Matt Merritt

I was born in 1969 in Leicester, live in nearby Whitwick, and have worked as a journalist for the past 13 years, in Leicestershire, Cardiff and Peterborough. 

I enjoyed Larkin and Heaney at school, then got grabbed by the poetry bug when I read lots of Anglo-Saxon verse and Geoffrey Hill's Mercian Hymns while studying history at Newcastle University. Since then I've read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, but current favourites include John Clare, Kathleen Jamie, Peter Sansom, Stanley Cook and Hugo Williams.

I've been published in Anon, in the 2004 anthologies Dress Of Nettles (Ragged Raven Press) and The Nude In Miss Mae's Bedroom (Biscuit Publishing), and in the webzine Worm, and have won prizes in the Salop Poetry Society Competition, the Cherrybite Open Poetry Competition, and the Redcar Writers Competition. (Matt also came joint third in the Plough Prize in 2003.)

I enjoy hill-walking, bird-watching and cricket, would love to succeed in learning a foreign language, and admit to liking country and western music.

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