Martyn Crucefix – born in Trowbridge, Wiltshire. After a year studying Medicine, he switched to English and Philosophy, graduating from Lancaster University. A DPhil focused on the work and thought of Percy Bysshe Shelley was completed at Worcester College, Oxford. Martyn taught in London for many years. He has recently worked as a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at The British Library.

Biographical Note (Summer 2025):

Martyn Crucefix is a British poet, critic, blogger, and translator. He is the author of eight original collections of poetry, most recently Between a Drowning Man (Salt, 2023) and Cargo of Limbs (Hercules Editions, 2019). A chapbook, Walking Away, is due from Dare-Gale Press in Autumn 2025 and a new full collection, Our Weird Regiment, will be published by Shearsman in 2026, alongside a new translation of Jürgen Becker’s 1993 collection, Foxtrot at the Erfurt Stadium. Crucefix has received an Eric Gregory award, a Hawthornden Fellowship, and the Schlegel-Tieck Prize for his translations (from the German) of the poems of Peter Huchel (2020). His translation of Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies (Enitharmon, 2006) was shortlisted for the Popescu Prize for Poetry Translation. His translations of essays by German poet and novelist, Lutz Seiler, In Case of Loss, is published by And Other Stories and a major Rilke Selected Poems, Change Your Life, has recently been published by Pushkin Press (2024). Until recently a Royal Literary Fund Fellow at The British Library, Crucefix is also a tutor for the Poetry School in London and he edits the Acumen Poetry Magazine Young Poets web page. Blog (on-going capture and preservation at the UK Web Archive) and website at http://www.martyncrucefix.com

His poems, translations and reviews have appeared in magazines and journals including: Agenda, Black Box Manifold, Critical Quarterly, Dreich Magazine, Exchanges (USA), Finished Creatures, Littoral Magazine, Magma, Modern Poetry in Translation, Modron, Ploughshares (USA), PN Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Salzberg Review, Poetry Scotland, Poetry Wales, Raceme, Riggwelter, Stand, Strix, Tears in the Fence, Temenos Academy Review, The Cortland Review (USA), The Friday Poem, The Glasgow Review of Books, The High Window, The London Magazine, The London Review of Books, The Manhattan Review (USA), The North, The Rialto, The Times Literary Supplement, Under the Radar, Visual Verse, Wild Court.

He was featured in 1988 in a special edition of Poetry Review, ‘New British Poets’.  His original poems have been anthologised in Voices in the Gallery (Tate Gallery Publications, 1986), Touchstones (Hodder & Stoughton, 1987), Beneath the Wide, Wide Heaven (Virago, 1991), The River’s Voice (Common Ground, 2000), Radio Waves (Enitharmon, 2004), The Book of Love and Loss (Belgrave Press, 2014), Accompanied Voices: Poets on Composers (Boydell Press, 2015), DUSK (Arachne Press, 2018), For the Silent (Indigo Dreams/League Against Cruel Sports, 2019), Spring of the Muses: the poetry of music, art and dance (Avalanche Books, 2019). Hollow Palaces (Liverpool University Press, 2021), Christmas Walk (Candlestick Press, 2023), Apocalyptic Landscape (Valley Press, 2024), Objects (Dunlin Press, 2024), Masculinity (Broken Sleep Books, 2024).

Forthcoming

Foxtrot in the Erfurt Stadium – translations of Jürgen Becker (Shearsman Books, 2026)

Our Weird Regiment – original poems (Shearsman Books, 2026)

Dream of Glass – translations of Angèle Paoli (Muscaliet Press, 2025)

Walking Away – original poems (Dare-Gale Press, October 2025)

Published Work

Change Your Life – selected translations of Rilke’s poetry (Pushkin Press, 2024)

In Case of Loss – translations of essays by Lutz Seiler (And Other Stories, 2023)

Between a Drowning Man – original poems (Salt Books, 2023)

Garland of Poems for Christmas – co-editor of anthology of poems (1889 Books, 2022)

Cargo of Limbs – original poems (Hercules Editions, 2019)

The Lovely Disciplines – original poems (Seren Books, 2017)

These Numbered Days – translations of Peter Huchel (Shearsman Books, 2019)

O. at the Edge of the Gorge – original poems (Guillemot Press, 2017)

A Convoy – original poems (If A Leaf Falls Press, 2017)

Daodejing – versions of the Chinese classic poems (Enitharmon Press, 2016)

A Hatfield Mass – original poems (Worple Press, 2014)

The Time We Turned – original poems (Shearsman Books, 2014)

Sonnets to Orpheus – translations of Rilke’s poetry (Enitharmon Press, 2012)

Hurt – original poems (Enitharmon Press, 2010)

Duino Elegies – translations of Rilke’s poetry (Enitharmon Press, 2006)

An English Nazareth – original poems (Enitharmon Press, 2004)

A Madder Ghost – original poems (Enitharmon Press, 1997)

On Whistler Mountain – original poems (Sinclair-Stevenson, 1994)

At The Mountjoy Hotel – original poems (Enitharmon Press, 1993)

Beneath Tremendous Rain – original poems (Enitharmon Press, 1990)