Simultaneous Stories: The Poetic Mark-Making of Cilla McQueen and John Pule

Abstract

The poet-artists Cilla McQueen and John Pule draw on multiple poetic modes to tell stories and to record and express identity through the exploration of place and memory. It is easy to split work by McQueen and Pule into their verbal or visual elements, however, such splitting belies the permeability inherent in their forms of expression, creativity and record-making. I therefore use the term mark-making to embody both the word and the image as both are formed or created out of the same action and the same impetus in the work of these artists. To make a mark is to record a physical movement which results in a line or mark. This mark could turn into a letter or word, or it may turn into a line intended to replicate or represent an object or any other kind of recording. The physical movement is entwined with the intellectual move of representation. The term poetic mark-making in this thesis refers to the bringing together of the visual and the textual into a single plane to emphasise the poetry of both. This thesis investigates the poetic mark-making of McQueen and Pule, who use stories, maps and memories to explore issues of place and identity. It compares how the two poets navigate the act of recording memory and place by utilising and combining types of mark-making not commonly seen in conventional poetry on the page. Particular attention is paid to McQueen’s collections described as “poems and drawings,” namely Markings and Soundings, which feature purely verbal poems alongside drawings doing the same or similar work as the poems. The pictorial language developed in Pule’s lithographic series Seven Love Poems, Restless Spirit and hiapo paintings is also explored. I begin first by outlining the international and local, historical and contemporary context of combining image and text in artistic and literary work. I then explain the genesis and detail of the concept of poetic mark-making and the various artists and poets that have inspired the concept besides McQueen and Pule. Chapters 2-4 then take key thematic concerns in McQueen’s and Pule’s work as a running thread to ground poetic mark-making readings. Drawing on the similarities of their thematic concerns – place, time, memory, whakapapa, migration and identity – the chapters explore simultaneous stories within their work. The aim of this thesis is to produce an explorative demonstration of some strategies and literacies that poetic mark-making involves.