Christopher Merrill

Leaving Afghanistan

The following sets up the nature of Merrill's seminar, held in the capital of the Nangarhar province:

...Over a bridge we lumbered. The rule of law specialist was explaining that the MRAP was designed to disperse the charge of an improvised explosive device when the gunner in the turret swiveled around to take a closer look through his sights at something in the distance. In the tense silence that followed I wondered how the soldiers would react if one of their own was killed on account of poetry, and then the convoy stopped in front of the Lincoln Learning Center. This is a joint project of the embassy and the local department of information and culture, which offers classes in English and computing, presents films and workshops, provides information about the United States. (In other countries it would be known as an American Corner, but anything with American in its title in Afghanistan is a target for the insurgents.) Soldiers took their positions around the courtyard, with one standing guard at the door to the library, where poets, writers and journalists had gathered around the table. The director, the author of several novels, said that two hundred students were enrolled in classes, with separate sections for men and women, and in his welcome to the writers the colonel said that he hoped to see more programmes like mine. During the introductions a woman in a blue burka, which covered her eyes, lamented the oppression of women: how they could not leave their homes, how they had no opportunities...


Read the full article here.

Selected Works

Non-Fiction

"Christopher Merrill is on an ardent lifelong quest and luckily he is taking us along. His three journeys in The Tree of the Doves are deep, wandering investigations where the old world meets the new, where the person becomes politic, and where peace many times has just left the room..."

--Ron Carlson

"A gem that shows off Merrill-the-poet's gorgeous writing, and Merrill-the-reporter's sharp eye—and introduces a new Merrill, the pilgrim."
--The Spectator
“[T]his book might very well become a modern classic about what once again seems a painful and incomprehensible corner of Europe.”
--Publishers Weekly
Poetry
In the fall of 2008, poet Christopher Merrill hatched a plan: invite six other poets to join him in four days of writing in Iowa City. The poets would write for 30 minutes, creating a poem of 15 lines, and then read it aloud to the group. Then, each poet would take one line from another poet, and create another poem using that line. Those 80 poems are collected in this book, penned by authors who represent some of the best and brightest the world of poetry has to offer.
“Brilliant Water is written with love, speed and passion. It shines. Makes you fly.”
--Tomaz Salamun
“Watch Fire” is a remarkably original, ambitious, and unified volume of poetry.”
--Los Angeles Times Book Review
Poetry in Translation
The poems of Heeduck Ra are charged with a friction between image and idea, sound and sense. She glimpses an arc, which may light a path from the visible world to the invisible. Her work occupies the ever-shifting border region between what we know and what we do not know, a zone in which to apprehend the world anew.
Buddhism was introduced to Korea via China in the fifth century and similar to China and Japan a long tradition of Zen poetry developed. This collection spans 1,500 years of this tradition with a selection of the key poets and teachers starting with Great Master Wonhyo the founder of Korean Zen Buddhism.

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