In this fine collection of new poems and drawings, Cilla McQueen traces the lives and voyages of her ancestors, and the living history of her husband's people. She herself travels through the fire that destroys her house at Otakou, the autoclave of the central poem, tying together the separate threads of her journey and moving from one harbor to another. The sea is a constant element in these poems which she balances along with her precisely observed images of domestic life and her relationship with the forms and inhabitants of the land. Markings, the author's seventh book of poetry is a meditation on family history and midlife -- aspects to which readers can relate.