Fleur Adcock--whose name comes from John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga (1906-1922)--has turned the events of her own life to literary account in volume after volume of short, evenly pitched lyric poetry. The subjects of her mature work--love, motherhood, home, friendship, separation, solitude, travel, art, nature--come for the most part straight from her immediate experience, though she has written memorable poem drawing upon dream, myth, and the imagined lives of others. Having begun to compose poetry in the traditional forms and having been trained as a classicist, Adcock is always deeply aware of tradition; but she is also at ease with free verse and by her own account prefers it for occasions of high poetic intensity. Her characteristic voice is clear, controlled, thoughtful, richly descriptive, entertainingly ironic; it is unafraid of a complexly constructed sentence; it never rants; it is never obscure.

Kareen Fleur Adcock was born in Papakura...