You Sleep Uphill / David Merritt

Poems by David Merritt

The long-awaited collection of poems both well-worn and newly minted by New Zealand’s only street-level poet. Hand-bound with brass screws and recycled Reader’s Digest hardback covers.

Published May 2022
Hardcover, 86 pages
ISBN 9780995125193

Praise David Merritt excels at a sort of hard-luck lyrical life-writing that, in an Aotearoa context, is virtually his exclusive domain. (Maybe only slightly contested by Dunedin’s beloved Peter Olds.) His poetic practice is also unique in that he tirelessly travels the country gigging and selling his numerous lovingly made broadsheets and ‘poetry bricks’ to audiences outside the poetry mainstream. (Well, he did before COVID.) He is warm and engaging and engaged. So I was a little surprised to realise that his recent work, some of which I have read before, is, when put between two covers and handed over to a publishing house, suffused with a poignant sadness. It is affecting.