Crystal

Ellen Cranitch is a poet, lecturer and journalist. Her debut collection, The Immortalist (Templar Press), was shortlisted for the Seamus Heaney Award for Best First Collection 2018. Her second collection, Crystal, is due from Bloodaxe in 2024. Born in London of Irish parents, Ellen holds an MA in English Literature from Cambridge University and a PhD in Creative Writing (Poetry and Poetics) from the University of St Andrews. She has taught Creative Writing and literature at a number of universities including University College London and Bath Spa. Recent posts include Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Hull where she ran the poetry modules. Her arts journalism has appeared in The Times, New Statesman and The Irish Times and she contributes poetry reviews and interviews to Poetry London and The Poetry Review. She currently works at the City Lit Institute, London, teaching the Masterclass and Advanced Poetry Workshop.

Utterly mesmerising. An intensely rewarding and spine-tingling experience. What pain underlies it is mitigated by so much love, rescue, hope and triumph. Only a real poet can take one from a walk with Cavafy amongst the stones of the Acropolis to the misery of Heston motorway services; from Colombian emerald mines to communing with T.S. Eliot’s ashes in East Coker… Cranitch takes the resources of landscape, science, philosophy, mythology and of course poetry and uses them not just to meditate on the cruel, sordid, terrifying and humiliating truths of addiction, but to do something more than meditate – to understand, to resolve and to transform. This is what poetry at its best and truest can do. A wonderful achievement.

• 9 Bonnard I10 Bonnard II11 Bonnard III12 C10H15N13 Words14 Strickeen15 Actaeon16 Metamorphoses17 Io18 Uplift19 Tom21 Athens I22 Athens II23 To Cavafy24 Revelations25 Secrets26 Void27 Betrayal28 The Wishing Cup29 Double Exposure30 Heston Services31 The Drive West32 Kingsley Road33 The Stars34 Dan36 How They Give Back to Me37 ‘en las multitudes’38 The Dream39 Riverside40 Fife41 ‘lente currite’42 ‘Relapse’43 Bypass44 Trust45 Some statistics on relapse46 The Undertow47 Reactions48 Kinship49 Praed Street50 Prayer51 The Beaked Ships52 To Forget53 Kryos54 The Empty Space55 Church of St Michael and All Angels56 The Colour of Blood57 Chez Camille58 Degrees of Separation59 Panic Attack60 Antiphon61 Tributary62 The Question of Intention63 The Parable of the Emerald and Dark Water65 Theories of addiction66 Crystall67 Judgement70 Definition of enabling71 Living with Uncertainty74 Addiction interaction disorder75 Dissonance76 Addiction and pleasure77 ‘Against Hurt’78 The Ascent80 Beauty81 Radical82 What Held Me83 If Ever84 Hope85 Maple-serrated86 The Dance87 Grey88 April 179489 Love90 December 157492 Minerals Gallery, Natural History Museum, London95 Acknowledgements