Scott Clifford Cairns (born 1954 in Tacoma, Washington) is an American poet, memoirist, librettist, and essayist.
With Carolyn Forché and Ilya Kaminsky, he also directs Mystikós: A Writers Retreat in Greece.
Cairns is the author of twelve collections of poetry, one collection of translations/adaptations of Christian mystics, one spiritual memoir (now translated into Greek and Romanian), a book-length essay on suffering (now translated into Greek), and co-edited The Sacred Place with Scott Olsen, an anthology of poetry, fiction and nonfiction.
Cairns's poems have appeared in journals including The Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, The New Republic, Image, and Poetry, and have been anthologized in Upholding Mystery (Oxford University Press, 1996), Best Spiritual Writing (Harper Collins, 1998 and 2000), and Best American Spiritual Writing (Houghton Mifflin, 2004, 2005, and 2006).
He is married to Marcia Lane Vanderlip and they have two children, Benjamin V. Cairns and Elizabeth V. Cairns-Callen.