Three Cilla McQueen Songs

About

I first heard Cilla McQueen reading her own poems at the opening of the new National Library building in August 1987. Among the poems she read was Synaesthesia, which entranced me with its sustained lyricism and seemed to be crying out for music – something very unusual in recent NZ poetry, most of which tends to be more conversational in tone. I asked her for a copy of Synaesthesia (at that stage unpublished) and later found two other poems among her published collections. The musical connections between Synaesthesia and Princess Alice came quite unconsciously, though the two songs are very contrasted in rhythmic style: one flowing, the other dancing. In between, Solstice is suspended in stillness.