CHRISTYMERRY
BOOK RELEASED 11/6/2024
Don't Kiss the Messenger!​​
Available at Cosmic Coffee in NE Mpls & at christymerry.bandcamp.com
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Join Christy Merry in the trenches of love where joys, frustrations and despair accompany an arduous journey in her new collection, Don’t Kiss the Messenger. A few prologue poems introduce us to her seasons of love. Though “scarred, beautifically/by Love” she hopes others will still risk seeking it. “What you have at the end is anything but velveteen,” she writes of the magic she anticipates in long-term love, while navigating a world where “lovers are like knife-throwers.” Bridges get burned as she tries to build them. Surprises await the reader especially in her longest and final section (appropriately like a Minnesota winter) where “a faithful heart’s a burden.” Grief, loss, loneliness and the rest of what love leaves behind is not enough, Merry’s words tell us. Yet even as an unstrung rib, this lover will try again and “cheat despair.” Like me, you may want to read these poems more than once.
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​ - Charmaine Pappas Donovan,
Poet Laureate of the League of Minnesota Poets​
This book of poetry has distilled the experiences of love and loss wonderfully. How do we transform by joining in experience with another? How do we continue on when it ends? How do we build ourselves back up? How do we wait for a future that now feels unknowable and unfamiliar? How do we keep faith that we’ll get all that is meant for us in the end, and that the end will be anything but this pain? Merry viscerally captures the essence of these questions, and we are along for the journey through her seasons. Likely remembering our own journeys. Nodding along remembering, “Yes, yes. Exactly this.”
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- Lindsay Hutton Pierre, Former co-host of Book Narcs podcast
THE LATEST​​
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January 13, 2025 - Started new job - now an 'Investor Services Associate' at Ultimus Leverpoint! See blog post regarding the decision/transition.
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January 15, 2025 - A poem from Don't Kiss the Messenger was featured on KFAI (90.3 FM)'s 'Poetry, Science & Wrestling' show - you can listen to the replay here - at the 29 & 90 minute marks.
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June 26, 2025 - Thursday, 6:30-8:00 pm Blank Verse Reading at Northtown Library (free event) - 5 feature poets (I will be one of them) and some open mic time at the end. If you are a poet, we'd love for you to share! Here's a link to the details.
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FESTS, JUNE & JULY: Confirmed last minute, I'll be performing (a bit of music & poetry) at Barnstock in Spring Valley, MN Friday 6/27 & also attending Audiofeed in Champaigne-Urbana, IL July 3-6 (not booked to perform but if there's time available on the impromptu stage, I might!)
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NEXT BOOK: Working hard on my next poetry book, which will be released in 2025, date TBD
