Description

Fleur Adcock began writing the poems in this book when she was 82. The two chief settings are New Zealand, with its multi-coloured seas, and Britain, seen in various decades. There are foreign travels, flirtations, family memories, deaths and conversations with the dead. Katherine Mansfield, incognito, dodges an academic conference; there’s a lesson in water divining as well as a rather unusual Christmas party. We meet several varieties of small mammal, numerous birds, doomed or otherwise, and some sheep. The book ends with a sequence in memory of her friend, the poet Roy Fisher.

Publisher Review

Informality and immediacy are vivid ways to remake a world; and Adcock's style has not dated in the half-century since her debut. -- Fiona Sampson * Guardian * Fleur Adcock's poetry is lauded for its composure and ease of delivery. Yet that sense of control...belies a more complicated history. -- Julian Stannard * Times Literary Supplement * Fleur Adcock is as clear-eyed as always in a collection that ranges widely over lost worlds, family histories ...but always maintains the art of seemingly artless observation. -- Adam Newey * Guardian * Adcock's reputation has been founded on her spare, conversational poems, in which the style is deceptively simple, apparently translucent...those who see in such poems only flatness are missing the power of a voice which teases both reader and subject. -- Jo Shapcott * Times Literary Supplement *