Cilla McQueen



Priscilla Muriel "Cilla" McQueen (born 22 January 1949 in Birmingham, England) is a poet and three-time winner of the New Zealand Book Award for Poetry.

Early years and education
McQueen's family moved to New Zealand when she was four. She was educated at Columba College in Dunedin and University of Otago (Master's with first-class Honours in 1971).

Career
A poet and artist, she has published eleven collections and a CD of her poetry. In 2010 she was named New Zealand Poet Laureate. She also received the Prime Minister's Awards for Literary Achievement (Poetry) in 2010. Other awards include: NZ Book Award for Poetry 1983, 1989 and 1991; Robert Burns Fellowship at Otago University 1985 & 1986; Fulbright Visiting Writer’s Fellowship 1985; Inaugural Australia-New Zealand Writer’s Exchange Fellowship 1987; Goethe Institute Scholarship to Berlin 1988; NZ Queen Elizabeth Arts Council Scholarship in Letters 1992. Her most recent works are a CD of McQueen reading her poems ("A Wind Harp", from Otago University Press) and a 2010 volume of new poems and drawings "The Radio Room" (Otago University Press).

In 1999 McQueen was awarded the Southland Art Foundation Artist in Residence award, which allowed her to develop both poetry and painting simultaneously.

Cilla McQueen's poems include themes of homeland and loss, indigeneity, colonisation and displacement. She writes as a descendant of the colonised on St Kilda in the Hebrides. Her writing also reflects her engagement with the history and present reality of the Maori people of Murihiku.

Personal life
McQueen was married to New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere from 1973 until the 1990s, and together they set up a studio and living space at Careys Bay, near Port Chalmers. She currently lives in Bluff, at the southern tip of New Zealand’s South Island.

Works
McQueen's work includes a variety of poetry books and poems over the past twenty-five years, including these volumes:


 * 1982: Homing In
 * 1984: Anti Gravity
 * 1986: Wild Sweets
 * 1988: Benzina
 * 1990: Berlin Diary
 * 1993: Crikey
 * 2000: Markings, Otago University Press
 * 2001: Axis, Otago University Press
 * 2002: Soundings, Otago University Press
 * 2005: Fire-penny, Otago University Press
 * 2006: A Wind Harp (compact disc)
 * 2010: "The Radio Room", Otago University Press