Born twenty years after Andrew Crozier, I was lucky indeed to have heard him read his poetry, and that Colin Still was there to film it. It had been said that Crozier had renounced public readings, but perhaps only the presence of Carl Rakosi, over from San Francisco in England in 1997 to read from The Earth Suite, made him momentarily deflect from what he had foresworn. He began his reading with ‘The Beasts’ after Rakosi, and two of the four other pieces read were deft yet internalised interpretations of ‘Free Running Bitch’. Crozier then gave, without notes, a detailed and precise introduction to Rakosi’s poetry. I have never heard an introduction to a poetry reading as complexly argued, vivid, precise, which captured Rakosi’s achievement for the lay reader

Andrew Crozier’s last public engagement was a talk on Basil King and Harry Roskolenko, at the Arnolfini in 2005. He declined the reading he was also offered. He also declined my offer to publish a chapbook of poems. But he did agree to introduce the programme of readings, and thereby state his views on Etruscan Books. 

Eight years later I asked four poets, all connected with Crozier, to read his poetry. The poet and historian John Seed had advised Crozier in his research on the East End that John Rodker would have known as one of the ‘Whitechapel boys’. Crozier had travelled from Sussex to Staffordshire in 1993 to hear John Hall give his first reading for ten years at the Six Towns Poetry Festival. ...