McQueen Classics Back In Print

Ardent fans and new readers alike will be delighted by the latest book by one of New Zealand's major poets, Cilla McQueen. Axis, published by University of Otago Press, is a selection of McQueen's poems drawn from five volumes of her work. It brings back into print some of her best-known and most loved poems.

The poems are drawn from Homing In (1982), Anti Gravity (1984), Wild Sweets (1986), Benzina (1988), and Crik'ey (1993), now all out of print. As demonstrated in this volume, Cilla McQueen's poetry is very accessible and wide-ranging - from deft playing with language to taut, formal verses.

Beautifully designed and presented, the collection will be a pleasure to own and re-read. It provides an insight into McQueen's passions as both writer and artist, juxtaposing poems and drawings completed at the same time, linking themes and subjects. Her musical scores - of 'singing landscapes' and 'conversations in crowded rooms' - are part of this process, showing imaginative and unconventional ways of depicting sound on paper.

The publication of Axis comes close on the heels of Cilla McQueen's most recent book of new work, Markings, published by University of Otago Press last year.

About the Author Educated in Dunedin where she has lived for most of her life, Cilla McQueen now lives in Bluff. She has received the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry (1983, 1989, 1991) and many other honours. Fellowships she has held include the Robert Burns at the University of Otago (1985-86), a Fulbright Visiting Writer's Fellowship to Stanford University (1985), and a Goethe Institut Scholarship to Berlin (1988).

Axis: Poems and Drawings Cilla McQueen 144 pages ISBN 1 877276 06 5 Published May 2001 $34.95

CONTACT For more information, or to arrange an interview, contact Philippa Jamieson, University of Otago Press, tel. (03) 479 9094, fax (03) 479 8385, email: philippa.jamieson@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

© Scoop Media