Praise for A Wild Region:

"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

"Kate Buckley's poems are dark prayers and lyrical ballads, infused with mystery and awe... And the stories these poems tell — finely crafted as the poems are — are 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

"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."
— G. Murray Thomas, 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."
— Jennifer Erickson, Laguna Beach Independent

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

"Kate Buckley was fabulous! Wow! We all loved her. Plus, her voice. As I recall it, I get chills. We all demanded that she also include a CD of her reading her poems with any book as a set. How do I explain her voice? First, she takes her inspirations for poems from real life events that she discovers in the newspaper, television (History Channel), stories she hears, even from driving down a Kentucky back road, as a passenger with her husband Chuck at the wheel. She writes in the car, pen to paper, capturing the scenes of life and landscape as they scroll past her window. Loved that poem! As writers, I will speak for all of us, she depicts the essence, the emotions of humans with a 'shared memory' as she labels it. She told us about a time when she was reading an article in the news paper at the dining table while Chuck was making breakfast and when a poem was at hand. Chuck tries to speak but she hushes him, puts her hands over her ears to block his voice, and then she beings to write. He calls it her 'zone'. He's a great poet's spouse. He understands. When a poem emerges from her creative inner being, it's not her story. She gives a voice to the people that are the subjects, whose life drama of pain or joy must be told. It's eerie as hell, to me, but it's like she has been possessed by the spirit of her protagonists and it is their emotions, words, story that Kate puts to a rhythm, an inner beat, that haunts her. Poems about life. I'm sold on Kate. I overheard the word genius used to describe her work. I'm no authority, but genius does not quite do it for me. What I saw and heard was a spiritual relationship that Kate is able to tap into, then becomes the conduit, the scribe. Spooky in a way. Well, you had to be there...well...here. Kate was wonderful and she appreciated reading to writers. We get it."

— Orange County Writers Group's Russell Traughber's Review on "An Evening with Kate Buckley"

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 reviewer Jaimes Palacio on a recent 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 reviewer Jaimes Palacio 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." Much of her work revolves around Southern life. (She's originally from Kentucky but shows only little hints of an accent).

They are little character snapshots: The woman who waited under the house at night,/counting ghosts and bobcats/ through lattice of leaves, (Harlan County); the title characters in Fisherman's Wife and American Queen, (this one purposely done with a thick drawl); and the child that she was (your shoes were your own country [My Mother's Closet). Buckley can go from the sun-drenched Laurel County, (There must have been times/ when Kentucky was a life sentence,/ a dark-veined monster burning coal in her belly ) to the grim, rain-soaked culverts of a piece in which a body is discovered...

One of my personal favorites also happens to be one of the best erotic poems I have ever heard. In Sustenance Buckley maps in vivid (yet not grossly explicit or crude) detail 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. Smoke ‘em if you got ‘em! Buckley ended her set 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."