Kate Buckley
For information on booking or workshops contact: Kate@KateBuckley.com

Press & Reviews:

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Follow Me Down by Kate BuckleyAdvance Praise for Follow Me Down:

"Vivid, passionate, pulsing with life in the face of loss and pain, these incantations bravely seek to void The Void. They are poems to conjure with."
Charles Harper Webb

"15th century painter Cennini spoke of the art of 'unseen things hidden in the shadow of natural ones.' Like 'a sea turning in on itself' Kate Buckley's poems speak to this, moving together, folding and unfolding the echoes of a voice in place, a voice out of place, 'salt licking salt/coming home.' Follow Me Down maps out the geography of longing where sometimes 'you walk the yellow fields,' sometimes 'the moon sets itself on fire,' lighting up the distances between the past and the future. Buckley's parenthetical considerations, her ache and intellect coincide in a sensuous, revelatory motioning toward that inspired sanctuary of who we are."
Elena Karina Byrne


"She is making her mark on the landscape of contemporary American poetry."
Molly Peacock



Praise for A Wild Region:

A Wild Region"A Wild Region is a family history in verse as well as a lovely elegy for Buckley's grandmother set in a Kentucky that is both pastoral and industrial: 'I have ridden on horseback / under the harvest moon, gold and heavy' vs. 'the coughs that stained your linens black / no matter how many times you bleached them.' Interspersed are the poet's own paintings, similarly patterened: pale impressionist shimmers plus brusque expressionist impasto. The elegies are especially moving: 'her wisy hair, fine as floss / cotton against the pale earth of her skull' and 'I cradle her, cradle her, and rock her home.' Pick up this book. (Buckley won this year's Hearst Poetry Prize.)
North American Review


"Kate Buckley's poems are dark prayers and lyrical ballads, infused with mystery and awe... And the stories these poems tellfinely crafted as the poems areare stories that speak to all of us, accessible and clear for all their complicated depth, 'universal' precisely because they're so deeply personal, and so deeply felt. There is so much stunning language in this collection, so much accuracy and grace, and there are so many images that take my breath away... Kate Buckley shows us how the beautiful and the brutal can not only coexist alongside one another, but exist within one another. Hers is a necessary and welcome new voice."
Cecilia Woloch


"Painting and poetry are two art forms that stand side by side and work well together. A Wild Region is a collection of oil paintings and poetry from prolific poet Kate Buckley, whose work has appeared in countless venues. Many of her poems are opposite full color art, adding a fresh dimension to her work. A Wild Region is a fine blend of artforms, highly recommended. 'On Hearing Your News': My eyes lie flat in my skull,/darkened, bruised//lashes whip-stitched to swollen lids/sleep has once again been elusive.//My organs weigh more/than they did the day before,/swollen with unhappiness,/gorged with regret:/tiny fists in my stomach pummeling/ the hanging ball of my heart."
Midwest Book Review (Reviewer's Choice)

"A ribbon of Appalachia winds through Kate Buckley’s vigorous voice in her debut collection of poems, A Wild Region. It was my pleasure to choose her as the winner of the 2008 James Hearst Poetry Prize for the North American Review, and it is an equal pleasure to welcome this book of poems, crafted from the patterns of speech of the wild region Buckley loves and the wildness of its people, too."

Molly Peacock


"
Many of the poems recall the work of poet Andrew Hudgins, both for their subject matter and use of forms... Like Hudgins, Buckley can convey the physical and emotional violence of characters without apology, presenting people as they were and laying bare their choices without too much explanation...W.H. Auden once said 'a poem is like a story . . . with all the boring parts left out.' Buckley certainly has many stories to tell, of birth and deaths, abandonment and murder. And she is a gifted storyteller... Perhaps, this is Buckley’s intent in many of her poemsto take the chaotic and random pieces and make them fit, make them record a life, like a handmade quilt. Buckley's poems are as beautiful and well-crafted."
The Adirondack Review

"Kate Buckley's A Wild Region, exemplifies what is best about American poetry: honest, clear, fluid, and genuine. A Wild Region, is a strong debut collection that deserves a place on every poet's bookshelf.
Marie C. Lecrivain

"This is a book of poems full of clues—clues more satisfying even than answers, since they point us toward the wilder regions of the complex human heart. Like a heady night in the rural South, these poems are sonorous, delicious, and dark
at once comforting and mysterious, wicked and sweet."
Robert Peake

"True to her Kentucky roots, Kate Buckley is a born storyteller with a poet’s transforming vision of the world’s details informed by loss and exile."
— Julie Kuzneski Wrinn for the Betty Gabehart Prize, Kentucky Women Writers Conference


"In A Wild Region, Kate Buckley explores the connections between landscape, memory and history...Buckley's style is perfect for this task."
— Poetix.net: Poetry for Southern California

"Buckley is a firm believer in the value of the myths and legends that have been handed down through time and that reveal essential truths about who we are, providing a common thread of humanity that links past, present and future generations. She tries to give a sense of that in her poetry. So that while the poems in her book are set in her native Kentucky and are evocative of the hard and often desperate lives of Appalachian people to whom black lung and hunger were all too familiar, she emphasizes that they are indicative of a collective experience
stories of love and loss that everyone can relate to."
Laguna Beach Independent

PRESS FILES 2008 - 2010:

Read a recent interview with Kate on "How A Poem Happens: Contemporary Poets Discuss the Making of Poems."

Watch Kate read "Aubade" from her new collection, Follow Me Down, at the Ruskin Art Club.

Watch Kate read "Fitzgerald's Wife" from her new collection, Follow Me Down, at the Ruskin Art Club.

Watch Kate read her Pushcart Prize nominated poem, "Honesty," from Follow Me Down, at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center.


Listen to Kate read from & discuss Follow Me Down on "Accents – A Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture."

A clip from Kate's reading from Follow Me Down at Laguna Beach Books.


Watch Kate read her Pushcart Prize nominated poem, "Honesty," from Follow Me Down, at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center.

Interview on "Accents – A Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture."

A clip from Kate's reading at Laguna Beach Books.

Interview with Kate Buckley, Molly Peacock & others, The Huntington Beach Independent.

A clip from Kate's reading at The Read at Moorpark College.


"Kate Buckley's Wild Heart": www.robertpeake.com

Two poems from Follow Me Down featured on Accents - A Radio Show for Literature, Art and Culture.

Kate reading the poem of occasion at the Laguna Beach Inaugural Gala

Laguna Beach Independent on Kate's Reading and the Laguna Beach Inaugural Gala

New Southerner : "Ties to A Wild Region" interview with Kate Buckley by Cecilia Woloch

New Southerner, "Exploring the Interplay of Paintings and Poems" by Cecilia Woloch

The Adirondack Review, review of A Wild Region

Poetix: Poetry for Southern California, review of A Wild Region

Interview on NPR affiliate, WUKY's Tonic: Arts & Music Magazine with a Twist

Laguna Beach Independent Article

Orange County Register Article

Palm Springs Sunday Art Review



PRESS FILES 2007 - 2006:

The Laguna Beach Independent Article by Suzie Harrison on the 2nd Annual Poetry Blast for Help Blue Water: “HelpBlueWater.com will stage a poetic eruption as Orange County’s top artists and musicians converge to translate the planets’ unspoken language,” organizer Rick Conkey promised. Revered in Southern California’s poetry scene, Laguna Beach residents John Gardiner and Kate Buckley will headline the environmentally themed event...

Tide Pools: An Anthology of Orange Country Poetry - Reviewed by G. Murray Thomas, Poetix.net, Poetry for Southern California: An Anthology featuring: Kate Buckley, Marcia Cohee, Elizabeth Fellows, John Gardiner, Beth McIlvaine, Daniel McGinn, Michael Miller, Jaimes Palacio, Mike Sprake, Leigh White and James Ysidro. Edited by Lee Mallory, Ricki Mandeville, and Michael Miller. Moon Tide Press

Poetix.net on a reading:
"These beautiful women can captivate a crowd just by their mere presence. And they are talented. Very, very talented. Though their methods may be different the effect is the same: enticing, dazzling and thoroughly addictive. Ms. Buckley…was like a sip of lemonade on a hot day. Seductively perching herself on a stool, her slightly raspy drawl spinning stories and painting characters brimming with color. As they say, the devil was in the details and her devils were charming, intricately carved creations."

Poetix.net on Kate's reading with David St. John at Tebot Bach:
"Kate Buckley is one of those creations you could swear don't exist outside of a movie script written by Woody Allen: beautiful, smart, confident and talented—but not devoid of a sly humor and even a little charming eccentricity. (She legally changed her name recently from Amy to Kate simply because she 'had always felt like a Kate.') ... One of my personal favorites also happens to be one of the best erotic poems I have ever heard. In 'Sustenance' Buckley maps...possibly one of the most desirable geographies this side of Hawaii's Garden Island and ends the poem with: 'tasting my every sweetness, / shaking my body for new fruit.' Enough said. Buckley ended...with 'On the Alchemy of Cells.' Here she instructs: 'First, you must learn to whisper - and, when / that's mastered: shout. yell / scream at the top of your scarlet lungs/ all the things that have lain so long: / black dogs sitting solidly on your chest.'"

Kate Buckley

  © 2010 Kate Buckley