NEW DEPARTURES

Although the heightened activity in The Scenic Route confirms Adcock's ongoing acculturation to the northern hemisphere, her annus mirabilis came in 1979 with the publication of The Inner Harbour and Below Loughrigg. These mark significant developments: her first visit to New Zealand in 1975-6 after thirteen years; residencies in the Lake District (September 1977 to June 1978) as Arts Council Creative Writing Fellow at the Charlotte Mason College of Education in Ambleside, and in Newcastle (September 1979 to June 1981) as Northern Arts Literary Fellow at the universities of Newcastle and Durham.

Adcock's first journey ‘home’ established a ‘to and fro’ mode of existence of returning to New Zealand at least every two years. This return brought problems of ‘belonging’; she was treated as a celebrity, having aroused public curiosity about her life and work. Elements of the earlier claustrophobia resurfaced when she was ‘scorned as a Pom’ and accused of lacking allegiance to the country of her birth. New Zealand literary circles also reacted strongly to her exclusionary definition of nationality in her edition of The Oxford Book of Contemporary New Zealand Poetry (1982); she argued that writers (including herself) who chose to live abroad could not be called ‘New Zealand poets’. The residencies also had long-term repercussions: in 1979 Adcock resigned from her position in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library to become a full-time, free-lance writer. From now on she would live by judging poetry competitions, giving readings and talks, teaching on Arvon courses, writing, editing, and translating. She returned to her earlier interests in classical poetry, in 1983 publishing transla tions of medieval Latin lyrics, The Virgin and the Nightingale and in 1994, Hugh Primas and the Archpoet, an edition and translation of two twelfth-century ‘Goliardic’ poets, Hugh Primas of Orleans and the so-called Archpoet.

Adcock's growing reputation internationally as a poet also opened up new overseas connections: she visited Romania on writers’ exchange trips sponsored by the British Council in 1984, 1987 and 1990 and taught herself the language; friendships with several Romanian poets whose work was censored by the Ceausescu regime resulted in Orient Express, her translation of poems by Grete Tartler (1989) and Letters from Darkness, translations of poems by Daniela Crasnaru (1991) (TWIH, 162-64).