Matt's work is always filled with a tension between his
success as a Bootle boy who made it to Cambridge and took up a
life-long teaching career at what is now Hope University -
tinged with regret that he never followed in his father's
footsteps and put to sea.
He will be remembered for his generosity of spirit - always
willing to help fellow-poets with the knotty problems of
redrafting their poems, placing their work with publishers and
reviewing for leading magazines.
He always said that if you didn't have anything positive to
say in a review - then it wasn't worth saying; and that for
all his academic prowess, the only true test of the worth of a
poem was if it made the hairs on the back of your neck stand
up.
Matt delighted in his role as Chair of The Windows Project,
participating enthusiasticly in workshops for children in
schools and playschemes all over Merseyside... in the same way
as he had also involved himself in the early readings of
Harold Hikins Amazing Merseyside Poetry Circus at venues all
over the region.
Matt's focus was both universal and domestic. He was Poet in
Residence in Tasmania whilst the core of In Deep, his most
recent collection for Shoestring, was the sequence November
Song concerned with the "ins and out and ups and downs" of
marriage (to Monika) - again taking a personal experience and
finding in it something that touches us all.
Matt showed another side to his character in the warmth and
humour of his poetry for children which appeared in a wide
range of best-selling anthologies as well as The Pig's Thermal
Underwear (Headland) and What The Wind Said! (Greenwich
Exchange).
Matt was actively writing right up to his death - new poems as
well as student tracts on Shakespeare, based on his wealth of
teaching experience.
We can only imagine now what was still to come.
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