Bloodaxe Books, paperback

Publication Date: May 7, 2024

Publisher Marketing: Fleur Adcock is one of Britain's most accomplished poets, unmasking the deceptions of love and unravelling family lives through her poised, ironic poems. This first complete edition of her poetry is published on her 90th birthday, and updates her earlier retrospective, Poems 1960-2000, with five later collections published by Bloodaxe, along with 20 new poems. Born in New Zealand, Fleur Adcock 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. All her most celebrated poems are here, from the highly entertaining 'Against Coupling', 'Smokers For Celibacy' and 'The Prize-Winning Poem' to modern classics such as 'The Ex-Queen Amongst the Astronomers' and 'Things'.