion and challenges how we reflect on our own memories of trauma. As readers look to the past in the manuscript, they are asked to examine how each of them would experience and react to grief and abuse.

Rayanne Haines is the executive director of the Edmonton Poetry Festival. In 2017, she was shortlisted for Edmonton Poet Laureate and a Mayors Award for Arts Management. She has had the immense privilege of performing her fiction and poetry for diverse audiences from youth to business professional, for various reading series, conferences, and festivals. She has been published in anthologies, magazines, and online. Her poetry has been used as the text for the National Youth Choir of Canada, as well as recorded for a United Kingdom, talking newspaper for the Blind. She's had work published in Canada, the USA, and the UK. Stained With the Colours of Sunday Morning is her first full-length poetry collection. She lives in Edmonton.

Rayanne Haines' profile page