Axis is a selection of Cilla McQueen's poems from the past twenty years, drawn from five volumes of her published Homing In , Anti Gravity , Wild Sweets , Benzina , and Crik'ey . The poems are interspersed with her drawings and Cilla's musical scores are also included.
"In this absorbing poetic memoir of her early life, Cilla McQueen, one of New Zealands major women poets, leads us over the stepping stones of childhood memory, some half submerged, some strong and glinting in the light of her wit... With humour and openness, clarity and grace, the memoir continues through her teenage years and the excitement and turbulence, the expansion and vulnerability, of university days and early motherhood in the 1960s and 1970s raising a young child alone, falling in love with Ralph Hotere and witnessing his deeply immersive artistic practice"--Back cover
Born in 1949, Bluff-based Cilla McQueen is one of New Zealand's best-loved poets. Poeta: Selected and New Poems brings together a definitive selection of her poetry spanning five decades, arranged by the poet in a thematic narrative that elucidates abiding themes while maintaining a loose chronology of her creative life to date. Poeta gathers together poems from the poet's 14 previous volumes, punctuated by 11 striking drawings, and also includes a range of new work that shows her riddling creativity continuing to grow and evolve. Collectively, the poems demonstrate a versatile and diligent wordsmith never content to sit on her laurels, ever experimenting and improving in her attempt to write the world's poem.