#AWW2019 Poetry NZ Cilla McQueen
- Author: Cilla McQueen
- Title: The Radio Room (34 poems)
- Published: 2011
- Genre: poetry
- List of Challenges 2019
- Monthly plan
- #AWW2019
- @AusWomenWriters
- Trivia: Ockham NZ Awards shortlisted Poetry Prize 2011
- Trivia: If you ever read this collection of poems
- …I will save you some time.
- It took me 2 days to find the meaning of Maori words
- mentioned in three poems: About the Fog, Reprise and
- Talking to My Tokotoko.
- “Hopupu Honengenenge Matangi Rau”
- …which in Maori means
- “the long water which bubbles, swirls and is uneven”.
- #YourWelcome
Who is Cilla McQueen?
- Mcqueen was Born in Birmingham, England
- …and moved to New Zealand when she was four years old.
- She ranks amongst the finest poets of her generation.
- Trivia: Three New Zealand Book Awards
- Trivia: 2009 Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement
- Trivia: New Zealand’s Poet Laureateship (2009-2011)
- In The Radio Room, Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen
- …travels space and time, throwing thoughts (Poem: Bookworm)
- from Bluff NZ , her corner of the world, to the ancient Celtic islands
- of her ancestors. (St Klida, Island Mull) (Poem series: Elements 1,2,3,4)
Conclusion: My notes about a few poems….
Poem: The Ghostly Beast
- Reference: 15th C Scottish history
- Macdonalds of Clanranald…carry off booty van rival clan
- …rough estimante 600 cows.
- McQueen describes fear of people “in the bothy” (cottage)
- Sounds of “song of a storm, roiling tempest”
- “…a lowing so close”
- Is it a our cow or the ghosts of stolen cattle?
- Conclusion: No emotional impact but I do
- learn that McQueen bases many poems
- on her Scottish heritage.
- #BadChoice for kick-off poem in collecton 😦
Poem: About the Fog
- Reference: feelings about loss (mother)
- McQueen’s personal journal…
- …pages destroyed b/c book left on a table
- ….during a foggy night.
- …”vanished thoughts”
- washed away “…as if by tears.”
- Blue ink turned “…turquoise wash
- …word-slivers….beld edges”
- Conclusion: very moving poem
- #TimeForKleenex
Reading tip:
- I read this poem 1 x … it made no sense.
- I’m too close to the text, to eager to understand
- …hence see nothing!
- Then I wrote each stanza in longhand,
- absorbing each sentence as I went on.
- That is the best way to ‘read’ poems.
- You just have to invest some time and
- effort to distill the poet’s message.
- Sometimes objects art not things.
- Objects are news…that is part of the puzzle.
Poems: Altar (Elements 1)
- Reference: Island of Mull– 15th C MacKinnon’s Cave
- Deep inside lies a large, flat slab of rock, known as Fingal’s Table
- used as an altar by hermits and early followers of the Christian church.
- The first part of the poem
- …refers to the ‘sin’ of killing
- the Great Auk bird on St. Kilda, Scotland 1844.
- The second part refers to a Greek mythical figure of
- a warrior Amazon.
- She offers the spirits a gift as does…the narrator.
- The poem is bookended:
- Part 1: laid our sin on the altar
- Part 2: laid our prayer on the altar
- Conclusion: this poem needed some
- research to understand it (Great Auk).
- No emotional impact…just historical interest
- #Dud
Poem Beacon (Elements 2)
- Reference: Island of Mull– 15th C MacKinnon’s Cave
- This was very different compared to Altar (Elements 1)
- I thought there would be a connection
- ….but the contrast was the best part!
- McQueen uses beautiful lyrical language to
- give us an image of a beacon of light
- leaping from “altar to altar, island to island”.
- Conclusion: Images linger; fascinated
- McQueen makes a (lighthouse) beam come to life …
- “a quartz shiver”….with ” quicksilver feet’!
- #Magical
Poem: Bookworm
- Reference: Martin Martin from the Island of Skye.
- 1690s he decided to visit St. Kilda and
- record the natural history and culture.
- This was a frustrating read.
- I must have read it 10 x…!
- It feels as if McQueen read the historical
- document by M. Martin and just left her
- thoughts drift: “tell past to know time present”.
- She compares herself with a (title) bookworm
- that tunnels through books
- …as she does through memory.
- Literary device:
- antimetabole (reversal of words)
- “…on dark ground white words, on white ground dark words.”
- This device can be pithy and powerful
- …but it fell flat in this poem.
- Conclusion: exasperated…only wish Ms McQueen
- could explain this poem to me.
- PS:...to make matters worse
- …my reading glasses broke today
- so I was forced to read this through “old lenses”!
Poem: Foveaux Express
- Reference: ferry between Bluff and Stewart Island
- McQueen compares poetry to the catamaran ferry ride.
- Ferry: it is ‘swift as the stroke of a pen…text in motion’
- Poem: “…gimballed (supported) on muscling swells (waves)
- …word-ware cargo.”
- Conclusion: McQueen tells me why I should read poems:
- “Poetry takes you apart, puts you back different”
Poem: Lens
- Literary devices: filled with …alliteration and assonant rhyme
- webbed wash-house windows
- dusty dwang (building), bee-sting blue-bag
Poem: Ripples
- This poem is considered one of the best poems of New Zealand
- The Poets mentioned in “Ripples” are Joanna Paul (1945-2003)
- and Hone Tuwhare (1922-2008).
- #Impressive
Poem: Soapy Water
- McQueen is so clever!
- #Hysterical!
Poem: Three Elaborations
- After reading several poems like this one
- ….topic is about a beloved one who passed away.
- …gone with Ganyede, beloved one,
- to fill the crystal glasses of the gods.
- …you swore to send a message back from death…
- …empty VB bottles queueing by the sink
- …all gone – the house as quiet as Miss McKenzie’s old piano…
- I can assume Hone Tuwhare was
- Cilla McQueens life partner after her divorce in 1986.
- I can find no biographical information to support my
- assumption…just a ‘woman’s intuition’ that Hone was the
- #LoveOfHerLife.
Poem: Coastling (Elements 3)
- I took a page out of Mcqueen’s book and
- …let MY thoughts drift after reading this poem:
Poem:
- I meet myself coming the other way.
- Distinguish between two grains of sand.
- No power on earth can change me,
- nothing pins me down.
- Within my high and low I belong to none.
- A sacred slate where law is written.
- Conclusion: Title: Coastline
- I imagine a beach and
- …the poet gazing at her footprints (“…met myself”).
- Nothing “pins me down”.
- Footprints are washed away
- …by the next wave (“belong to none”).
- The next step she makes is
- …on “a sacred slate where law is written.”
Poem: Mining Lament
- This is playful poetic pantoum!
- A verse form composed of stanzas in which the
- second and fourth lines
- ….are repeated as the
- …first and third lines of the following stanza.
- 10 lines and McQueen stretches the poem to 20 lines
- ….a pantoum!
- She repeats lines so subtly
- …that if you read it without a warning
- you would think it contains 20 separate lines of poetry!
- #BrainTeaser
- NOTE: the last line of a pantoum is the same as the first,
- making this a form of ouroboros type.
- The ouroboros a SYMBOL in the form of a snake
- …consuming its own tail.
- The poem ends where it begins
- ….a never-ending circle.
- How cool is that?
- #WhoSaidPoetryIsBoring
What is my favorite poem in the collection?
- It has to be a poem of friendship for 2nd Poet Laureate of
- New Zealand Hone Tuwhare. (1922-2008).
Poem: Letter to Hone 1
- I so impressed by the tenderness and
- affectionate words McQueen uses to celebrate this poet.
- I can only assume this is a tribute to him just after his death.
- He passed away in 2008 and
- …this collection was published 2010.
- I don’t usually post the poems I read…but this one
- I must share:
- Note: Matua Tokotoko = Maori carved walking stick
- …that is a symbol of great respect.
Letter to Hone 1
- Dear Hone, by your Matua Tokotoko
- sacred in my awkward arms,
- its cool black mockings
- my shallow grasp
- I was
- utterly blown away.
- I am sitting beside you at Kaka Point
- in an armchair with chrome arm-rests
- very close to the stove.
- You smile at me,
- look back at the flames,
- add a couple of logs,
- take my hand in your bronze one,
- doze awhile;
- Open your bright dark eyes,
- give precise instructions as to the location of
- the whisky bottle
- on the kitchen shelf, and of two glasses.
- I bring them like a lamb.
- You pour a might dram.
Last Poem: Your Eyes
- Of course…no mistake
- Hoen T. was McQueen’s soul mate.
- Trivia: Yvonne mentioned in the last line
- is the NZ writer Yvonne du Fresne (1929-2011)
Last thoughts:
- Unlike poems by
- Jericho Brown (USA, raw, gritty)
- Gerard Fanning (IRELAND, nostalgic, playful)
- Therese Lloyd (NZ, heartbreak, visiting Ed Hopper’s paintings)
- Cilla McQueen’s poems were exhausting!
- I mean this in a good way…she makes me think.
- Her best poems are about her grief losing Hone Tuwhare.
- Also best poems include the ones in which
- …McQueen shows us what is like at…
- the end of the world in New Zealand her hometown
- Bluff in Southland is the country’s most southerly tip,
- Subjects: weather, animals, whaling, oystering, shipwrecks, the sea.
- She has a sharp eye for particularly New Zealand detail.
- “my Tolotoko” (Poem: About the Fog)
- A tokotoko is a traditional Māori carved ceremonial walking stick.
- ..a symbol of authority and status for the speaker holding it.
- “bronze totara” (Poem: Crazy Horse) – tree in New Zealand
- “In a kowhai two bellbird sing…” (Poem: In Hand) –
- small tree and bird prevalent to New Zealand (greenish colors)
- McQueen’s most difficult poems are based on
- …Scottish myth, legend and history.
- It requires more research to understand
- …just a few snapshots in the poems.
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