Martyn Crucefix works as poet, teacher, reviewer, critic, translator and competition judge. He is a tutor with the Poetry School in London. He is a founder member of the group ShadoWork, specializing in performing and writing collaboratively.

His poems have appeared in magazines and journals including: Acumen, Ambit, Critical Quarterly, The Independent, The London Magazine, The London Review of Books, Oxford Poetry, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Stand, Tabla, Thumbscrew and The Times Literary Supplement. He was featured in 1988 in a special edition of Poetry Review, 'New British Poets'.

His poems have been anthologised in Voices in the Gallery, edited by Dannie and Joan Abse (Tate Gallery Publications, 1986) and Touchstones (Hodder & Stoughton, 1987), Contemporary Christian Poetry (Collins, 1990), Beneath the Wide, Wide Heaven (Virago, 1991), Field Days (Common Ground, 1998), The River’s Voice (Common Ground, 2000) and Radio Waves (Enitharmon, 2004).

Martyn won a major Eric Gregory award in 1984 and a Hawthornden Fellowship in 1991. He was placed second in the 1991 Arvon/Observer International Poetry Competition. He has won several prizes in the National Poetry Competition as well as the Kent, Cardiff, Lancaster and Leek festival competitions. He won joint first prize in the Sheffield Thursday Poetry Competition, 1993, with his poem 'On Whistler Mountain'.

Martyn’s first full collection, Beneath Tremendous Rain (1990), was published by Enitharmon Press. The Arvon prize-winning poem, At The Mountjoy Hotel, appeared with Enitharmon in Spring 1993. A second collection, On Whistler Mountain, was published by Sinclair-Stevenson in 1994. His third book was A Madder Ghost (Enitharmon, 1997), praised by Anne Stevenson: "It is rare these days to find a book of poems that is so focused, so carefully shaped and so moving".

His most recent collection is An English Nazareth (Enitharmon, 2004) and his new translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies was published by Enitharmon in 2006.

Review Comments:

On Rilke’s Duino Elegies (2006)

Unlikely to be bettered for many years . . . Crucefix has brought greater poetic resources to bear than any previous translator . . . [he] has put his talents at Rilke’s service and produced a translation of the Elegies which makes all previous ones clumsy and partial. With the German text in parallel and a useful commentary on each elegy, it deserves to become the standard English edition worldwide.

Hannah Salt, Magma
 

On An English Nazareth (2004)

Crucefix has, as always, an exceptional ear . . . ‘On Night’s Estate’ is global in its vantage point . . . It’s a dark poem, portending monsters and catastrophe in a way that reminds one of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’ and makes us read the title of Crucefix’s book in a different way. It’s a superbly intelligent ending to a very strong collection

 Kathryn Maris, Poetry London
 

Crucefix aspires to be the patron saint who can lift us into the clouds of the small near-magic-realist lyric ('Scoop'), a high-flying purveyor of majestic clarity ('On Night's Estate'), a tight-rope-walker forever balancing himself over the symbolic-sense divide ('So Far' and 'Clay Town') and in the best of these poems we rise with him and are then returned to earth by his many routes, squarely, impressively, on both feet.

Acumen
 

On A Madder Ghost (1997)

It is rare these days to find a book of poems that is so focused, so carefully shaped and so moving.

Anne Stevenson
 

On On Whistler Mountain (1994)

Richly various in its subject matter. The undoubted masterpiece is the title poem . . . He is the master of the small apocalypse. Martyn Crucefix has firmly staked his claim to be one of the most mature voices of the 1990s.

John Greening, Poetry Review
 

On Beneath Tremendous Rain (1990)

Great intelligence and subtlety . . . clearly an outstanding talent from whom great things can be expected.

Herbert Lomas, Ambit
 

For information on Martyn’s work visit www.writersartists.net.

Information on Martyn Crucefix and books to order via Enitharmon Press 

Holderlin Translation Competition, 1991. link  

Poems and translation on the web.  link

Reviews and Articles by Martyn

On Michael Donaghy and Anne-Marie Fyfe

On Tony Harrison

On Shelley and Wordsworth

'Ten Steps to a Good Poetry Reading', in Poetry News, Winter 2001/2.  link

e-mail Martyn

poetry favourites:
Writers Artists net
Enitharmon

and in the shop ...
collections -
"Duino Elegies" (translation),
"An English Nazareth",
"A Madder Ghost",
"At The Mountjoy Hotel"
and
"Beneath Tremendous Rain",
Enitharmon;

"On Whistler Mountain",
Sinclair-Stevenson

© of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
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