January 31, 2012: Andrew Merton publishes book of poetry 
Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs is an exciting debut collection of poetry by veteran journalist, essayist, and UNH Professor of English Andrew Merton. Former Poet Laureate of the United States Charles Simic provides an insightful foreword to introduce us to Merton's work.
From publisher's website:
What Others Say About Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs
A live current of existential terror, honestly engaged, runs through Andrew Merton's Evidence that We Are Descended from Chairs. The threats sometimes come from a sense of the abyss within, sometimes from the silent distances between us, and at other times from the irreparable wounds of history. Yet these threats are only part of the story that Merton's poetry tells. This is a book of restless imaginative energy, of surreal premises, of dream-like transformations, of a vision creatively skewed so as to see reality as if for the first time. Within all their terrors and transformations these poems brim with delight and astonishment at the minute particulars of our existence, the facts that are, as Frost once said, "the sweetest dream that labor knows."
—Fred Marchant