Lucy Crispin is a prize-winning poet who lives in north Lancashire, between the beautiful Forest of Bowland and her beloved Lake District. 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, the life of the spirit; interested, too, in the way our experiences shape us. Both in her poetry and her non-fiction she celebrates what she calls the everyday extraordinary.
Lucy is a former lecturer in literature who has worked for 20 years as a person-centred therapist, supervisor and facilitator. With a particular interest in loss and grieving, Lucy facilitates poetry-based CPD for fellow-therapists and charitable organisations. She has taught creative writing in third-sector organisations, schools, and at the Swanwick Writers’ Summer School.
Working with Clive Walkley, in 2019 Lucy wrote the libretto for The Song of the Silent Child, a dramatic cantata with a folky, fable-like feel which explores our culture’s uneasy relationship with sadness (first performance October 2019). Lucy has also collaborated on a number of occasions with composer Tamsin Jones; you can listen to their anthem ‘Cana: what Mary knew’ here. Together they have written a hymn for the Multitude of Voyces Hymn Project, and their recent work ‘song to bring us home’ has been included in Pride Week celebrations in Ely Cathedral (first UK performance) and St John’s Church, Victoria, Canada (world premiere).
In 2020 wish you were here and shades of blue were published by Hedgehog Press. In 2021 Lucy won the Segora International Poetry competition and the Ware Sonnet prize, which she won again in 2023. She’s working on her next, full length collection, hungers. You can read in advance some of the poems from hungers at various places on the net (see publications page for details). Publication details for the whole book will follow in due course.
What with one thing and another, Lucy has a busy and creative life. Writing is part of every day. It makes the invisible appear.
© Lucy Crispin 2024