Martyn’s most recent full collection is Our Weird Regiment, published by Shearsman Books in February 2026. Download a sample PDF from this volume here.
Buy the book direct from Shearsman Books here.
Blurb:
‘Crucefix has, as always, an exceptional ear . . . superbly intelligent . . . urgent, heartfelt, controlled and masterful’ – Kathryn Maris
In Martyn Crucefix’s powerful new poems, the unearthed bones of the dispossessed gather together to march; in rural England, the whinnying of horses heralds an apocalyptic unease; amid October storms, there rises an acute sense of decline and fall as we stand, ‘in hope maladroit as the woods riot’. Elsewhere, the ancient pike remains ‘the weapon / of choice in the defence of democracy’ as Our Weird Regiment evokes a sense of menace and insecurity in the environmental, political and personal spheres.
‘Learning, no doubt, from the poetry he has translated . . . Crucefix has become more and more experimental, more complicatedly troubled . . . He knows how to find the imagistic essence of a situation and his gift for metaphor has always been considerable . . . Walking Away demands to be read’ – John Greening
‘[These are] despatches from a fond but fearful place – so close to the depths of loved-ones’ old age … Sharply observant of himself as well as what’s around him, Crucefix is an acute but tactful guide to somewhere most of us, at any age, are loath to go’ – Philip Gross
On Between a Drowning Man (2023)
‘Crucefix’s skill at managing sequences is stunning. In language that arrests, disturbs, and provokes reflection, each poem refracts and reflects the whole. By examining contemporary life in all its flawed difficulty… these poems call on us to witness how our vulnerability isolates and unites us’ – Heidi Williamson
‘Crucefix has always been one of the most interesting and experimental of poets working in what’s sometimes called the mainstream…We are firmly in the contemporary world of Twitterstorm, Google Map, Uber and Wi-fi, yet somehow at an angle to it…the overall mood is not of gloom, but wonder – almost puzzlement at times. The clarity of the language begets a kind of luminosity’ – Stuart Henson
Here’s the opening poem from this new collection:
Ping
I can talk of course
but mostly listen
and at lunchtime
snowflakes crashing down
x
onto London tarmac
though you’d hardly
describe this as snow
not even sleet
x
yet something more
fleecy than hailstones
making a noise
in the instant of falling
x
a kind of shuffling
one thing on another
as the waitress runs
to the plate-glass door
x
where she holds out
her mobile phone
for just a moment
and presses record
x
because it’s there
this strange rustling
swoosh and worth it
this muttering noise
x
gets whatsapped
to her older sister
an exclamatory caption
pings on her phone
x
where it lies face down
on a cluttered desk
gazing for a moment
up at the clouds
x
where they drift over
Manchester’s river
warily she stops
what she’s at to listen
Martyn Crucefix 