Fleur Adcock
For Heidi With Blue Hair
When you dyed your hair blue
(or, at least ultramarine
for the clipped sides, with a crest
of jet-black spikes on top)
you were sent home from school
because, as the headmistress put it,
although dyed hair was not
specifically forbidden, yours
was, apart from anything else,
not done in the school colours.
Tears in the kitchen, telephone-calls
to school from your freedom-loving
father:
'She's not a punk in her behaviour;
it's just a style.' (You wiped your
eyes,
also not in a school colour.)
'She discussed it with me first we checked the rules.' 'And
anyway, Dad,
it cost twenty-five dollars.
Tell them it won't wash out not even if I wanted to try.
It would have been unfair to mention
your mother's death, but that
shimmered behind the arguments.
The school had nothing else
against you;
the teachers twittered and gave in.
Next day your black friend had hers
done
in grey, white and flaxen yellow the school colours precisely:
an act of solidarity, a witty
tease. The battle was already won.
Background and Biography
Poet Fleur Adcock was born in Auckland, New Zealand, on 10 February
1934, but spent much of her childhood, including the war years, in
England. She studied Classics at Victoria University in Wellington
and taught at the University of Otago, moving to London in 1963
where she worked as a librarian at the Foreign and Commonwealth
Office. She has held various literary fellowships, including a period
at the Charlotte Mason College of Education, Ambleside (1977-78).
Later she held the Northern Arts Fellowship at the Universities of
Newcastle upon Tyne and Durham (1979-81), where she met the
composer Gillian Whitehead with whom she collaborated on a song
cycle libretto and later a full-length opera about Eleanor of
Aquitaine. In 1984 she was Writing Fellow at the University of East
Anglia. She has been writing full-time since 1981.
Her poetry has received numerous awards, many of them from her native New
Zealand, and she won a Cholmondeley Award in 1976. She was awarded an OBE in
1996.
A collected edition of Fleur Adcock's poetry, Poems 1960-2000, was published in
2000, and she is a regular contributor to, as well as editor and translator of, poetry
anthologies. She was awarded the Queen's Medal for Poetry in 2006, and in 2008 was
named Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature.
Her latest poetry collection is Dragon Talk
(2010). http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/oct/20/poem-of-theweek-fleur-adcock
The SIFT method to analyse and revise poems.
pecify the subject matter and sense of the poem through a brief
summary
nform us of the intention of the poet and his/her main ideas
overall
ocus on the form ( structure/punctuation) and the feelings
conveyed ( poet’s attitude/tone used) and how this highlights the
main ideas
ell us about the techniques, imagery and poetic language that show
the ways ideas are presented
Questions to analyse the poem.
 Write a brief summary of the poem, who and what is the subject of this poem?
 What do you think the poet’s purpose is in writing this poem? Adcock’s
intentions seem to be ….
 The poem is written in free verse in a narrative style, as if a story is being told,
how does the structure and punctuation reflect this? (look at caesura,
enjambment, commas, full stops, semi colons and other punctuation).
 Adcock undermines poetic structural convention by loosely forming her fiveline stanzas – how might this form reinforce an important idea in her poem?
 How are teachers and the headmistress made to sound ridiculous?
 Explain the tone of voice of the poet? What moods and feelings do you
recognise and how can you tell?
 How does the tone of voice / feelings of the poet highlight the themes or main
ideas (social institutions and boundaries, family and friend relationships) in
the poem?
 Identify figurative language features, imagery (colour), sound devices such as
alliteration ‘teachers twittered’, symbolic devices which all present Adcocks
views on social boundaries, rebelliousness, friendship, home life and social
institutions (school).
 How is the ‘rebel’ in the poem made to sound vulnerable? How is she
supported?
 Who or what is this ‘battle’ being fought against?
Analysis - surface
For Heidi with Blue Hair presents us with a central image
of a child sent home from school for dyeing her hair
blue. As the narrative develops, we find ourselves
confronted not just with an amusing story, but also
with a quiet knocking of social boundaries. Adcock
manages to gently bring together issues of friendship,
solidarity, home life, and social institutions under the
guise of a minor event. Her language is full of precision
and control, and she exudes a distinctive air of
knowingness. It isn't hard to guess whose side she is on.
Analysis - deeper
Over the years, her poetic manner has generally moved from the
formal to a looser conversational mode. In keeping with this has
come a much warmer vein, especially in writing about her family,
divided as they are between countries and cultures. The Incident
Book (1986) contains some of her most quietly moving poems.
‘The Chiffonier’, for instance, about a piece of furniture promised
by her ‘dear little Mother’, becomes a meditation on mortality
and a re-assessment of their relationship, and concludes ‘I have
to write this now, while you’re still here: / I want my mother, not
her chiffonier’. She now writes about being a grandmother
herself (‘Tadpoles’), able to sympathize with a wayward niece
(‘For Heidi with Blue Hair’). Other poems return to her wartime
childhood self in England, with her little sister - the novelist
Marilyn Duckworth. Only in ‘Excavations’ do we find a bitter
note. In this sardonic fantasy, the speaker finds the previous men
in her life buried in holes and covered up with earth. In one,
there are the ‘pretty bastards’ who didn’t love her; in another, ‘the
men whom I stopped loving’, who are ‘cuddled up with their
subsequent ladies’.
http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singl
ePoet.do?poetId=75 Recordings of other poems
Fleur Adcock (b.1934) is a New Zealander by birth but spent part of her childhood in England,
returning to live in London in 1963. She worked as a librarian until 1979 before becoming a
freelance writer. She is the author of ten books of poetry and a collected edition of her work,
Poems 1960-2000, was published by Bloodaxe in 2000. Recipient of a Cholmondeley Award in 1976
and a New Zealand National Book Award in 1984, she was awarded an OBE in 1996.
The influence of Fleur Adcock's migratory childhood can be traced in her work's exploration of
identity. In her poem 'Immigrant' this is specifically an issue of voice as she practices her newly
adopted English accent. Several of the poems here examine roots and rootlessness: as she puts it
in 'Chippenham', a poem recalling her status as the odd one out in an English classroom, "Who
did I think/I was . . .?" Identity is also an issue of gender: in 'The Russian War' a returning uncle
claims he'll "be a thing called oral history" but Adcock is acutely aware of those female ancestors
whose stories have disappeared, like the silent labouring woman in 'Water'. Her poems often
bring to light women's lives that might otherwise be marginalised or forgotten, as in the poignant
vignettes of suffering in 'The Soho Hospital for Women'. However, her poems have no air of
stridency: her characteristic tone is restrained, rational, conversational. Adcock herself has talked
about this poetic strategy: "The tone I feel at home in is one in which I can address people without
embarrassing them; I should like them to relax and listen as if to an intimate conversation". ('Not
Quite a Statement', Strong Words, Bloodaxe Books, 2000).
Certainly this quality of intimacy is to the fore in her Archive recording. Her reading voice is clear
and distinct, striking the consonants with precision and just the faintest hint of her original
accent. A particular pleasure are her generous explanations of the poems and the insights she
gives into her creative process: apparently "the bath is a very good place for getting inspiration."
Compare with…
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Childhood by Frances Cornford
My Parents by Stephen Spender
Praise Song for My Mother by Grace Nichols
Follower by Seamus Heaney
Country School by Allen Curnow
And further reading …
www.poemhunter.com/fleur-adcock
www.contemporarywriters.com/authors/?p=auth161
Homework
 Compare “Heidi” with “Childhood” – use a similarities
/ differences table to record your notes. Focus on
techniques, tone, speaker, form, structure and ideas.
Similarities
Differences