Clare has published many books and pamphlets over the years, as well as a CD collaboration, and appeared in many journals and magazines. Here is a selection, starting with her most recent publications.
The Mulberry Tree
“In The Mulberry Tree, Clare Crossman’s eye for detail is, as ever, accurate, acute, alive, alert. Often accompanied by a background of song-refrains, the poems range from celebrations of places – both wild and inhabited, from Cumbria to the Cyclades – to several poems about the experience of cancer, all the more moving for their understatement. These are integrated with expressions of love and memory, especially for members of her family. The feeling tone of every one of these poems is imbued with clarity, care and magnanimity. These strong, delicate poems are to be treasured and remembered.” – Richard Burns
Published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2021. ISBN: 978-1-912524-58-7
Winter Flowers - The Life and Work of Lorna Graves 1947-2006
"This is the first biography of painter, sculptor and poet, Lorna Graves, written by someone who knew her well. Clare Crossman uses Lorna’s own notebooks and letters, and the testimony of friends, to provide a vivid portrait of a gifted and complex woman." - Kathleen Jones
Published by Bookcase, Carlisle, 2018. ISBN 978-1-912181-07-0
The Blue Hour
"A lyrical and haunting collection of poems. The title ... refers to the time of dusk when colours are uncertain and take on a bluish tint. The theme of uncertainty, or of things in uncertain transition, permeates the collection making the world that Crossman describes both beautiful and fragile at the same time. It is a beautiful and insightful book." - J S Watts
"Full of glittering beauty, darkness, loss and warmth." - Ruthie Collins, Arts Inside Cambridge, January 2018.
Published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2017. ISBN: 978-1-912524-00-6 66
Vanishing Point
"This is one to be snapped up." - John Greening.
"In poems that are at once beautiful and unsettling, Clare Crossman makes the reader aware of what an extraordinary world she inhabits and how precarious this habitation can be." - Joanne Limburg.
"These are lovely poems which take us through the lives of people, their habitations and the open spaces around them. Through Clare Crossman’s innovative and moving language we become willing witnesses to their 'sorrows and occasions'." - Liz Cashdan
Published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2013. ISBN 978-1-907356-91-9
The Shape of Us
"Clare Crossman’s poems bear the hallmark of a poet who is sensitive to her environment. Her perceptions, filtered through a keen poetic imagination, are expressed beautifully in a language which invites us into her world and gives us new perspectives." - John Lyons
"These poems, in Clare Crossman’s words, focus on ‘the details of sunshine and shadow’. She is interested in the minutiae of things, their colours and moods and shapes. The book is populated with ghosts – Edward Thomas, Eric Ravilious, the poet’s mother – but also a poignancy for what is lost. This is a lyrical and moving collection." - Tamar Yoseloff
“The value Clare Crossman places on friendship, her alertness to 'the texture of things', to the particular weight of colour that she evokes, for instance, in Sunflowers, and her understanding that 'the keeping of the seasons' falls to us come together to produce a poetry of unflinching celebration, whose quality can be seen in her elegy for the artist Lorna Graves: 'I have picked a bunch of alder and ash / to mark a shape, catch once more your grit / and buoyancy of air.'” - Roger Garfitt
Published by: Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2010 ISBN 1-907356-07-0. Cover illustration: Rachel Birkett
Contourlines: New responses to Landscape in word and Image
Published by Magdelene College publications and Salt, Cromer, 2009 ISBN 978-1-84471-715-6
Contourlines was a collaboration initiated by Magdalene College, edited by Neil Wenborn and M E J Hughes 2009
Fen Song: A Ballad of the Fen
(CD with Penni Mclaren Walker and Bryan Causton)
This cycle of poems and songs was developed over 18 months of collaboration between Clare and acoustic singer songwriter Penni Mclaren Walker. Clare and Penni met in Cambridgeshire at The Red Lion Folk Club and discovered they had some complementary new poems and songs. The cycle is a meditation on the natural world, creativity, belonging and loss and in the best acoustic tradition becomes a ballad of the Fen, which is universal. Piloted at The Babylon Gallery in Ely it was described as 'inspirational', 'most memorable', 'beautiful', and 'voices to hear by the ocean’."
"A triumphant collaboration" - Patrick Widness, Headstand 209 Radio
"In the best tradition of the acoustic ballad" - ADEC, Babylon Gallery, Ely
Please use the Contact form if you'd like to buy a copy.
Fenlight
A CD of poems and music Clare recorded in 2006, featuring muscians Richard Newman, Candida Orbell, and Amanda Stewart on guitar, vocals and flute respectively. Produced by Gareth Stuart for ZigZag music productions.
Take Five '04
Published by Shoestring Press, Nottingham, 2004. ISBN: 1-904886-10-8, Paperback.
Cover illustration: Thomas Bewick
Going Back
Published by Firewater Press, Royston, 2002, Paperback.
"Firewater Press was an Arts council funded project for a brief time in Cambridge and I was asked for poems after the editors heard me read at CB1 café. It was a limited edition of 200 copies, with cover illustration by Cumbrian artist Lorna Graves (2001)."
Silent Reading
A poetry sequence that was first published in Scintilla issue 4, and then as this pamphlet published by Pharos Press in 2001.
‘A fine poet’ - Poetry Review.
Contact Clare via the Contact form if you'd like to buy a copy.
Landscapes
Award: joint winner of the Redbeck Prize 1996
Published by Redbeck Press, 1996, ISBN 0-946980-33-0, Paperback.
Cover illustration: Iain Mcphee
Other poems of Clare’s have appeared in Artemis, The Interpreters House, Poetry Salzburg Review (30) and other publications.