Cilla McQueen is one of New Zealand's major poets. Poems And Drawings By Cilla Mcqueen is a remarkable anthology comprising poetry drawn from the past twenty years of her work as represented in five volumes of her published poetry, and is enhanced with a selection of her drawings and musical scores. Wild Sweets: what I mean by/love? A terrorist incident/a torn artery an electric arc a/touch without fear/hand in a flame/leather seduction cup of tea/curly rose cushion scrambled eggs/stroke wheel stomp stiletto/in the arch of the foot/spearing the bones/sucking wild sweets/without word talk, it's/not that I love for any at-all/things to get from you/but my learning to cease/expectation.

Soundings is a collection of heartfelt poems and simple yet evocative black-and-white drawings by Cilla McQueen. The brief yet poignant free-verse lyrics evoke scenes of life, history, and the best and worst of human nature, focusing especially on conflicts engendered between colonists from the New World and Native American civilizations. Rakiura, 1823: At Poti Repo, Ebenezer Denton/died defending the stores--//the last thing he saw/was the patu//that struck like a shark/in the dreamy dark//where silent figures/cast and puffed//white flour about, bit soap/and spat it out,//scattered tobacco,/spurning the gunpowder,//throwing it down/on the ground, on the fire,//gyrating/through violent explosions.