Adcock, Fleur (1934-…), a New Zealand-born poet, produced her first collection of poems in Wellington in 1964. Part of this collection, titled The Eye of the Hurricane, was republished in London in 1967 in Tigers. Other collections included In Focus (1977), The Incident Book (1986), and Time Zone (1991). Her Poems: 1960-2000 was published in 2000.
Adcock’s verse deals in an unsentimental style with personal, domestic, social, and political issues. The Incident Book embraces a series of vivid poems on subjects including childhood and men. In Time Zone, some of the poems deal with political matters of the day, including the Romanian revolution of 1989, and environmental and antinuclear issues. Adcock served as editor of The Oxford Book of New Zealand Poetry (1982) and The Faber Book of Twentieth Century Women’s Poetry (1987). She has also translated medieval and Latin poetry into English.
Kareen Fleur Adcock was born on Feb. 10, 1934, in Papakura, Auckland, New Zealand. She was educated in England and studied classics at Victoria University College (now Victoria University of Wellington) in New Zealand. She worked as a schoolteacher and librarian in New Zealand from 1958 to 1963. In 1963, she returned permanently to the United Kingdom and took a post as assistant librarian in the library of the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Office. In 1979, she gave up this job and became a full-time writer.
