Poems 1960-2000

by Fleur Adcock

Overview

Fleur Adcock is 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 has 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 has also written movingly of birth, death and bereavement, and has tackled political issues with honest indignation and caustic wit. This first Collected edition of her poetry replaces her "Selected Poems", with the addition of work from her later Oxford collections "The Incident Book", "Time-Zones" and "Looking Back". It does not cover her later collection "Dragon
Talk" (2010).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781780370040
Publisher:	Bloodaxe Books
Publication date:	07/21/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	807 KB
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Fleur Adcock writes about men and women, childhood, identity, roots and rootlessness, memory and loss, animals and dreams, as well as our interactions with nature and place. Her poised, ironic poems are remarkable for their wry wit, conversational tone and psychological insight, unmasking the deceptions of love or unravelling family lives. Born in New Zealand in 1934, she 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 Books, 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). She also published two translations of Romanian poets with Oxford UniversityPress, Orient Express by Grete Tartler (1989) and Letters from Darkness by Daniela Crasnaru (1994). All her other collections were published by Oxford UniversityPress until they shut down their poetry list in 1999, after which Bloodaxe published her collected poems Poems 1960-2000 (2000), followed by Dragon Talk (2010), Glass Wings (2013), The Land Ballot (2015), Hoard (2017) and The Mermaid's Purse (2021). Poems 1960-2000 and Hoard are Poetry Book Society Special Commendations while Glass Wings is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. In October 2019 Fleur Adcock was presented with the New Zealand Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry 2019 by the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern.

Table of Contents

	Early Poems From: The Eye of the Hurricane (1964) and Tigers (1967)
	Note on Propertius	14
	Flight, with Mountains	15
	Beauty Abroad	17
	Knife-play	18
	Instructions to Vampires	19
	Incident	19
	Unexpected Visit	20
	For Andrew	21
	For a Five-Year-Old	21
	Comment	22
	Miss Hamilton in London	22
	The Man Who X-Rayed an Orange	23
	Composition for Words and Paint	24
	Regression	25
	I Ride on My High Bicycle	26
	Parting Is Such Sweet Sorrow	27
	Hauntings	28
	Advice to a Discarded Lover	29
	The Water Below	30
	Think Before You Shoot	31
	The Pangolin	32
	High Tide in the Garden (1971)
	A Game	34
	Bogyman	35
	Clarendon Whatmough	36
	A Surprise in the Peninsula	38
	Purple Shining Lilies	39
	Afterwards	40
	Happy Ending	40
	Being Blind	41
	Grandma	42
	Ngauranga Gorge Hill	43
	Stewart Island	44
	On a Son Returned to New Zealand	44
	Saturday	45
	Trees	47
	Country Station	48
	The Three-toed Sloth	49
	Against Coupling	49
	Mornings After	50
	Gas	52
	The Scenic Route (1974)
	The Bullaun	60
	Please Identify Yourself	61
	Richey	62
	The Voyage Out	62
	Train from the Hook of Holland	63
	Nelia	64
	Moa Point	64
	Briddes	65
	The Famous Traitor	65
	Script	66
	In Memoriam: James K. Baxter	68
	St John's School	69
	Pupation	70
	The Drought Breaks	70
	Kilpeck	71
	Feverish	72
	Folie a Deux	73
	Acris Hiems	74
	December Morning	75
	Showcase	76
	Over the Edge	76
	The Net	77
	An Illustration to Dante	77
	Tokens	77
	Naxal	78
	Bodnath	79
	External Service	80
	Flying Back	80
	Near Creeslough	81
	Kilmacrenan	82
	Glenshane	82
	The Inner Harbour (1979)
	Beginnings
	Future Work	84
	Our Trip to the Federation	85
	Mr Morrison	86
	Things	87
	A Way Out	87
	Prelude	88
	Accidental	89
	A Message	89
	Proposal for a Survey	90
	Fairy-tale	92
	At the Creative Writing Course	92
	The Ex-Queen Among the Astronomers	93
	Off the Track	94
	Beaux Yeux	94
	Send-off	95
	In Focus	95
	Letter from Highgate Wood	96
	Poem Ended by a Death	97
	Having No Mind for the Same Poem	98
	Syringa	99
	The Thing Itself
	Dry Spell	100
	Visited	100
	The Soho Hospital for Women	101
	Variations on a Theme of Horace	103
	A Walk in the Snow	105
	A Day in October	105
	House-talk	107
	Foreigner	107
	In the Dingle Peninsula	108
	In the Terai	108
	River	109
	To and Fro
	The Inner Harbour	110
	Immigrant	111
	Settlers	112
	Going Back	113
	Instead of an Interview	115
	Londoner	116
	To Marilyn from London	116
	Below Loughrigg (1979)
	Below Loughrigg	118
	Three Rainbows in One Morning	119
	Binoculars	119
	Paths	120
	Mid-point	120
	The Spirit of the Place	121
	The Vale of Grasmere	121
	Letter to Alistair Campbell	122
	Declensions	123
	Weathering	124
	Going Out from Ambleside	124
	Selected Poems (1983)
	In the Unicorn, Ambleside	128
	Downstream	128
	The Hillside	129
	This Ungentle Music	129
	The Ring	130
	Corrosion	130
	4 May 1979	131
	Madmen	131
	Shakespeare's Hotspur	132
	Nature Table	132
	Revision	133
	Influenza	134
	Crab	135
	Eclipse	135
	On the Border	136
	The Prize-winning Poem	136
	An Emblem	137
	Piano Concerto in E Flat Major	138
	Villa Isola Bella	139
	Lantern Slides	140
	Dreaming	141
	Street Song	142
	Across the Moor	142
	Bethan and Bethany	143
	Blue Glass	143
	Mary Magdalene and the Birds	145
	Hotspur (1986)
	Hotspur	148
	Notes	153
	The Incident Book (1986)
	Uniunea Scriitorilor	156
	Leaving the Tate	156
	The Bedroom Window	157
	The Chiffonier	158
	Tadpoles	159
	For Heidi with Blue Hair	161
	The Keepsake	162
	England's Glory	163
	The Genius of Surrey	164
	Loving Hitler	165
	Schools
	Halfway Street, Sidcup	166
	St Gertrude's, Sidcup	166
	Scalford School	166
	Salfords, Surrey	167
	Outwood	168
	On the School Bus	169
	Earlswood	169
	Scalford Again	170
	Neston	170
	Chippenham	171
	Tunbridge Wells	172
	The High Tree	173
	Telling Tales
	Drowning	174
	'Personal Poem'	175
	An Epitaph	176
	Being Taken from the Place	176
	Accidents	177
	On the Land	177
	Icon	178
	Drawings	179
	The Telephone Call	179
	Incidentals
	Excavations	181
	Pastoral	182
	Kissing	182
	Double-take	183
	Choices	184
	Thatcherland
	Street Scene, London N2	185
	Gentlemen's Hairdressers	186
	Post Office	187
	Demonstration	188
	Witnesses	189
	Last Song	190
	Time-Zones (1991)
	Counting	192
	Libya	193
	What May Happen	193
	My Father	194
	Cattle in Mist	195
	Toads	196
	Under the Lawn	197
	Wren Song	198
	Next Door	199
	Heliopsis Scabra	200
	House-martins	200
	Wildlife	201
	Turnip-heads	202
	The Batterer	203
	Roles	203
	Happiness	204
	Coupling	204
	The Greenhouse Effect	204
	The Last Moa	205
	Creosote	206
	Central Time	206
	The Breakfast Program	208
	From the Demolition Zone	209
	On the Way to the Castle	210
	Romania	211
	Causes
	The Farm	212
	Aluminium	213
	A Hymn to Friendship	214
	Smokers for Celibacy	215
	Mrs Fraser's Frenzy	217
	Meeting the Comet	222
	Looking Back (1997)
I
	Where They Lived	234
	Framed	234
	The Russian War	235
	227 Peel Green Road	236
	Nellie	237
	Mary Derry	238
	Moses Lambert: the Facts	240
	Samuel Joynson	240
	Amelia	241
	Barber	242
	Flames	242
	Water	243
	A Haunting	243
	The Wars	244
	Sub Sepibus	245
	Anne Welby	246
	Beanfield	247
	Ancestor to Devotee	247
	Frances	248
	At Great Hampden	250
	At Baddesley Clinton	251
	Traitors	252
	Swings and Roundabouts	254
	Peter Wentworth in Heaven	255
	Notes	256
II
	Tongue Sandwiches	257
	The Pilgrim Fathers	258
	Paremata	259
	Camping	259
	Bed and Breakfast	260
	Rats	261
	Stockings	261
	A Political Kiss	262
	An Apology	262
	Festschrift	263
	Offerings	263
	Danger: Swimming and Boating Prohibited	264
	Risks	265
	Blue Footprints in the Snow	265
	Summer in Bucharest	266
	Moneymore	267
	The Voices	267
	Willow Creek	268
	Giggling	269
	Trio	269
	The Video	270
	New Poems (2000)
	Easter	272
	High Society	272
	For Meg	273
	A Visiting Angel	274
	It's Done This	275
	Kensington Gardens	276
	Index of Titles and First Lines	281