For Heidi With

Blue Hair
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

'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.

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.

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.

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.)

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 fulllength 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-the-week-fle

SIFT
The SIFT method to analyse and revise poems.

S
I
F

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 ( poets 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 poets purpose is in writing this poem? Adcocks 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 five-line
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 reassessment of their relationship, and concludes I have to write this
now, while youre 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
didnt love her; in another, the men whom I stopped loving, who
are cuddled up with their subsequent ladies.

http://
www.poetryarchive.org/poetryarchive/singlePoet.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
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