Fleur Adcock (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.

Life and career

Fleur Adcock; the oldest of two sisters; was born in Papakura by Cyril John Adcock and Irene Robinson Adcock. She spent eight (8) years in England. Marilyn Duckworth; her sibling is the novelist. Fleur Adcock studied Classics at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with an MA. 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 August 1952, she married Alistair Campbell (divorced 1958). Then in February 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.

Poetry collections

1964: The 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

1997: Looking Back, Oxford and Auckland: Oxford University Press

2000: Poems 1960–2000, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books ISBN 978-1-85224-530-6

2010: Dragon Talk, Newcastle upon Tyne: Bloodaxe Books  ISBN 978-1-85224-878-9

2013: Glass Wings, Tarset: Bloodaxe Books and Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press.

2014: The Land Ballot, Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, Tarset: Bloodaxe Books.

2017: Hoard, Wellington, NZ: Victoria University Press, Hexham: Bloodaxe Books.

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

Awards and honours

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
1984: Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
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.