Description
shades of blue is an invitation to be present to life. By turns mischievous, meditative, melancholy and ecstatic, this short collection celebrates the natural world and the mixed and marvellous experience of being human. Though shades of blue features a variety of forms and moods, it is unified by the characteristic Crispin qualities of passion, precision and tenderness. Acutely sensitive to both exterior and interior landscapes, she writes vividly and with authority. Here, as in her previous pamphlet wish you were here, Lucy Crispin honours the truth of the heart, the life of the spirit.
“Lucy Crispin would make a brilliant scene-of-crime officer, because she notices everything, and understands its significance. And there’d be nothing second-hand about her report to the CID, either, for she uses language with a vigour and freshness that puts one in mind of Dylan Thomas or Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Crispin has a dazzling gift for representing her subjects. Situations, things, nature, atmosphere, all come to life eagerly from her pen. She has a sharp eye and a sensitive response, and no patience at all with anything remotely resembling a cliché. There’s nothing contrived; she’s always fresh and apt. Hers is a strongly individual vision, accessible, interesting, compelling. She knows her craft, is faithful to her daemon, and she has a reliably consistent voice. What particularly distinguishes her for me is a rare kind of personal poetic courage, for her tones are honest, compelling, both disciplined and passionate, both serious and moving-a rare enough combination in the contemporary poetry scene. And the human condition? She writes with equal delicacy of what lies under the skin, what moves the human heart. Such gifts are rare, even in the world of poetry. I certainly look forward to more of her work, which deserves to be far better known.”
– RV Bailey
“This collection, with its beautifully described, precise imagery, draws you in to moments and scenes and senses: shape, texture, colour are here in abundance. The language… has a wonderful music. So many different moods here-joy, anger, mischievousness; and an invitation fully to enter my own world, parallel to the poems’, with the reminder that the only time we have is now.”
– Jeff Cowton, Head Curator, Dove Cottage
“Lucy’s poems are intensely rich interior landscapes, finely and vividly observed, in which she explores reflections on her life and the lives of others. Her verse includes occasional experiments with sonnet and villanelle forms with brief flashes of self-deprecating humour; but the essence of her work is a piercing insight into life’s episodes set against the beauty of the natural world.”
– Roger Iredale
About Lucy Crispin
Lucy Crispin is a librettist and prize-winning poet who lives in the Lake District, England. Asked what she writes about, she mutters something vague about ‘Um, well… what it’s like being a person’. She’s inspired by the natural world, travel, other people, and the life of the spirit; interested, too, in the way our experiences shape us. In both her poetry and non-fiction she celebrates what she calls the everyday extraordinary. An experienced person-centred therapist, Lucy facilitates poetry-based CPD for fellow therapists and charitable organisations. She’s also taught creative writing in third-sector organisations, schools, and at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School. Lucy is a former Poet Laureate of South Cumbria. Her work has been widely published in print and online, and Hedgehog Press brought out her micro-pamphlet wish you were here in January 2020 (available directly from Lucy at her site below). As well as writing a weekly poetry column and facilitating monthly poetry-reading groups, Lucy performs her poetry and takes part in other events.
Find out more at: lucycrispin.com.
Product details
elisabeth kelly –
Beautiful collection of poems that take you into moments in such detail, you feel fully immersed in a world of colour, emotion and wonder. There are a number of poems that I will return to again and again as a source of solace and strength.
kmalderman –
There seems an incredible depth of understanding about the human condition represented in this collection. Awesome control of language, and pin-sharp observation, vibrant and compelling. Lucy describes the natural world with such beauty and immediacy that one feels present in the moment, with all the sights and sounds invoked. In ‘Sea Glass’ for example – ‘underfoot the shingle shifts and seethes, a living ground which slides away from me with a rasping rattle, like hard won breath’. I particularly liked that she chooses often under-represented subjects, such as the middle-aged woman with ‘heavy breasts’ emerging from a swim in ‘Shades of Blue: beach’, but here, her ‘time-sagged flesh’ is made ‘beautiful’. There’s a range of emotions present, from the single person’s revenge in ‘Bank Holiday Blues: to the tune of ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to the raw, howl of her sonnet, ‘what the dog walkers in the wood don’t hear me thinking’; powerful and devastating. I think ‘Shades of Blue’ is the kind of collection that will deliver more on each reading and I’ll enjoy returning to it.