This book includes all the poems from Fleur Adcock’s Selected Poems (Oxford University Press, 1983), which drew upon her earlier OUP collections, Tigers (1967), High Tide in the Garden (1971), The Scenic Route (1974) and The Inner Harbour (1979), and Below Loughrigg (Bloodaxe Books, 1979), as well as all the poems from her three later OUP collections, The Incident Book (1986), Time-Zones (1991) and Looking Back (1997). It also includes the text of Hotspur, a ballad for music by Gillian Whitehead, originally published with monoprints by Gretchen Albrecht (Bloodaxe Books, 1986), and Meeting the Comet (Bloodaxe Books, 1988).
Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following publications in which some of the previously uncollected poems in the New Poems section first appeared: Landfall, Last Words (Picador, 1999), Poetry Ireland, Poetry Review and Salt. ‘A Visiting Angel’ was commissioned by Salisbury Festival for the Last Words project in 1999. Fleur Adcock wishes to thank Royal Parks Enterprises and the staff of Kensington Gardens for a Poetry Placement in the summer of 1999.