Leland Kinsey

American 1950 – 2016

Leland Kinsey was a graduate of Lake Region Union High School and the University of Vermont and wrote eight volumes of poetry.  He has written, Winter Ready, a book-length narrative poem, The Immigrant’s Contract (Godine, 2008) in which Kinsey chronicles the life of a French-Canadian man who was his neighbor in North Troy, and Sledding on Hospital Hill (Godine, 2003).

Kinsey grew up the second of five siblings on a farm in South Albany. The rugged and beautiful region has been home to his relatives for more than two centuries: Kinsey’s Scottish Presbyterian ancestors cleared the woods with axes, saws and horses to settle four Northeast Kingdom towns: Albany, Craftsbury, Glover, and Greensboro.

Standing in a field in South Albany in the spring of 2014, looking at the land around him, Kinsey said: “Here we go, I can see my world. If there’s a physical center to my universe, this may be it.”