A present absence: Fleur Adcock today

This is an introduction to a group of three articles on the poetry of Fleur Adcock. It reviews Adcock’s career as a diasporic poet who left New Zealand in 1963 to make a life in the UK, and for whom a sense of division between two countries has been pervasive. Her explorations of places, journeys and ethnicities by which she mediates her sense of dual belonging have led to forms of reconciliation traceable in poetry written over the last six decades. These reflections on Adcock’s diasporic trajectory frame the brief introduction to the three articles that focus on: humour in her work, her participation in meetings of the Group in the 1960s, and her relationship with her father as revealed in her poetry.