Expatriate poet Fleur Adcock is grateful to New Zealand for the affection it has shown her, despite her having lived in England since 1963.
Ms Adcock was named a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to literature in the Queen's Birthday Honours today.
"I'm very pleased to have it. It's very nice of them to offer it to me," she told NZPA.
Having been gone so long she said it was always strange to receive awards as a New Zealander, although she had strong family ties to the country.
"I've got a lot of descendants, I've got six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren so I'm getting more and more reattached to New Zealand over the years because of going back to see them."
Ms Adcock is a poet of international acclaim who frequently reviews New Zealand books in British journals.
A student at Victoria University from 1951-1955 she gained a Bachelor and Masters of Arts in Classics. Her first published poems were in the university's student newspaper Salient.
In 1984 Ms Adcock was awarded the New Zealand Book Award, the same year she was made a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. This was followed by an Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1996 and in 2006 Ms Adcock became only the second New Zealander to receive the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry.
She returned to England earlier this year after a two month stay in New Zealand after being awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Literature from her old university.
Ms Adcock said she was not sure where she would be accepting the latest accolade, but the New Zealand High Commissioner to Britain Derek Leask had offered to throw a party in London.
