The Lovely Disciplines

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.

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).