Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica

By Matt Merritt

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Matt Merritt's second collection, Hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica, is alive with a rare frequency all of its own – it is a precise and rewarding music for the soul, the heart, and the head.
These are poems that take a distinctive route through landscapes rich with legend and wildlife, finding elegies written in the night sky on the way home from the pub, or quiet epics raging in the pages of memories and neglected histories. Matt Merritt has an ear for the exact notes, be they in a major or a minor key, and these gently insistent poems continue to resound long after their first reading.
"In Matt Merritt's finely honed new collection, lives are lived in liminal spaces, shadow selves are reconstructing history and time is no time at all. These are quick-witted poems, made of toughened glass and ground-down clocks."

Helen Ivory
"Matt Merritt's new book is a cracker – technically adventurous and thematically cohesive. His work is based on a close attention to the world and a scrupulous approach to getting that world into verse. His subject is landscape, the rural and urban landscapes of the Midlands, which he uses as a cipher to talk about personal and community life. We see the surfaces of the contemporary, but also the deep presence of the historical poking through – the planning of new towns and the persistence of floodplains. This is the psychogeography of modern Leicestershire. Reading these poems I felt my own consciousness calming and concentrating – which is as good a way as any of saying that they are beautiful."

Tony Williams
Matt Merritt's debut full collection, Troy Town, was published by Arrowhead Press in 2008, and a chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, by HappenStance in 2005. He studied history at Newcastle University and counts Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh poetry among his influences, as well as the likes of R.S. Thomas, Ted Hughes and John Ash. He was born in Leicester and lives nearby, works as a wildlife journalist and is an editor of Poets On Fire.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Jul 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9781911027577

Book preview

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hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica

hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica

Matt Merritt

ISBN: 978-0-9565514-4-3

Copyright © Matt Merritt 2010

Cover image: Optic at Portland Bill Lighthouse

© Jane Commane 2010

Author Photograph: © Mark Cureton

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Matt Merritt has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published November 2010 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

imprintdigital.net

Seychelles Farm,

Upton Pyne,

Exeter

EX5 5HY

www.imprintdigital.net

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Matt Merritt’s second collection is hydrodaktulopsychicharmonica. His debut full collection, Troy Town, was published by Arrowhead Press in 2008, and a chapbook, Making The Most Of The Light, by HappenStance in 2005. He studied history at Newcastle University and counts Anglo-Saxon and medieval Welsh poetry among his influences, as well as the likes of R.S. Thomas, Ted Hughes and John Ash. He was born in Leicester and lives nearby, works as a wildlife journalist, is an editor of Poets On Fire, and blogs at http://polyolbion.blogspot.com.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to the following publications, in which some of these poems, or versions of them, first appeared:

Anon, BBC Wildlife, Blackbox Manifold, Brittle Star, The Delinquent, Gists & Piths, Horizon Review, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Iota, London Poetry Pearl, New Walk, The New Writer, Ouroboros Review, Peony Moon, Poetry Nottingham, The Reader, The Slab, The Smoking Poet, Tears In The Fence, Umbrella, Under The Radar and Stripe (Templar Poetry Anthology 2009).

‘Unquiet’ was originally written for the book Vagabond Holes: David McComb and The Triffids (Fremantle Press, 2009).

For advice, proof-reading and encouragement, many thanks to Tom Bailey, Lizzy Dening, Matthew Stewart and James W. Wood. For constant use of the reference library that is his house, I am grateful to Kirk Parsons. And for their support, patience, editorial expertise and willingness to listen to the same poems at readings again and again, I am greatly indebted to Jane Commane and Matt Nunn.

CONTENTS

Prelude for Glass Harmonica

Uchronie

English Literature

Unquiet

The American version

With Immediate Effect

Uchronie

A Fixer-Upper

Farewell, fantastic Venus

Halcyon

Treaty House

Dio Boia

Lyonnesse

Your Search Also Found

Things Left In Hotel Rooms

Request Hour At The Numbers Station

Stanislav Petrov

Truth Or Consequences

Worst Case Scenario

January

Glass

Maps & Legends

Dreams From The Anchor Church

1984

The sea at Ashby de la Zouch

The Archaeologist

Leland’s New Year Gift To The King, 1546

Seven Whistlers

from Tesserae

St Beuno Meets