| From Perfect Blue reviewed in The Guardian | by Charles Bainbridge |
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This is an enjoyable and accomplished second collection.
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You can read the full review here.
The Guardian, 24 April 2010
| From Perfect Blue at Peony Moon | by Michelle McGrane |
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Wow! I especially love the second poem, but they are both amazing. She has such a vivid imagination.
-- Comment by Christine Swint
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Michelle McGrane has a generous feature on Perfect Blue at Peony Moon, including two poems from the book that aren't online anywhere else.
You can read the full feature at Peony Moon.
Peony Moon, January 2010
| From SPL Poetry Podcast | by Ryan van Winkle |
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Witching Hour...
A podcast featuring an interview with poet Kona Macphee, who discusses her Poem of the Week project and reads a Halloween themed poem from her collection Tails (Bloodaxe, 2004).
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You can listen to the podcast at the SPL Reading Room.
Scottish Poetry Library Reading Room, October 2009
| From Tails, Tricks and Herrings | by Matt Simpson |
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All in all, [Macphee's] poetry is a search for 'the rightness
of things'. But not without entertaining a deep sense of the fragilities,
the instabilities that sensitise ordinary daily lives.
Macphee is surely a poet to watch. Tails... contains fine poems,
the reading of which offers the excitement of poetry often working with
genuine precision and poems coming to properly clinching endings.
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Stride Magazine, May 2004
| From Books by Local Authors | |
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While her poems do reflect her scientific background from time to time, they
also tell a very human story... Her work combines technical excellence
with accessibility.
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Cambridgeshire Pride Magazine, June 2004
| From Interview with Kona Macphee | by Mark Thwaite |
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There is a lovely mix in your poems in Tails between the lyrical/poetic and occasionally difficult use of language and the deeply personal...
how do you bridge that formal/personal divide?
I suppose I don't see it as a divide. In fact, the more emotive or personal a subject is, the more likely I am to use a tightly-controlled traditional or nonce form: paradoxically it's the constraints of the form that make it possible to get started on a difficult theme.
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You can read the rest of this interview at Ready Steady Book.
Ready Steady Book, September 2004
| From Interview with Kona Macphee | by Mark Thwaite |
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Kona Macphee's Tails strikes me as a better first
collection than most because technically this is a better first
collection than most...
The title poem "Tails" combines the personal, the anecdotal and the rhythmic as well as any of the best of the rest in this fine collection...
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You can read the rest of this review at Ready Steady Book.
Ready Steady Book, September 2004
| From Kona Macphee in Conversation | |
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Ok, your career includes musical composition, violin, computer science, robotics, astronomy and poetry? So, you get bored easily or there's a creative link?
I do have a very low tolerance for boredom, so I've spent a lot of years looking for areas I find absorbing. I like activities that are creative, emotionally engaging and intellectually challenging. Writing poems is the only one I've found so far that manages to be all three at once!
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You can read the rest of this interview at BBC Cambridgeshire.
BBC Cambridgeshire, March 2004
| From Chance encounter | by Carrie Etter |
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...Kona Macphee's finest work presents a perspective whose detachment is
rooted in genuine care for what it sees... Tails offers an impressive
range, indicative of a mature first
collection.
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Poetry Review, Vol 94 No 3, Autumn 2004
