Hoard

Hoard brings together poems Fleur Adcock had to keep under wraps for several years because they didn’t suit the themes of her last two collections, The Land Ballot and Glass Wings. They include reflections on the tools of her trade (handwriting, typewriters), snatches of autobiography (a brief, ill-considered second marriage followed by her migration from New Zealand to England in 1963), and poems on trees, wildlife and everyday objects. Ellen Wilkinson, who led the Jarrow March in 1936, makes two appearances, joining Coleridge, several ancestors and two dogs. The most recent poems in the book recall Adcock’s visits around the North Island of New Zealand in 2015, affirming her renewed although not uncritical affection for the country of her birth.