Fluer Adcock (1 Viewer)

[egg_]

New Zealand poet, lived in the UK most of her life. Anyone heard of her? She wrote Against Coupling and Kissing and that one about being kind to snails - some brilliant stuff, she's quite well-known, you'd find her in lots of poetry anthologies
Anyway was coming out of the library in Pearse St on Tuesday night and a woman says to me 'Do you know where Fleur Adcock is speaking?', turned out she was doing a reading and a public interview in the library so in I went. Twas deadly to see her in the flesh or rather hear her read some of her poems, even though, for some reason, they had an enormous amount of reverb on the mics (in a small room) which made her voice sound very unreal. The 'interview' was less worthwhile ... you know the expression 'he loves the sound of his own voice' and it's a figure of speech? Well, the interviewer really did seem to love the sound of his own voice, just to enjoy hearing himself talking, it was kind of off-putting, also he was very interested in showing how much homework he'd done, quoting various critics' comments on her work, which was very English-in-school and not very interesting
Still though, it's not every day you get to see a world-class poet in your local library, and it was free in

 

[egg_]

Shite
I can't believe I spelled her name wrong in the thread title
It's probably cos the Poetry Ireland guy who introduced her (in a stilted, boring and pointless speech) as 'Flewer'

 

[Alan Remorse]

i fucking HATE this woman's poetry

 

[egg_]

How could you hate this?

For a Five-Year-Old
By Fleur Adcock

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother
and we are kind to snails.

 

[Alan Remorse]

given half the chance a snail would eat you and everyone you care about