Fleur Adcock has been honoured in the Queen’s Birthday honours today:
Expatriate poet Fleur Adcock is grateful to New Zealand for the affection it has shown her, despite her having lived in England since 1963. Ms Adcock was named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours today. ODT
Contemporary Authors has a good exploration of her work and career (including stints as an assistant librarian). She is currently considered a candidate for poet laureate of Great Britain.
Adcock … travels frequently to give readings and lectures … it is understood that her reader-friendly poetry has won her a lasting role in the history of British and New Zealand letters. According to John Greening, her poems “remain fresh because she rarely lapses into jargon.” Greening concluded: “[Adcock] is an insouciant elegist, celebrator of life’s sweet symmetry and its lewd gargoyles, one whose native senses flower because they are so deeply rooted in her dreams of elsewhere.”
See the full list of those honoured
