FLEUR ADCOCK

1934 - 2024

Fleur Adcock, who died recently aged 90, was a ‘grande dame’ of literature – perhaps even (like Maggie Smith who died a few weeks earlier) a ‘national treasure.’ I use such terms with my tongue in my cheek, as I am sure Adcock would have managed to debunk any claim made about her status and legacy; she was not a poet, or a person, who stood on ceremony. But, like other national treasures, she had a way of getting under your skin so that you felt at home with her, in that slightly creepy para-social way we have with great artists we have never actually met.

I think this was due in part to the unboundaried approach to her subject matter. Whether eulogizing masturbation in the bath while the veg cooked, considering drying between her toes, celebrating family and friends, lamenting the plight of animals on the at risk list, or reminiscing about parties with fellow poets, she brought sharp insight, a wicked sense of humour, and tenderness to her subjects.

Her legacy is, by any standards, immense – twenty poetry collections, including Selected and Collected, alongside edited volumes and translations. Her reach spanned the globe, from the New Zealand of her birth, via the Northern Ireland of her ancestry, to her time in London (where she died). Reading recent collections one can see an increasing focus on her interest in her heritage and cultural identity. She was as open-eyed and frank about the losses incurred by aging: her sequence of poems dedicated to Roy Fisher (who died in 2017), tells us that her ‘target’

is mouldy old Death, who keeps grabbing my friends.

Playful as ever, among the previously unpublished poems in her Collected Poems of this year, Adcock celebrates life, and explains that on the eve of her 89^th birthday she intends

a practice run –

… along with my fellow funambulists,

into the storms of my ninetieth year. 

We can only be angry with ‘mouldy old Death’; and a sense of relief that Bloodaxe captured what were among her last poems to be written. Wherever she is now, I bet there is a party going on.

Hannah Stone

Hannah Stone is the author of Lodestone (Stairwell Books, 2016), Missing Miles (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2017), Swn y Morloi (Maytree Press, 2019) and several collaborations, including Fit to Bust with Pamela Scobie (Runcible Spoon, 2020). She convenes the poets/composers forum for Leeds Leider, curates Nowt but Verse for Leeds Library, is poet theologian in Virtual Residence for Leeds Church Institute and editor of the literary journal Dream Catcher. Contact her on hannahstone14@hotmail.com for readings, workshops or book purchases.