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Poetry in Translation Reading - Crouch End Literary Festival

Rather late notice – not wholly down to my own tardiness – but I will be reading work in translation at the inaugural Crouch End Literary Festival this weekend. Do come along if you can. There are plenty of other events scheduled in the Festival, but this one is at 4pm on Saturday 24th February in the Gallery upstairs at the Hornsey Library Haringey Park, London N8 9JA (see map on location and…

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#Caroline Maldonado #Crouch End Literary Festival #Hornsey Library #Laura Fusco #Peter Daniels #Peter Huchel #Pushkin Press #Rainer Maria Rilke #Robert Desnos #Rocco Scotellaro #Shearsman Books #Tim Ades #Victor Hugo #Vladislav Khodasevich

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Ian Brinton reviews 'Between a Drowning Man'

Here is Ian Brinton‘s recent review of my new Salt collection, Between a Drowning Man. It was first published by Litter Magazine in January 2024. The invitation at the opening of these two remarkable sequences of poems by Martyn Crucefix emphasises both ‘difference’ and ‘ambiguity’, an ‘othering’ which hones attention rather than dulling it. Divided into two sections, Works and Days (forty-nine…

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#A Poison Tree #Alan Jurdi #Alan Kurdi #crown of sonnets #Dante #Daodejing #Duino Elegies #Enitharmon Press #George Orwell #Google maps #Hesiod #Ian Brinton #Jeremy Prynne #Laozi #Litter Magazine #O. at the Edge of the Gorge #Rainer Maria Rilke #Salt Publishing #Seren Books #Sonnets to Orpheus #The Second Coming #vaccana #WB Yeats #William Blake

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A new review of 'Between a Drowning Man'

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#Brexit poems #crown of sonnets #Dante #Guillemot Press #Hesiod #Mat Riches #O. at the Edge of the Gorge #post-Brexit UK #Salt Publishing #social media #The High Window #vacana poems #Works and Days

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Two new prose poems at Black Nore Review

Many thanks to Ben Banyard for accepting these two recent experiments in prose poetry. Do check out other postings on Ben’s site at Black Nore Review. Click on Martyn Crucefix – two poems below to read the pieces. Ben’s details are as follows: Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, near Bristol. His three collections to date are Hi-Viz (Yaffle Press, 2021), We Are All Lucky (Indigo Dreams, 2018)…

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#Black Nore Review #Indigo Dreams #Portishead #Prose poetry #Yaffle Press

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A new podcast interview - plus a new review of 'Between a Drowning Man'

I am delighted to announce that Planet Poetry – the long-running, terrific poetry podcast run by Robin Houghton and Peter Kenny have released their new episode which includes an interview with me about my new Salt book. Do listen here: https://planetpoetry.buzzsprout.com/1414696/14024020-bridges-broken-with-martyn-crucefix Stuart Henson has also written a fine review of Between a Drowning Man,…

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#London Grip #Peter Kenny #Planet Poetry #podcast #poetry podcast #Poetry Review #Robin Houghton #Salt Publishing #Stuart Henson

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New podcast discussion on Between a Drowning Man

I’m very pleased to announce that Mark McGuinness’ excellent poetry podcast, A Mouthful of Air, which has recently featured poets such as Mona Arshi, Judy Brown, Rishi Dastidar, Ian Duhig, Mimi Khalvati, Clare Pollard, Tom Sastry, and Denise Saul, has recorded a discussion about my new Salt collection, Between a Drowning Man. Mark’s method is to focus on one particular poem and between us we…

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#A Mouthful of Air #AE Stallings #AK Ramanujan #anaphora #Anne Stevenson #English Lake District #English landscape poetry #ghazal poetic form #Hesiod #hybridity #Isaiah Berlin #Lake District bridges down #Mark McGuinness #Pandora&039;s jar #podcast #poetic forms #poetry in performance #post-Brexit UK #Salt Publishing #social media and politics #Storm Desmond #Tom Rawling #vacana poems #via negativa #Works and Days #WS Merwin

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Influences on 'Between a Drowning Man' #2

Last week, with the imminent arrival of my new book of poems, Between a Drowning Man, I decided it would be useful – for those who would like to know – if I re-blogged a piece I wrote and posted early in 2019 about one of the key sources and inspirations of the new book’s main sequence of poems called ‘Works and Days’. The focus then was on my reading of AK Ramanujan’s collection of vacana poems.…

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#A E Stallings #AK Ramanujan #Antaeus #Becky Varley-Winter #Brexit poems #Elisabeth Sennitt-Clough #H.G. Evelyn-White #Hesiod #Pandora #Pandora&039;s jar #post-Brexit UK #Salt Publishing #the age of iron #The Betsey Trotwood #vacana poems #Works and Days

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Influences on 'Between a Drowning Man' #1

With the arrival of my new book of poems, Between a Drowning Man, imminent, I thought it would be useful to re-blog a piece I wrote and posted early in 2019 about one of the key sources and inspirations of the new book’s main sequence of poems called ‘Works and Days’. It was my fortuitous reading of AK Ramanujan’s collection of vacana poems, early in 2016 (all explained below), that set me off…

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#AK Ramanujan #Becky Varley-Winter #Brexit #Elisabeth Sennitt-Clough #Keswick #origins of poems #post-Brexit UK #refrains in poems #Salt Publishing #Storm Desmond #Ted Hughes #the making of a poem #vacanna poems

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Goethe's poetry - some new translations by John Greening

In this blog post, I am discussing John Greening’s new translations of a small selection (9 poems in all) from the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. With the original German texts provided on facing pages, these translations are published as Nightwalker’s Song, by Arc Publications (2022). This review was originally commisioned and published by Acumen poetry magazine early in 2023. By the way,…

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#Acumen Poetry Magazine #Arc Publications #Christopher Marlowe #Christopher Middleton #David Luke #DM Black #Doctor Faustus #FRAS Publications #Goethe #Holderlin #Michael Hamburger #Rainer Maria Rilke #Robert Lowell #The Sorcerer&039;s Apprentice #WH Auden

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'My mother's care home room as Cleopatra's monument' - an unpublished poem @ The Poetry Archive

The Poetry Archive has recently been calling for submissions for what they are calling Poetry Archive Now. They are searching for poems written during 2023 as follows: We want you to have the opportunity to join the Poetry Archive collections by recording yourself reciting or reading your poem out loud and sending it to us to care for and share worldwide. 20 poets will be chosen to join the…

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#a mother&039;s death #Antony and Cleopatra #Care Home #Charmian #Easter island statue #Shakespeare #social media #suicide #The Poetry Archive #YouoTube

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New review of my translation of Peter Huchel's 'These Numbered Days'

When Shearsman Books published my translations from the German of Peter Huchel’s 1972 collection These Numbered Days (Gezählte Tage), we were still in the early days of Covid restrictions and so launch events and so on were very difficult. I was pleased when the book was recognised in 2020 by winning the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for translation from German awarded by the Society of Authors. The…

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#Dora Osbourne #Frank Beck #German Democratic Republic #Gezahlte Tage #Henry Beissel #Joel Spector #Karen Leeder #Michael Hamburger #Philip Fried #Schlegel-Tieck prize for translation #Shearsman Books #Sinn und Form #Steffan Davies #Stephen Parker #Suhrkamp Verlag #The Manhattan Review

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My Three Desert Island Poems

As mentioned in a post earlier in June, I spent a few days around that time trying to choose just 3 poems that I might take with me to a speculative desert island. I was asked to do this by The Friday Poem website and they have now posted the results of my labours. In the end I chose work by Coleridge, Edward Thomas and Rainer Maria Rilke. Of course, the latter has been on my mind a great deal…

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#Edward Thomas #new translations of Rilke&039;s poems #Pushkin Press #Rainer Maria Rilke #Samuel Taylor Coleridge #The Friday Poem

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Greedy alpha-creatures: the poetry of Ulrike Almut Sandig

I’m shocked to realise that it is a full year since I posted my review of the stunning long poem, Porcelain, by the contemporary German poet, Durs Grünbein, in Karen Leeder’s equally impressive translation (Seagull Books, 2020). That review was originally commissioned for, and published in, Patricia McCarthy’s penultimate issue of Agenda (those who follow such things will know that Patricia has…

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#Agenda Magazine #Angela Carter #anti-immigration party #Duino Elegies #Durs Grünbein #Grimm&039;s Fairy Tales #John Burnside #Karen Leeder #Ledbury Poetry Festival #Mediterranean refugee crisis #migration #neo-Nazi #Patricia McCarthy #Pegida #Peter Florence #Porcelain #Rainer Maria Rilke #refugees in Europe #Seagull Books #The Children’s and Household Tales of the Brothers Grimm #Ulrike Almut Sandig #Walt Whitman

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Edward Thomas, Tellisford, and a poem of my own

I have recently been writing a piece for the excellent site, The Friday Poem, or the FRIP as it styles itself, edited by Hilary Menos. I’d had a poem accepted by the FRIP earlier this year and Hilary had asked if I’d like to contribute something in prose, perhaps choosing 3 ‘desert island’ poems. An impossible challenge, of course – only three!!?? – but an interesting exercise to be sure. I’ll…

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#1914 #desert island poems #Edward Thomas #Gone #Gone gone again #Hilary Menos #In Pursuit of Spring #Nestle factory at Staverton #Quantock Hills #River Frome #Seren Books #Tellisford #The Friday Poem #The Lovely Disciplines #the Other Man #Trowbridge #Wiltshire

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'The Man Overstanding' - on Raymond Antrobus' 'All The Names Given'

Genuinely acclaimed first books can be hard to follow up. Raymond Antrobus’ The Perseverance (Penned in the Margins, 2018) was a Poetry Book Society Choice and won the Ted Hughes Award and the Rathbone’s Folio Prize in 2019. I reviewed the book that year as one of the five collections shortlisted for the Forward Felix Dennis First Collection Prize. In many ways it was a conventional book of poems…

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#Antrobus #Forward First Collections #overstanding #Penned in the Margins #Pentonville Prison #Peter Tosh #Picador Poetry #Poetry Book Society Choice #Poetry Book Society Recommendation #Rathbone&039;s Folio Prize #Raymond Antrobus #Ted Hughes Award for New Work #The High Window #The Perseverance #Tyrone Givans

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'Letter to my Younger Self' - a third brief Royal Literary Fund talk

As a Royal Literary Fund Fellow based at The British Library in London (though working on-line for the most part), I was asked way back in May 2020 (feels like a different world) to write and record three brief talks. One of these was on ‘Writing and Technology’ which I posted (as text and audio file) on this blog a few months ago. Another commision was to be titled ‘How I Write’ – not an easy…

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#1976 #Agnes Arber #Allan Watts #autobiography #Eltham Park #English Romantic poetry #Guys Hospital Medical School #How I Write #Jean Paul Sartre #Letter to my Younger Self #Louise Gluck #Nausea #RLF VOX website #Royal Literary Fund #self development #Studying Medicine #The British Library #The London Magazine #The Manifold and the One #The Wisdom of Insecurity #WH Auden #writing and technology

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Pia Tafdrup: recent poems from Bloodaxe Books

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#Bloodaxe Books #Cassini Space Probe #close analysis of poetry #David McDuff #Pia Tafdrup #poetry of the senses #The High Window #The Salamander Quartet