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Poet Fleur Adcock is to receive an honorary doctorate of literature from Victoria University.
Vice-Chancellor Pat Walsh said Adcock's "literary contribution in New Zealand, England and further afield could not be under-estimated".
"Fleur is unquestionably one of our finest expatriate writers. While she is best known for her poetry, she has also found success as translator, editor, musical collaborator and teacher."
Born in 1934, Adcock spent the war years growing up in England, returning to New Zealand in 1947. A student at Victoria from 1951-1955, she gained a bachelor (1954) and master of arts (1956) in classics.
Her first published poems appeared in the university's student newspaper, Salient, in 1952.
Adcock has had numerous books of poetry published as well as two collections, Selected Poems (1983) and Poems 1960-2000 (2000). In addition, she has been the editor of several anthologies, including The Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1982) and The Faber Book of 20th-Century Women's Poetry (1987).
Adcock first won recognition as a poet by winning the Festival of Wellington Poetry Award in 1961 and, although moving to England in 1963, she has continued to receive recognition and acclaim here and there.
In 1976, she was granted a Cholmondeley Award for Poets which recognised her achievement in, and contribution to, poetry.
She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 1984 and won an Arts Council Writers' Award four years later. This was followed by an Order of the British Empire in 1996 and being made an Honorary Fellow of the English Association in 2001.
Last year, Adcock was awarded the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry, only the second New Zealander to win the award, the late Allen Curnow being the first in 1989.
She will receive the doctorate at the university in Wellington on December 11.
- NZPA
