Cicely Belle Blain is a writer, activist, and thought leader, driving powerful conversations and strategizing for change.

About Cicely

Cicely Belle Blain (they/them) is a Black, mixed, queer non-binary femme from London, United Kingdom now living on the lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh people. Their ancestry is a mix of Gambian (Wolof), Jamaican and English.

Cicely Blain is looking towards the camera whilst standing in front of a brick wall. They are wearing a white jacket and pink lipstick. — Cicely Belle spent their formative years between London, the Netherlands, and a small Catholic village in France - each home presenting a pivotal opportunity for awakening and growth. Cicely Belle is descended from a long line of feminist educators and developed a passion for justice from a young age.
Cicely Belle is noted for founding Black Lives Matter Vancouver and subsequently being listed as one of Vancouver's 50 most powerful people by Vancouver Magazine twice, BC Business's 30 under 30, and one of Refinery29's Powerhouses of 2020.
Cicely Belle founded Bakau Consulting Inc. in 2018 and has grown the company to serve 1000’s of clients worldwide - their public speaking, equity consulting and literary prowess has impacted people in Canada, the USA, the UK, South Korea, Netherlands, Poland, Germany, Ecuador, Senegal, South Africa, Eswatini and many more.
Some of their most notable professional achievements include speaking at the United Nations Summit in Quito, Ecuador, developing an Intersectionality Toolkit for the City of Vancouver and presenting the keynote address for the 2020 graduating ceremony at the University of British Columbia, their alma mater.
Cicely Belle is also an instructor in Executive Leadership at Simon Fraser University, the Editorial Director of Ripple of Change Magazine and the author of Burning Sugar (Arsenal Pulp Press and VS Books, 2020). They are also a board member with the Tegan and Sara Foundation.
*Burning Sugar* was shortlisted for the 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Their debut book also garnered them spots at some of Canada's top literary festivals including Vancouver Writer's Festival, Word of the Street Toronto, FOLD and features in CBC Books, Autostraddle, Indigo and Essence Mag.

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Watch Cicely’s TED Talk

From intergenerational trauma, to critical life junctures and the creation of truly intersectional communities. Cicely Blain, Founder of Black Lives Matter - Vancouver, explains the concept of intersectionality, and how the liberation of minority groups contributes to the liberation of us all.

Burning Sugar

Testimonials

“Burning Sugar is a vigilant time marker and vivid place maker. The bearings of colonial violence and of Black resistance are physically present on every page of this debut collection by Cicely Belle Blain.”

- Amber Dawn, author of My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems

“In these pages, you will travel through time and across places while Blain's poetry invites you to linger for a moment longer on the transformative political power of unrequited endings.”

- Amin Ghaziani, Professor of Sociology, University of British Columbia

“Each poem pulls its teeth from the book's title and offers the soft and deliberate sweetness of what could have been - before the burning.”

- Jillian Christmas, author of The Gospel of Breaking

In this incendiary debut collection, activist and poet Cicely Belle Blain intimately revisits familiar spaces in geography, in the arts, and in personal history to expose the legacy of colonization and its impact on Black bodies.

They use poetry to illuminate their activist work: exposing racism, especially anti-Blackness, and helping people see the connections between history and systemic oppression that show up in every human interaction, space, and community.

In Burning Sugar, verse and epistolary, racism and resilience, pain, and precarity are flawlessly sewn together by the mighty hands of a Black, queer femme.

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