Markings
I am concerned with opposites
And the skin between them
In this fine collection of poems and drawings, Cilla McQueen traces the lives and voyages of her ancestors, alongside the living history of her husband’s people.
She also writes through the fire that destroys her home at Otakou, the autoclave of the central poem, drawing together the separate threads of her journey as she moves from one harbour to another. The sea is a constant presence, balanced by the poet’s precisely observed images of domestic life and her fascination with the forms and inhabitants of the land.
Cilla McQueen
Cilla McQueen MNZM is a poet, teacher and artist, and a three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry. She received an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Otago in 2008 and was New Zealand Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2011. In 2010 she received the Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement (Poetry). In 2020 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services as a poet. Cilla lives in Bluff, at the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.
More About Cilla McQueen
Fire-Penny 
A Wind Harp 
Axis 
Soundings 
Poeta 
The Radio Room 
In a Slant Light 
Edwin’s Egg and Other Poetic Novellas