Description
From cosmology to infidelity, gentle truth to the fiercest of fairytales, this first collection from Kona Macphee tells an outsider's story in a voice that sings with the music of language. As a coin tossed or untossed, a snowball, a course of IVF, the thread of fate weaves itself throughout the poems in Tails. Can we learn to change our destiny by releasing the hurts of the past, while still embracing our fragility and ultimate mortality? Exuberantly lyrical, occasionally bleak yet never bitter, these poems explore the ambivalence of hope in the face of loss, and the redemption to be found in celebrating the transitory.
About the Author
Kona Macphee was born in London and grew up in Australia, where she worked as a waitress, shop assistant and apprentice motorbike mechanic. She studied musical composition at the Sydney Conservatorium, violin at the University of Sydney, and computer science and robotics at Monash University, later taking an M.Sc. at Cambridge as a Commonwealth Scholar. She received an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1998, and has published three collections with Bloodaxe, Tails (2004); Perfect Blue (2010), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2011; and What Long Miles (2013). She is a freelance writer and software developer, and lives in Crieff, Perthshire.
Reviews
Kona Macphee's poetry has a genuine lyricism and mystery, together with a bold experimental diction. There are invigorating formal pressures that sharpen her intelligence and she always has an eye to those wider, grander themes, an ear to the sounds the words make. -- John Greening * Poetry Review *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246600
Author Kona Macphee
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
About the Author
Kona Macphee was born in London and grew up in Australia, where she worked as a waitress, shop assistant and apprentice motorbike mechanic. She studied musical composition at the Sydney Conservatorium, violin at the University of Sydney, and computer science and robotics at Monash University, later taking an M.Sc. at Cambridge as a Commonwealth Scholar. She received an Eric Gregory Award for her poetry in 1998, and has published three collections with Bloodaxe, Tails (2004); Perfect Blue (2010), winner of the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 2011; and What Long Miles (2013). She is a freelance writer and software developer, and lives in Crieff, Perthshire.
Reviews
Kona Macphee's poetry has a genuine lyricism and mystery, together with a bold experimental diction. There are invigorating formal pressures that sharpen her intelligence and she always has an eye to those wider, grander themes, an ear to the sounds the words make. -- John Greening * Poetry Review *
Book Information
ISBN 9781852246600
Author Kona Macphee
Format Paperback
Page Count 64
Imprint Bloodaxe Books Ltd
Publisher Bloodaxe Books Ltd
