Fleur Adcock

Collected Poems

Publication Date : 10 Feb 2024

ISBN: 9781780376844

Pages: 65
Size :216 x 138mm
Rights: World

Winner of the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, 2006

Fleur Adcock (1934-2024) was one of Britain's most accomplished poets. Her poised, ironic poems are tense and tightly controlled as well as shrewdly laconic, and often chilling as she unmasks the deceptions of love or unravels family lives. Disarmingly conversational in style, they are remarkable for their psychological insight and their unsentimental, mischievously casual view of personal relationships.

Born in New Zealand, she explored questions of identity and rootedness throughout her work, both in relation to her personal allegiances to her native and adopted countries as well as her family history, whose long-dead characters she brings to life. She also wrote movingly of birth, death and bereavement, and has tackled political issues with honest indignation and caustic wit.

This first complete edition of her poetry was published on her 90th birthday, superseding her earlier retrospective, Poems 1960-2000, with the addition of five later collections published by Bloodaxe, Dragon Talk (2010), Glass Wings (2013), The Land Ballot (2015), Hoard (2017) and The Mermaid's Purse (2021), along with a gathering of 20 new poems. All her most celebrated poems are here, from the highly entertaining 'Against Coupling', 'Smokers For Celibacy' and 'The Prize-winning Poem' to modern classics such as 'The Ex-Queen Among the Astronomers' and 'Things'.

‘Fleur’s deceptively relaxed conversational style is often barbed with an oblique take on reality. As the poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy said: “The sharper edge of her talent is encountered like a razor blade in a peach.” Her poetry deals with life’s surprises and oddities, the unexpected or unexplained that can cut the ground from beneath your feet.’ – Janet Wilson, paying tribute to Fleur Adcock in The Guardian

'Fleur Adcock, the New Zealand-born poet, who has died aged 90, was one of the most celebrated and influential voices in British poetry … A poet of direct, often irreverent, observation and precise emotional intelligence rather than overdone, flowery epiphanies, Fleur Adcock converted her own memories and musings into deceptively artless poetry which seemed almost conversational, giving the reader a sense of familiarity that comes from shared assumptions and experiences.' – The Telegraph

‘Fleur Adcock began writing at a time when very few women poets were being published, and remained a pioneer, a champion and a role model, providing the inspiration for other women writers to follow. Her poems are witty, warm and conversational, welcoming the reader in.’ – Judith Palmer, Director of The Poetry Society

‘Her work was characterized by wit and powerful observation. She was a stalwart of the British poetry scene for many decades. Her writing remained clear-eyed and humorous even as she contemplated her own old age.’ – Samira Ahmed, paying tribute to Fleur Adcock on BBC Radio 4’s Front Row

‘Fleur Adcock’s Collected Poems is a vast treasure chest of vivid, memorable poetry. Opening it at almost any page I find strikingly original turns of phrase and thought or sophisticated plays on register […] The richness of the work expresses itself in Adcock’s ability to deploy very different writing styles with equal poise and precision […] Driving this linguistic virtuosity, giving it purpose, there are complementary intellectual and imaginative strengths.’ – Edmund Prestwich, London Grip

'Richness of memory is one of Adcock’s great gifts … The sounds, smells, tastes, and heightened reactions of childhood are presented with unfailing vividness ... It’s often words that travel down the years, like beads clasped on a string ... playful freedom, allowing the world to speak to us in all its myriad voices, is the keynote of this wonderful volume.' – Dorothy Yamamoto, ARTEMISpoetry, on Collected Poems

'One of the advantages about a collected edition is that it enables the reader to gain an insight into a poet’s development and to gauge the extent to which his or her style has changed over time. In the case of Adcock, the barometer has hardly moved at all: her work has been consistently good right from the start [...] The relaxed, conversational style that has become her hallmark over the years is a testament to the power of plain words when placed within a poetic context [...] This major retrospective of her work will be welcomed with enthusiasm by all who wish to study in depth the span of Adcock’s literary career.' – Neil Leadbeater, Write Out Loud

'This monumental Collected serves as a historical document – hundreds of snapshots, in the backgrounds of which pass millions of lives – as much as an artistic one, the sixty-year-long record of a piercing, curious mind. Adcock’s poems have the confidential feel of a private journal, all witty asides and wry observations, following her imagination into her ancestors’ past, her youth during the war, old loves and friendships. A book like this is a rare thing indeed, a life lived in poems.' – Dave Coates, Poetry Book Society Spring Bulletin 2024

‘Fleur Adcock may be about to turn 90, but – as her new Collected Poems shows – she’s still writing essential work. Originally from New Zealand, since settling in England in 1963 she has become one of the most celebrated, and quietly influential, voices in British poetry. Adcock writes with a rare lightness of touch, and a candour that’s often seen her labelled a confessional poet. “For a Five-Year-Old” is one of her earliest poems, but its careful balancing act of light and dark – warmth on the one hand, faintly shocking, self-critical humour on the other – sets the tone for her later writing.’ – Tristram Fane Saunders, The Telegraph (Poem of the Week)

'Adcock has a deceptively laid-back tone, through which the sharper edge of her talent is encountered like a razor blade in a peach.' – Carol Ann Duffy, The Guardian

'Adcock's reputation has been founded on her spare, conversational poems, in which the style is deceptively simple, apparently translucent…those who see in such poems only flatness are missing the power of a voice which teases both reader and subject.' – Jo Shapcott, TLS

'Informality and immediacy are good ways to remake a world; and Adcock’s style has not dated in the half-century since her debut.’ – Fiona Sampson, The Guardian

'Most of Fleur Adcock’s best poems have something to do with bed: she writes well about sex, very well about illness, and very well indeed about dreaming… Her imagination thrives on what threatens her peace of mind, and only when she is unguarded can these threats have their full creative effect. Hence the importance of bed: it is the place where the elegant artful barriers that she builds from day to day are most easily over-thrown… Throughout her writing life, she has made a fine art from holding on to principles of orderliness and good clear sense; but she has made an even finer one from loosening her grip on them.' – Andrew Motion, TLS

Fleur Adcock reads nine poems

Fleur Adcock reads nine poems from her Collected Poems: ‘The Video’, ‘For a Five-Year-Old’, ‘The Pangolin’, ‘An Illustration to Dante’, ‘Things’, Weathering’, ‘For Heidi with Blue Hair’, ‘Where They Lived’ and Counting’.. Pamela Robertson-Pearce filmed Fleur Adcock at her home in London on 29 June 2007. This film is from the DVD-anthology In Person: 30 Poets, filmed by Pamela Robertson-Pearce & edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe Books, 2008).

Fleur Adcock launches Collected Poems in Newcastle

Fleur Adcock read poems from her Collected Poems at Newcastle Poetry Festival in May 2024.

New Zealand & Australia: Click here to order the New Zealand edition from Te Herenga Waka University Press

Ireland: Click here to order from Books Upstairs in Dublin

USA: Click here to order from Indiebound or Bookshop.org

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ISBN: 9781780376837

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ISBN: 9781780376851

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ISBN: 9781780376844

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BOOKS BY Fleur Adcock

Fleur Adcock

Dragon Talk

Publication Date : 26 May 2010

Fleur Adcock

Glass Wings

Publication Date : 27 Jun 2013

Fleur Adcock

Hoard

Publication Date : 26 Oct 2017

Fleur Adcock

Poems 1960-2000

Publication Date : 27 Apr 2000

News & Publicity

Fleur Adcock (1934-2024)

We are immensely saddened by news of the death of Fleur Adcock, aged 90. Tributes in The Guardian, The Telegraph, online, and on BBC Radio. RSL Remembers tribute event...

Poetry Events

Fleur Adcock tribute event in London

RSL Remembers event in tribute to the late Fleur Adcock to be held at the London Library on Wednesday 19 February 2025, 6:30pm.

Fleur Adcock

Collected Poems

BOOKS BY Fleur Adcock

Dragon Talk

Glass Wings

Hoard

Poems 1960-2000

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Fleur Adcock (1934-2024)

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