The Lovely Disciplines

Overview

Poet Martyn Crucefix's new collection, The Lovely Disciplines, steps straight into a contemporary world where cursors blink, people Skype, consult Google Street View, make erotically-charged visits to the opticians, find ATM receipts in secondhand books of poetry. Such acuteness of observation is one of the 'lovely disciplines' in these vivid, exploratory poems that surprise and delight with portraits of a motor-biking boy-racer, strange meetings at Heathrow and images from Crucefix's native Wiltshire: a toll cottage, the West Kennet long barrow, the weir at Tellisford.

Reviews

"Crucefix has, as always, an exceptional ear... poems that are urgent, heartfelt, controlled and masterful." —Kathryn Maris, Poetry London 

"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." —Tim Liardet, Poetry Wales

Author Biography

Martyn Crucefix has won numerous prizes including a major Eric Gregory award and a Hawthornden Fellowship. He has published 7 collections of poetry including Hurt (Enitharmon, 2010): "an exceptional ear . . . superbly intelligent . . . urgent, heartfelt, controlled and masterful." (Kathryn Maris, Poetry London). His translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies (Enitharmon, 2006) was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation and hailed as "unlikely to be bettered for very many years" (Magma).