About Kath
In Praise Of Translating Air
Michael Boughn: Kath Maclean’s new poetry collection, Translating Air, is a deeply haunting engagement with the life, mind, and work of H.D., extraordinary poet and novelist, and friend to Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, D.H. Lawrence and many other modern writers. Following the trajection of H.D.’s life and drawing material from related documents, Maclean weaves in and out of the poet’s mind as destabilized pronouns shift between perceptual registers, moving back and forth from moments in H.D.’s biography, especially her long, deep relationship with Pound, to her writing, to the speaker’s own hovering mind’s interruptive presence entangled with it all. Finally a long, passionate meditation on love and violence enacted by these voices, Translating Air leaves us richer in understanding even as it refuses to provide any easy resolution.
In Praise Of Kat Among The Tigers
Dr. Vincent O`Sullivan, world renowned Mansfield scholar and author: "[In] Kat Among the Tigers. . . Kath MacLean brings off what is really rather magical. She gives us Mansfield straight, yet also a Mansfield crossed by her own reading; and from this traversing of texts, a hive of unexpected resonances. I admire the bravura of these poems, their technical poise, their reach towards an overarching statement on modernity, and the meeting of minds. Together, these construct a 'personality' which exists as a rich, poetic fact. In recent decades, there have been many attempts to catch Mansfield imaginatively in drama, fiction, and poetry. For my money, none strikes the complexity or the élan that MacLean achieves."
Janine Renshaw-Beauchamp, great niece of Katherine Mansfield: "I tried to read Kat Among the Tigers dispassionately but failed miserably. It brought me out in goose bumps... My reading of Katherine Mansfield's work and hearing her three sisters talk about her convinces me that these poems present a very real portrait of my Great Aunt. . . . This book of poems is a rarity, a real Gem."
Robert Kroetsch "[MacLean's] poems glow in the dark. I'll swear to that: [her] sense of line and sound, [her] wonderful Renaissance sense of conjunction and parallel. [Her] poems surprise themselves, as well as us, and that is a rare and beautiful accomplishment.
Elizabeth Greene: "In Kat Among the Tigers, Kath MacLean has not exactly become more Katherine Mansfield than KM could ever be, but she has lived so closely with her subject and done such careful, exhaustive research that she has certainly "created her anew," caught the freedom and intensity of her voice in this elegant, polished sequence of poems, a string of epiphanies and musings rooted in Katherine Mansfield's life. . .Those who have read Katherine Mansfield may delight in finding phrases that link these poems to the journals, in fitting the various poems to places and times in Katherine Mansfield's life. Those who haven't read Mansfield will catch their breath at lines like "One tires of tigers with tales thumping / fashionable accounts of nothing." and "How do you wild the tame?"("Tired of Tigers,"42), or "You've got to love me!" and "But the pudding my dear is fine." ("J'sPudding," 9) Katherine Mansfield alternates between immensity and the domestic, as do these poems. Readers of Katherine Mansfield will want to put this book next to her stories, journals and letters. Those who have never read Katherine Mansfield will be impressed by Kath MacLean's assured, polished poetry. Whether or not you know Katherine Mansfield's work, Kat Among the Tigers is an impressive achievement." | Read Entire Review
In Praise Of For A Cappucino On Bloor
George Elliot Clarke: "It [For A Cappuccino On Bloor] is a Top 40-inspired, breath-taking lyricism...Hers is a lyricism without apology and, naturally, without punctuation...she writes poetry well."
Linda Morra: "MacLean’s collection, finely and intricately wrought, revolves around different forms of desire...[she] uses musical terminology and patterns to structure her work. Her attention to form and her repeated references to particular images create layers of meaning..."
Judith Fitzgerald: "...Kath MacLean displays a lithe and admirable agility in For a Cappuccino on Bloor. MacLean’s successful experiments examine the tenuous threads binding the individual to a world where we taste the crisp silence of words and the pace between us rises like Toronto’s humidity... [She] combine[s] the lovely echoes of Gwen MacEwen and Phyllis Webb’s evocative work with a complex system of imagery alluding to both the Greeks and American Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton..."
Rob Mclennan: "The strength of MacLean’s writing...lies in the pure poetry of the language...it overwhelms in its sheer beauty."
Candace Savage "...[she] leaves the reader excited and dazzled."