After the appearance of Fleur Adcock's Poems 1960-2000 she wrote no more poems for several years. This cessation coincided with - but was not entirely caused by - her giving up smoking. When poetry returned to her in 2003 it tended towards a sparer, more concentrated style. This new collection continues to reflect her preoccupations with family matters and with her ambivalent feelings about her native New Zealand. Her initial inspiration was the letters her father wrote home from England to his parents during World War II, which evoked her own memories of that era. The central sequence moves from her first coming to consciousness in New Zealand up to and through the war years in Britain and on to sketches from her teens in puritanical postwar Wellington after her reluctant return - not without her usual sardonic eye for incongruities and absurdities. There are also affectionate poems for her grandchildren and her late mother.
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'It's a shock to realise that this is Adcock's first new collection for a decade; the pin-sharp voice of poems such as "Against Coupling", "Advice to a Discarded Lover" and "For a Five Year Old" is so essential and recognisable that it's difficult to know how we've done without it for 10 years. Inspired by the letters her father wrote from England, where he was stationed, to his parents in New Zealand during the second world war, this collection returns Adcock to familiar territory: the family, and her own complex feelings towards her native country' --- Sarah Crown, Guardian
About the Author
Born in New Zealand in 1934, Fleur Adcock spent the war years in England, returning with her family to New Zealand in 1947. She emigrated to Britain in 1963, working as a librarian in London until 1979. In 1977-78 she was writer-in-residence at Charlotte Mason College of Education, Ambleside. She was Northern Arts Literary Fellow in 1979-81, living in Newcastle, becoming a freelance writer after her return to London. She received an OBE in 1996, and the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2006 for Poems 1960-2000 (Bloodaxe, 2000). Fleur Adcock published three pamphlets with Bloodaxe: Below Loughrigg (1979), Hotspur (1986) and Meeting the Comet (1988), as well as her translations of medieval Latin lyrics, The Virgin & the Nightingale (1983). All her collections were then published by Oxford University Press until they shut down their poetry list in 1999, after which Bloodaxe published her collected poems Poems 1960-2000 (2000) followed by ten years later by Dragon Talk (2010).
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By Mr. Ian A. Macfarlane
TOP 100 REVIEWER
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A marvellous, thoroughly enjoyable book. The poems are all short, with the exception of the first, 'Dragon Talk' itself. Some are playful ; many have surprising or entertaining little twists at the end. The last group ('Next') include poems which are personal and autobiographical and two of these('That Butterfly', in memory of her mother, and 'Outside the Crematorium') are very moving. But all of these poems are the work of a master writer who knows exactly what she is doing. Highly recommended.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Well, I love Fleur too, so I feel I have to throw in my counterweight, particularly as Waterbaby admits both to loving her earlier work and that reviews are inevitably subjective. Yes, these are child's-eye-view but they also reflect the aged's procession back into, mulling over and seeking sustenance from those formative years, and the often unstated interplay between the next generation but one and one's own younger self. And I'm just so grateful for anything more from Fleur. Like Margaret Atwood she is fiercely intelligent but with a twinkle. See her read if (and while) you can
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By Waterbaby
Format:Paperback
I've always loved Fleur Adcock's poetry for its simple language and clarity of thought - seemingly ordinary words, showing us to something important or touching. Perhaps here, the poet is trying to use language as simple as a child's to describe childhood experiences. But without any of the gentle adult insight we expect from her, the poems fall far short of satisfying. Some - 'Lollies', 'Food', 'Glass' are short, plain descriptions and nothing more. Some even have an air of the spoof poet E J Thribb - glitterwax, apparently, was 'silky as poison, the plasticine of the gods. / Yet the world has decided to live without it.' Reviews are always subjective and other readers may find the collection much better than I did, but I would recommend her Collected Poems as a much better representation of her talents. Poems, 1960-2000
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