Obituary: Leading New Zealand poet Fleur Adcock dies

By RNZ

One of New Zealand’s finest poets has died at the age of 90.

Fleur Adcock, the older sister of the novelist Marilyn Duckworth, spent much of her childhood in England, until the family returned to New Zealand in 1947 when she was 13.

At 18, she married fellow poet Alistair Te Ariki Campbell while studying at Victoria University. A second marriage to the writer Barry Crump lasted only five months and Adcock moved to Britain, never to live again in New Zealand, although she came back often to give readings and visit her family.

NZ poet Fleur Adcock. Photo / Peter Meecham

She worked for 15 years as a librarian before becoming a freelance writer based in London.

After her first collection The Eye of the Hurricane came out in 1964, Adcock went on to publish 16 other volumes of verse, including Hoard in 2017.

Renowned Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy said of her style: “Adcock has a deceptively laid-back tone, through which the sharper edge of her talent is encountered like a razor blade in a peach.”

She marked her 85th birthday in 2019 with the publication of Collected Poems. At the time, she told Kim Hill on RNZ’s Saturday Morning the size of the collection confirmed she had “suddenly became embarrassingly prolific”.

An expanded edition of Collected Poems was published by Te Herenga Waka University Press in February 2024.

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