For information on booking or workshops contact: Kate@KateBuckley.com
| Press
& Reviews:
Praise for 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 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 "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 poems—to 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: 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 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: Poetix.net
on Kate's reading with David St. John at Tebot Bach: |
Advance
Praise for 
© 2010 Kate Buckley