"This is sanity speaking, with a mask of tragedy pulled up from its face. This is a stunning poet arguing with the failing authority of her culture, the whole Silk Road curled up and hissing by her feet." Valzhyna Mort

Yaa de Villiers' silence-smashing poems (in this manner reminiscent of Carol Ann Duffy's The World's Wife) are sensitive, unafraid to be erotic, sometimes tragic, and always irreverent - Tolu Ogunlesi, Wasafiri magazine

Dense yet taut poems, grounded in an everyday enriched by an intelligent, idiosyncratic awareness -- Carrie Etter

I'm drawn to what you might think of as traditional lyric poetry; it's an enduring, effective, powerful means of expression.

The opposite of the octopus's disappearing trick: the poem creates a cloud of ink in order to appear behind it (rather to its own surprise).

In the face of loss - human, natural, temporal - McQueen finds salvation in language. Often her work is about artistic endeavour itself: the desire to freeze time, the realisation that this is impossible - Sarah Quigley