In Praise and Memory of Fleur Adcock

In her poem ‘Weathering’, the New Zealand poet Fleur Adcock stands and admires the hills before her, and reflects on the inevitable change that this more rugged landscape will have on her appearance:

Literally thin-skinned, I suppose, my face
catches the wind off the snow-line and flushes
with a flush that will never wholly settle.

Away from ‘metropolitan vanity’, Adcock finds a calmer way of living within her body: one that is not defined by men ‘who need to be seen with passable women’, but instead with the weather and the wind and the ‘high pass’ visible beyond her window. To be ‘weather-beaten’, to have greying hair and chipped nails, is a fair bargain for living well, for being ‘thin-skinned’, as she puts it, to the world around her.

‘Weathering’, perhaps one of Adcock’s most well-known poems, has become an anthem for embracing change – and ageing  as an ever-constant. It speaks to a contentment between soul and body and explores how we live within – rather than separate – from the spaces we inhabit.  Yet the poem also says something about Adcock’s poetic approach more generally. There is a porosity there a willingness to take in and absorb, to ‘weather’ oneself through active engagement. She understood that to be a successful writer (although what success means remains undecided), one must be simultaneously thick- and thin-skinned. There must exist an openness – a capacity to listen and magpie and absorb – coupled with a ‘weathered’ resilience; an ability ...