Martyn Crucefix (born 1956 in Trowbridge, Wiltshire) is a British poet, translator and reviewer. Published predominantly by

Enitharmon Press Enitharmon Press is an independent British publishing house specialising in artists’ books, poetry, limited editions and original prints. The name of the press comes from the poetry of William Blake: Enitharmon was a character who represented ...

, his work ranges widely from vivid and tender lyrics to writing that pushes the boundaries of the extended narrative poem. His themes encompass questions of history and identity (particularly in the 1997 collection ''A Madder Ghost)'' and – influenced by his translations of

Rainer Maria Rilke René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke (4 December 1875 – 29 December 1926), shortened to Rainer Maria Rilke (), was an Austrian poet and novelist. He has been acclaimed as an idiosyncratic and expressive poet, and is widely recogni ...

– more recent work focuses on the transformations of imagination and momentary epiphanies. His new translation of Rilke's ''Sonnets to Orpheus'' was published by Enitharmon in the autumn of 2012. Most recent publication is ''The Time We Turned'' published by Shearsman Books in 2014.

Life

Crucefix attended Trowbridge Boys' High School, then spent a year studying medicine at Guy's Hospital Medical School, before switching to take a degree in English literature at

Lancaster University Lancaster University (legally The University of Lancaster) is a public university, public research university in Lancaster, Lancashire, Lancaster, Lancashire, England. The university was established in 1964 by royal charter, as one of several pla ...

. He completed a D.Phil. at

Worcester College, Oxford Worcester College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. The college was founded in 1714 by the benefaction of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2nd Baronet (1648–1701) of Norgrove, Worcestershire, whose coat of arms w ...

, writing on the poetry of

Percy Bysshe Shelley Percy Bysshe Shelley ( ; 4 August 17928 July 1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets. A radical in his poetry as well as in his political and social views, Shelley did not achieve fame during his lifetime, but recognition of his achie ...

and Enlightenment and Romantic theories of language. He teaches in North London and is married to Louise Tulip. They have two children.

Poetry

Crucefix has won numerous prizes including an

Eric Gregory Award The Eric Gregory Award is a literary award given annually by the Society of Authors for a collection by British poets under the age of 30. The award was founded in 1960 by Dr. Eric Gregory to support and encourage young poets. In 2021, the seven ...

and a Hawthornden Fellowship. He has published 6 original collections: ''Beneath Tremendous Rain'' (Enitharmon, 1990); ''At the Mountjoy Hotel'' (Enitharmon, 1993); ''On Whistler Mountain'' ( Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994); ''A Madder Ghost'' (Enitharmon, 1997); ''An English Nazareth'' (Enitharmon, 2004); ''Hurt'' (Enitharmon, 2010). His translation of

's ''Duino Elegies'' (Enitharmon, 2006) was shortlisted for the 2007

Popescu Prize The Popescu Prize is a biennial poetry award established in 1983.Popescu Prize
, official w ...

for European Poetry Translation and hailed as "unlikely to be bettered for very many years" (Magma) and by the Popescu judges as "a milestone of translation and a landmark in European poetry". An early selection of Crucefix's work secured an Eric Gregory Award in 1984 and appeared in ''The Gregory Poems: The Best of the Young British Poets 1983–84'', edited and chosen by John Fuller and

Howard Sergeant Herbert (Howard) Sergeant MBE (1914–1987) was a poet and editor from Hull and the publisher of Britain's oldest independent poetry magazine ''Outposts''. He was appointed MBE in 1978 for services to literature. He edited nearly 60 antholog ...

. His first book, ''Beneath Tremendous Rain'' (Enitharmon, 1990) was published two years after he had been featured by Peter Forbes in a ‘New British Poets’ edition of ''Poetry Review''. This collection contains his elegy for his friend, the poet and food writer, Jeremy Round, as well as the four part poem 'Water Music' and an extended meditation on language, love and history titled 'Rosetta'. For Herbert Lomas the book showed "Great intelligence and subtlety . . . clearly an outstanding talent from whom great things can be expected".

Anne Stevenson Anne Stevenson (January 3, 1933 – September 14, 2020) was an American-British poet and writer and recipient of a Lannan Literary Award. Life Stevenson was the first daughter of Louise Destler Stevenson and philosopher Charles Stevenson and w ...

wrote: "Poetry these days, often feels obliged to place conscience over art and make language work for precision, not complexity. In Martyn Crucefix's first collection, something else happens . . . daring to break with secular convention, Crucefix will become a real artist". During a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1990, Crucefix completed the long poem, ‘At The Mountjoy Hotel’, which went on to win second prize in the Arvon Poetry Competition 1991 (the poem was approvingly judged “controversial” by

Selima Hill Selima Hill (born 13 October 1945) is a British poet. She has published twenty poetry collections since 1984. Her 1997 collection, ''Violet'', was shortlisted for the most important British poetry awards: the Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry ...

, one of the selection panel that also included

Andrew Motion Sir Andrew Motion (born 26 October 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive, an online resource of poems and audio reco ...

) and was published as a short-run pamphlet by Enitharmon in 1993. It was also included in Crucefix's second collection, ''On Whistler Mountain'' (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994), opening the book which also contained a second long narrative poem, 'On Whistler Mountain'. This second piece carries the dates New Year 1991 – New Year 1993 and splices putative personal events with material from the

First Gulf War The Gulf War was a 1990–1991 armed campaign waged by a 35-country military coalition in response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Spearheaded by the United States, the coalition's efforts against Iraq were carried out in two key phases: ...

, in particular the 'turkey-shoot' of the US air attack on Iraqi forces on the highway north of Al Jahra.

Tony Harrison Tony Harrison (born 30 April 1937) is an English poet, translator and playwright. He was born in Beeston, Leeds and he received his education in Classics from Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University. He is one of Britain's foremost verse w ...

's poem 'A Cold Coming' (1991) refers to the same incident. ''Poetry Review'' thought the book proved Crucefix "one of the most mature voices of the 1990s" and it was praised by

Tim Liardet Tim Liardet is a poet twice nominated for the T.S. Eliot Prize, a critic, and Professor of Poetry at Bath Spa University. He was born in London in 1949, and has produced eleven collections of poetry to date. Biography ''Clay Hill'', his first ...

: "Crucefix is at his best, bringing physical truths faithfully into an intense focus whilst remaining alive to their more outlandish implications, their capacity for dream-making . . . . tendering poems of love and desire with great delicacy of gesture and movement . . . blending an earthy sensuality with fine cerebral observation".

Alan Brownjohn Alan Charles Brownjohn (born 28 July 1931) is an English poet and novelist. He has also worked as a teacher, lecturer, critic and broadcaster. Life and work Alan Brownjohn was born in London and educated at Merton College, Oxford. He taught in ...

, writing in

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

wrote of it as a "substantial and rewarding collection . . . highly wrought, ambitious, thoughtful". A third collection, ''A Madder Ghost'' (Enitharmon, 1997), drew on material unearthed in genealogical research ten years earlier. This had revealed that Crucefix's ancestors to be of

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

origins, fleeing France in the 1780s to settle in

Spitalfields Spitalfields is a district in the East End of London and within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The area is formed around Commercial Street (on the A1202 London Inner Ring Road) and includes the locale around Brick Lane, Christ Church, ...

, London, to continue the family trade of clock-making. The book's tripartite structure opens and closes with sequences of fluent, lightly punctuated lyrics in which he explores the anxieties and anticipated pleasures of fatherhood, from conception through the first year of his son's life. Genealogical material forms the middle section and looks to the past for identity, continuity and new ways of understanding the present in a ''tour de force'' of narrative interweaving that Vrona Groarke described as "a brave experiment . . . allowing two languages distanced by history and syntax, to swim together in single poems". The book was praised by

: "It is rare these days to find a book of poems that is so focused, so carefully shaped and so moving". Kathryn Maris also praised it as "urgent, heartfelt, controlled and masterful" and

Gillian Allnutt Gillian Allnutt (born 15 January 1949 in London) is an English poet, author of 9 collections and recipient of several prizes including the 2016 Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. Life Allnutt was born in London, but was educated at La Sagesse Schoo ...

thought the poems timely in their engagement with "proactive fatherhood" in ways that were "tender, humorous and . . . profound".

Original Poetry Collections

* Between a Drowning Man (2023, Salt Publishing) * Cargo of Limbs (2019, Hercules Editions) * The Lovely Disciplines (2017, Seren Books) * O. at the Edge of the Gorge (2017, Guillemot Press) * A Convoy (2017, If a Leaf Falls Press) * A Hatfield Mass (2014, Worple Press) * The Time We Turned (2014, Shearsman Books) * Hurt (2010, Enitharmon Press) * An English Nazareth (2004, Enitharmon Press) * A Madder Ghost (1997, Enitharmon Press) * On Whistler Mountain (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994) * At The Mountjoy Hotel (1993, Enitharmon Press) * Beneath Tremendous Rain (1990, Enitharmon Press)

Translations

* These Numbered Days, poems by Peter Huchel (Shearsman Books, 2019): translation * Daodejing – a new version in English (2016, Enitharmon Press): translation * Rilke's ‘Sonnets to Orpheus’(2012, Enitharmon Press): translation * Rilke's ‘Duino Elegies’ (2006, Enitharmon Press): translation

Poems on the web

* Audio Recording made at The South Bank Centre in 2012. * Two poems from 'Essays in Island Logic' (from ''Hurt'') * Three poems from 'Essays in Island Logic' (from ''Hurt'') with accompanying essay * 'He considers what the young have to teach' (from ''Hurt'') * 'Water-lily' (from ''Hurt'') * 'While There is War' (with audio) (from ''Hurt'') * 'Growth of a poet's mind' (from ''Hurt'') * 'Invocation' (from ''Hurt'') * 'Ivy tunnel at Kenwood' (uncollected) * 'Road' (uncollected) * 'On foot' (uncollected) * 'La Bastide-de-Bousignac' and 'Morning Song' (uncollected) * 'Tortoise' (from ''An English Nazareth'')

Critical writing

* On recent contemporary poetry about the war in Iraq. * Review of Sinead Morrissey's ''Through the Square Window'' * Essay on

Boris Pasternak Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (; rus, Бори́с Леони́дович Пастерна́к, p=bɐˈrʲis lʲɪɐˈnʲidəvʲɪtɕ pəstɛrˈnak; 30 May 1960) was a Russian poet, novelist, composer and literary translator. Composed in 1917, Pa ...

's influence on the completion of 'Essays in Island Logic' (from ''Hurt'') with three poems * On

John Milton John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem '' Paradise Lost'', written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political ...

's ''On Education'': BBC broadcast and the text available at and on YouTube. * “The Drunken Porter Does Poetry: Metre and Voice in the Poems of

," Originally published in ''Tony Harrison: Loiner'', edited by Sandie Byrne, Clarendon Press, 1997, pp. 161–70. * Review of

Michael Donaghy Michael Donaghy (May 24, 1954 – September 16, 2004) was a New York City poet and musician, who lived in London from 1985. Life and career Donaghy was born into an Irish family and grew up with his sister Patricia in the Bronx, New York, lo ...

and Anne-Marie Fyfe * Review of Philip Levine and

Dan Chiasson Dan Chiasson (; born May 9, 1971 in Burlington, Vermont) is an American poet, critic, and journalist. The ''Sewanee Review'' called Chiasson "the country’s most visible poet-critic." He is the Lorraine C. Wang Professor of English Literature at ...

References

External links

*
Essay on ''Beneath Tremendous Rain'' and ''On Whistler Mountain'' by Michael Peverett
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crucefix, Martyn Living people British translators British poets 1956 births Alumni of Lancaster University Alumni of Worcester College, Oxford British male poets