Fleur Adcock



Kareen Fleur Adcock (known as Fleur Adcock), CNZM, OBE (born 10 February 1934 in New Zealand) is a poet and an editor of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England.

Life and career
Adcock was born in Auckland, but spent the years between 1939 and 1947 in England. Her sister is the novelist Marilyn Duckworth. She studied Classics at the Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a M.A.. She worked as an assistant lecturer and later an assistant librarian at the University of Otago in Dunedin until 1962. She was married to two famous New Zealand literary personalities. In 1952 she married Alistair Campbell, (divorced 1958). Then in 1962 she married Barry Crump, divorcing in 1963.

In 1963, Adcock returned to England and took up a post as an assistant librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London until 1979. Since then she has been a freelance writer, living in East Finchley, north London. She has held several literary fellowships, including the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship in Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham in 1979-81.

Adcock's poetry is typically concerned with themes of place, human relationships and everyday activities, but frequently with a dark twist given to the mundane events she writes about. Formerly, her early work was influenced by her training as a classicist but her more recent work is looser in structure and more concerned with the world of the unconscious mind.

Recognition

 * 1961: Festival of Wellington Poetry Award
 * 1964: New Zealand State Literary Fund Award
 * 1968: Buckland Award (New Zealand)
 * 1968: Jessie Mackay Prize (New Zealand)
 * 1972: Jessie Mackay Prize (New Zealand)
 * 1976: Cholmondeley Award (United Kingdom)
 * 1979: Buckland Award (New Zealand)
 * 1984: New Zealand National Book Award
 * 1988: Arts Council Writers' Award (United Kingdom)
 * 1996: Officer of the Order of the British Empire for her contribution to New Zealand literature
 * 2006: Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry (United Kingdom)
 * 2008: Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to literature.

Publications

 * 1964: Eye of the Hurricane, Wellington: Reed
 * 1967: Tigers, London: Oxford University Press
 * 1971: High Tide in the Garden, London: Oxford University Press
 * 1974: The Scenic Route, London and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1979: The Inner Harbour, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1979: Below Loughrigg, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books
 * 1983: Selected Poems, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1986: Hotspur: a ballad, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books ISBN 978-1-85224-001-1
 * 1986: The Incident Book, Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1988: Meeting the Comet, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books
 * 1991: Time-zones, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1991: Selected Poems, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1993: Mary Magdalene and the Birds: Mezzo-sporano and Clarinet, by Dorothy Buchanan, with words by Fleur Adcock, Wellington: Waiteata Press
 * 1993: Five Modern Poets: Fleur Adcock, U.A. Fanthorpe, Tony Harrison, Anne Stevenson, Derek Walcott, Edited by Barbara Bleiman, Harlow, England: Longman
 * 1997: Looking Back, Oxford and Auckland: Oxford University Press
 * 2000: Poems 1960-2000, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books ISBN 978-1-85224-530-6
 * 2004: Contributor, The 2nd Wellington International Poetry Festival Anthology, Edited and compiled by Mark Pirie, Ron Riddell and Saray Torres. Wellington: HeadworX
 * 2010: Dragon Talk, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books ISBN 978-1-85224-878-9

Edited or translated

 * 1982: Editor, Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry, Auckland: Oxford University Press
 * 1983: Translator, The Virgin and the Nightingale: Medieval Latin poems, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe Books, ISBN 978-0-906427-55-2
 * 1987: Editor, Faber Book of 20th Century Women's Poetry, London and Boston: Faber and Faber
 * 1989: Translator, Orient Express: Poems. Grete Tartler, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press
 * 1992: Translator, Letters from Darkness: Poems, Daniela Crasnaru, Oxford: Oxford University Press
 * 1994: Translator and editor, Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press
 * 1995: Editor (with Jacqueline Simms), The Oxford Book of Creatures, verse and prose anthology, Oxford: Oxford University Press