Cilla McQueen: Radio Room

In The Radio Room, New Zealand's Poet Laureate Cilla McQueen travels through space and time, throwing 'thought-lines' from her present-day corner of the world to the ancient Celtic islands of her ancestors. McQueen's point of view is at once small, interior, and intimate, while in the next breath, it is flung outwards and upwards: "On a cliff-top above screeching gulls I stand still thinking backwards, antipodean poet grafted from ancient taproot in this bedrock..".."if they spoke, what would they say? Could I understand that language at the root of my tongue?" Whether investigating the extinction of the natural landscape, space-time, molecules, and mathematics, or writing to her dear departed, watching an insect, or playfully pondering the perspective of a sock, McQueen's word-ware is as polished and intelligent as ever, and demands multiple readings to uncover each subtle layer. "Poetry takes you apart, puts you back different" she intimates in Foveaux Express. This book does just th