Kona Macphee

Kona Macphee is a poet and self-described ‘thingwright’ who grew up in Australia and now lives in Perthshire. She received an Eric Gregory award in 1998 and her first collection Tails was published by Bloodaxe in 2004. Her second collection Perfect Blue (Bloodaxe, 2010) was awarded the Geoffrey Faber memorial prize for 2010, and her third collection What Long Miles (Bloodaxe, 2013) was the Observer’s poetry book of the month for July 2013.

Kona’s work has been commissioned for various events and anthologies, including the year-long touring exhibition Human Race: inside the science of sports medicine and Look Up Glasgow (Freight Books, 2013), a coffee-table book featuring Glasgow architecture. In 2011 she enjoyed a week-long residency at the Lviv International Literary Festival, supported by the British Council in Ukraine. An experienced and popular mentor, Kona has provided poetry teaching for organisations including the Poetry Society, the Poetry School, the Arvon Foundation, the National Association of Writers in Education, the Scottish Poetry Library and Hi~Arts, and she founded the Muse Tuners creative mentoring agency.

Having previously trained or worked as a composer, violinist, motorbike mechanic and computer scientist, Kona now freelances as a media producer specialising in podcasts, short films, photography and web development. In addition to poetry, she writes articles, science-fiction stories, music and software, and makes playful short films and visual art. Having abandoned all hope of a sensible career progression, Kona likes to spend as much time as possible absorbed in creating things and learning-by-doing.