Fleur Adcock

Fleur Adcock CNZM OBE (born 10 February 1934) is a New Zealand poet and editor, of English and Northern Irish ancestry, who has lived much of her life in England.[1][2]

Fleur Adcock

CNZM OBE
Born (1934-02-10) 10 February 1934
Papakura, New Zealand
Occupationpoet, editor
SpouseAlistair Campbell (divorced)
Barry Crump (divorced)

Early life

Fleur Adcock, the older of two sisters, was born in Papakura to Cyril John Adcock and Irene Robinson Adcock. She spent eight years of her childhood (1939–1947) in England. Adcock studied Classics at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an MA.[2][3]

Career

Adcock worked as an assistant lecturer and later an assistant librarian at the University of Otago in Dunedin between 1958 and 1962 and at the Alexander Turnbull Library in Wellington in 1962–1963.[2][3]

In 1963, she returned to England and took up a post as an assistant librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in London until 1979 when she resigned to become a full-time writer, taking up the Northern Arts Literary Fellowship in Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham in 1979–81.[2][3] Since then she has been a freelance writer, living in East Finchley, north London, a translator and poetry commentator for the BBC.[2][4]

Her first volume of poetry published in Britain was Tigers in 1967.[3]

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.[2]

Personal life

Adcock was married to two notable New Zealand literary personalities. In August 1952, she married Alistair Campbell (divorced 1958), and in February 1962 she married Barry Crump, divorcing in 1963. She has two sons, Gregory and Andrew. Her sister Marilyn Duckworth is a novelist.[2][3]

Poetry collections
  • 1964: The Eye of the Hurricane, Wellington: Reed[5]
  • 1967: Tigers, London: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1971: High Tide in the Garden, London: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1974: The Scenic Route, London and New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1979: The Inner Harbour, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1979: Below Loughrigg, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books[5]
  • 1983: Selected Poems, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1986: Hotspur: a ballad, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books[5] ISBN 978-1-85224-001-1
  • 1986: The Incident Book, Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1988: Meeting the Comet, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books[5]
  • 1991: Time-zones, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1997: Looking Back, Oxford and Auckland: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 2000: Poems 1960–2000, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books[5] ISBN 978-1-85224-530-6
  • 2010: Dragon Talk, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books [1] ISBN 978-1-85224-878-9
  • 2013: Glass Wings, Tarset: Bloodaxe Books and Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press.[6]
  • 2014: The Land Ballot, Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, Tarset: Bloodaxe Books.[6]
  • 2017: Hoard, Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, Hexham: Bloodaxe Books.[7]

Edited or translated
  • 1982: Editor, Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry, Auckland: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1983: Translator, The Virgin and the Nightingale: Medieval Latin poems, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books,[5] ISBN 978-0-906427-55-2
  • 1987: Editor, Faber Book of 20th Century Women's Poetry, London and Boston: Faber and Faber[5]
  • 1989: Translator, Orient Express: Poems. Grete Tartler, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1992: Translator, Letters from Darkness: Poems, Daniela Crasnaru, Oxford: Oxford University Press[5]
  • 1994: Translator and editor, Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, Cambridge, England, and New York: Cambridge University Press[5]
  • 1995: Editor (with Jacqueline Simms), The Oxford Book of Creatures, verse and prose anthology, Oxford: Oxford University Press[5]

Awards and honours

References
  1. Web page titled "Fleur Adcock" Archived 9 October 2009 at the Wayback Machine at the "British Council / Contemporary Writers in the UK website, accessed 26 April 2008
  2. "Adcock, Fleur – Postcolonial Studies". scholarblogs.emory.edu. 2014. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  3. Adcock, Fleur (1986). "A lifetime of writing". In Clark, Margaret (ed.). Beyond expectations: fourteen New Zealand women write about their lives. Wellington, N.Z: Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press. pp. 99–111. ISBN 978-0-86861-650-6. OCLC 1103883342.
  4. "Fleur Adcock | Biography, Poems, & Facts". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 8 May 2020.
  5. "Fleur Adcock" Archived 21 December 2006 at the Wayback Machine at the University of Auckland Library website, accessed 26 April 2008
  6. at The Poetry Library website, accessed 10 December 2016
  7. at The Poetry Library website, accessed 16 January 2018
  8. Fleur Adcock. "Current RSL Fellows". Royal Society of Literature. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  9. "No. 54256". The London Gazette (2nd supplement). 30 December 1995. p. 34.
  10. "Honorary graduates and Hunter fellowships. Victoria University of Wellington". www.wgtn.ac.nz. 5 March 2020. Retrieved 5 May 2020.
  11. "Queen's Birthday honours list 2008". Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet. 2 June 2008. Retrieved 1 February 2020.
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