The Poet: Stephen Watts

Stephen Watts was born in London in 1952: “My father’s family came from Stoke-on-Trent, my mother’s from the Swiss Italian Alps and I have cultural roots there and in Scotland.  In the early 70’s I lived on North Uist working as a shepherd and since 1976 have been working in Whitechapel in the East End of London."

"I have published two books of poetry – The Lava’s Curl and Gramsci & Caruso and edited several anthologies – Houses and Fish (a book of drawings with writing by 4 & 5 year olds), Voices of Conscience (an international anthology of censored poets), Mother Tongues (a special issue of Modern Poetry in Translation), and Music While Drowning (an anthology of German Expressionist poems).  I have read at international literary festivals, worked extensively as a writer in schools and hospitals, and currently work at the Multicultural Arts Consortium in London.

"At present I’m completing a book of long poems to be published in 2005, working of prose on Whitechapel.  I have translated some contemporary Persian poets, including Ziba Karbassi, and the Yiddish poet Avrom Stencl, and have compiled a bibliography of 20th Century poetry in English translation due to be published shortly.  Some of my poetry has been translated into Czech, Persian, Italian, Spanish, and Finnish.  My son, Miquesh, at the present time lives in Lima.”
 

On the project...

Stephen said: "I am very excited by this commission. It will require of me hard and sensitive work – always a good thing – and it has the potential to pull poetry back into close, strong contact with people’s individual lives. I feel that it can also provide an impulse to bring the passion of poetry back close to the sense of community. This commission – to create a body of work around issues of suicide in the Highlands and Islands – will, I believe, foster the engaged commit-ment and creative empathies that are basic to poetry, as to our individual and community lives. I feel very, very positive about this.

"Language, for me, is innately celebratory and both language and poetry matter a lot in our lives. I am also aware that they can be a resource for the outlet of stress and pain for us : all of us listen – or fail to listen – to each other. For me much of the poetry of living is precisely in such listening : writing poetry parallels both the balances and tensions within our lives.

"I am very much looking forward, with a calm passion, to this commission and the chance to expand on ground-breaking work, and I welcome also the possibility of returning to places in the Highlands and Islands that mean a great deal to me and that I feel are rooted in my poetry. The potential for making new work available is equally exciting: I believe strongly that real creative expression, built on a respect for individuals and the individuality of shared language, has a positive role to play in the issues and concerns of this Hi~Arts ‘Embedded Poets Project’.

Robert Livingston, Director, HI~Arts, said: ‘We’re delighted to welcome, as our first Embedded Poet, a writer of considerable standing and experience. Stephen will bring a fresh and informed perspective to this important theme.’

HI-Arts welcomes submissions from poets interested in this subject, which may be published on this website.  Please email stephen@hi-arts.co.uk with your work and contact details.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you that HI~Arts is an arts development agency. HI~Arts staff do not provide a treatment, counselling or advice service for those in crisis. If you are in crisis or feeling suicidal we urge you to seek help from your general practitioner, through a telephone help line service such as Samaritans (UK telephone number 08457 90 90 90), or by discussing your problems with a family member, friend or colleague. Further information on support services is available at the Choose Life website: http://www.chooselife.net

The Poetry of Stephen Watts

Below are some examples of Stephen Watts' previous poems:
 

FRAGMENT …

                   … And so I long for snow to
sweep across the low heights of London
from the lonely railyards and trackhuts
– London a lichen mapped on mild clays
and its rough circle without purpose –
because I remember the gap for clarity
that comes before snow in the north and
I remember the lucid air’s changing sky
and I remember the grey-black wall with
every colour imminent in a coming white
the moon rising only to be displaced and
the measured volatile calmness of after
and I remember the blue snow hummocks
the mountains of miles off in snow-light
frozen lakes – a frozen moss to stand on
where once a swarmed drifting stopped.
And I think – we need such a change,
my city and I, that may be conjured in
us that dream birth of compassion with
reason & energy merged in slow dance.

MOORLAND WITH FIRE AND SNOW

All the colours of snow imminent in the sky
                           that is coming,
black and brown obelisks in a dance of light
birds whorling white beaks in front of an 
                           unshattered curtain,
gulls whose backs become white as they spin 
                       against the breaking air,
green flecks that are owl flight in front of
                                            the storm,
fire when the prayer wheels burn in cartons
                                            of raw light,
crimson flame when mountain tenements go 
                        staggering on singed air.
This is language that is forming in my throat
revolt of burst energies from the skies of my 
                                           silence,
snows that tossed dead gulls across the moor,
in the perfect circle of dawn they are strewn 
                             about the shorelines,
in the exact geometries of morning they are 
                             bruising my veins.
Remember the tortures and the poetry, and
            the fertile crests of the white-out,
the horses of laughter, the nostrils that foam,
the sermons on barbarism, and the struggle
                       against butchered choice.
This is language that is forming from a clot
                                           in my throat,
a torch of fire out on the wasteland, a tent of
                      heat beneath the mountain,
a little drinking fountain for those abandoned
                               by language,
a spray of paint on democracy wall, democracy
                      wall that does not exist.
Moorland with snow and fire : a far-off burnt
   headland has stood up in my blood – it is
       trickling its crystals down the garnet
                                     air.

PRAISE POEM FOR NORTH UIST

Blood of my blood and you are on the hill
                   of Eaval and you go
brightflame are the waves among the islands
and the gannet sound that comes on the sea 

And you are on the cold moors of Liernish
                     and you go.
The straight line is the labyrinth memory
a steady unbearable decline from purging
                                    winter.

Love of my love and you are stood near
            the blue rooms of the sea
colour is multitude in the blizzard above
and in the bombs of air since that time

And you are on the wild coast of the Minches 
                                and you go,
great is the joy in the hearts of those people
and the anxiety that is pain in their limbs.

It was to there I went and to there I shall
                  return if an image
takes me, if a blizzard takes my spirit, to
the eastern shore of a western island and
          the placid edge of the sea

Love of my love and you are stood on the little
           hill of Beinn na ‘h-Aire
and the sea goes to St. Kilda and Cuillin and Mull
and the sea rises through all the intricate stains 
                                   of your heart

And you go among the small houses of Claddach
    strong is the kindness of those hurt people,
displacement of life and joblessness on those
                                             shores : 
they gave you food - though you gave them none.

And you are sat in the back room of the black 
                                 house,
damage and the smile of kindness on herself
and the burnt humour of his limping face;
they gave you food – though you did not ask.

And you are on Grimsay at the big house calm
           in generosity, and the lady
of the house is like a young girl again with joy
at the coming of her daughters from America 
                            and Lochcarron

And you are at the shielings towards Locheport
       whoop of swan, heron and piled stone,
and their land is harsh and their townships 
           cleared and their children gone.

And you are among the people of Grimsay, the 
           bright roofs of their reticence
those who came back from the sea and those 
                          who did not come back. 
 

And they are coming, postmen lobstermen men
from the small shapes of the fields and the peats,
from the muds and the sands and the quicksand,
coming, coming, and which of them now will
                                            return ?

If I were to sing and if I were to put music 
                                to my song,
and to dance and drum the piled air, what 
         praise would I not put on Uist

What praise and what harshness would I not 
                       put into my singing
measure of breath in the blizzard of these times
       but when have I ever finished a song!

Rising in a perfect curve upon the world’s more 
                     perfect curve
in silent anger through the coma of this world
the mountain buried upright by the sea calls
                                 out to me.

My tongue moves in a dry mouth and I feel it
                                                swell.
It is the full sea come steering down beating 
        song against generous hard cliff.

And if my mind were to go out to one man 
                       generous in his justice
then I would see the whole island with its
tongue exposed on the burnt edge of song.

I know how song arrives, that it comes with
                   breath, that it is
a fire out on the waste, that the mouth is dry
and pain is laughter and I look for no excuse
                               in my divided words.

And I am standing on the white cliff, I am
          on the other side of the mountain,
and the young cormorants slide into the lake,
sink and rise and sink in the exuberance of 
                           their wingbeat.

And I am on the other side of the mountain
                blood of my blood
there were no-one ever goes, a white sun only,
the lobster boat, the sheep man and the others
                               I must not mention.

I am among the moor crests of that marvellous
                      coast and I go
rock and timbers of the bandaged sun, and then
those friends who enter from the coma crests
                                  of their sleeps.

And I am there and there and there, as if 
         from Tigharry to Bagh Morag,
as if from the coast of Lochportain to the strand
           of Baleshare, North Uist was a city

Not an city of evil – but a haven – a city out 
           on the wide spaces of the moor
in the wide generosities of those hearts. Stand
up now from the slow dark sessions of your
                                  sleep.

Stand at the fank, on the hill-slope and you can 
    see Carinish and the blight of Benbecula
(for the jobs it provided were not those that were
       needed) you can see Heisker and Monach
and the whole spread of land and shattered sea

I am there as if Paible were full of yellow iris
         amid the stooks of your happiness, 
as if I could reach put and put hands on St. Kilda
as if the waves breaking white on white shores
           were a sea rising about my heart.

Here I am far enough removed to reflect and 
                     compose my mind,
to call up the single image of that wide earth,
and the broken thought of its dark shining
                                 world.

Friends arrive, and they tread the abyss of 
                      this silenced age.
The mountain wall is down and gone, the
shattered crown and raw pastures of the 
                                             slope.

I will not use irony in this poem, though it
      copes and helps, that it won’t be a  
                       fatal implement,
that I won’t be derelicted by a broken face.

I am stood on the lake, its steep and shattered
          ice; I am stood on the rocks and
a rucked moon creases the neat full sea. I am
stood on autumn shores to watch the world 
                                go into darkness.
 

What mists and shattered land and plausible fog.
I shall not use irony to character those people.
A face speaks, a numb sun, a slow stain that 
                       moves across the sea.

I am stood on the rocks and out of the dense
          fogs of the landing stage
come sliding the boats of my hoard and my
                                  happiness.

And though I would have wished it to have been 
          a community beneath that mountain,
beneath that mountain and over the whole of Uist
           from sea to air to sea and it wasn’t

It was to the mountain I went, stepping out and
              in at the blue door - and
I would make this clear for those who wouldn’t
                      care to know :

It wasn’t the loveliness of that land, hill and
                     moor and inlet of the sea,
that took my mind and my mouth’s spirit and 
        made life’s compulsion strong in me

It was not loveliness alone that took the ship 
           of my song and my word horde
and spilt them easily, tilting snows across 
                                   a superb sky.

I searched the belly, the face, the mountain.
       I asked with my eyes and heard the
                    ‘Yes’ ‘Yes’ ‘Yes’
spring that follows the volcanic days of 
                                winter

Damage and hurt, the measure of faith, and
                       edge of sight,
knowledge and speech put through my veins,
the smell of rain and generosity on a harmed 
                                  face.

I have stood on the height of Berneray with 
           the day coming over the sea.
I have taken the stone into my store : for
                  what more can I ask ?

I have stood on the hill of Eaval and have
                       gone and been lifted,
and felt the laughter and yielding sobriety of
the ground. To what more can I lay stress 
                                and claim ?

And Uist has appeared to me like a boat, stern of 
          Griminish from the prow of Eaval,
and if it could drive us from pampered government
and if it could bring them to job-fulfilled shores – 
          but when would that be likely.

I have stood on the slopes of the hill, the huge
                      circle of its clear day,
the lucid algebra of its dialects, and sight that
           is the labyrinth of a straight line.

And from the slight peak of Beinn na’h-Aire I
will be seeing Benbecula no longer a crater but
            a set of kitchen gardens worked
                           around Nunton.

I am standing on the wide sands of those shores
           and I am racing and I am still and
                             I am there
and the mountain still animates this dark-shining
                                                         world.

And it is to there I shall return, if peace or an 
                ice blizzard take my spirit,
if a face speaks, a numb sun. And I will walk in
the door between the shoulders of that house.

I will walk in the door, blue chalk and poise
                    of the sun,
between the shoulders of the island, its rich turf
of time, ruined laughter and speech, and the
            raw procession of those lives.

Climbing snowfalls and fences I will go at 
           the mountain’s blade of bone.
Their sudden quiets and stillnesses, flame-birth
of compassion, the raw pastures of their bodies
                                   and the fields.

And now they are coming - those who teach their
           language and those who fish,
those who sheep or who shirk and those who wage
their lives against nothing, and those who return 
                           and then go missing.
 

And I will not worry at my words’ extravagance
    (if they are cool houses spilled round with
                                 bright air)
only whether my words are real, only whether my
            rawness will become too inward.

And I give no excuse for the blind division of
          my words; nor do they
need any. Nor you, those generous people, the
mountain, whose banners are the sea’s and
                                   they are mine.
 

Stephen Watts  Spring 1976 or 1977  (Whitechapel)

A VERY LITTLE LIGHT

(‘Uma pequenina luz’ Jorge de Sena) 

Simply for the breath of staying alive
            I should talk to you,
simply to pass some words across a table
                        as bread or oil,
and not have them die in me. Or
                                                die in you. 
                                      And as I
measure by measure slowly toss the crisp
herbs of speech over towards your face,
a very little light will come into my eyes,
            a very little light
will glow out at you and enter your eyes
and will be returned to me and calm our
            mouths against duplicity.
And when all the bitter fratricides are 
            piled up about us
this little light, this tiny flame out on the
                                waste patch,
this wind-shaped tent that is your eye
                with its slow torch,
this flickered heart with its ventricles
                       that beat and pump,
will provoke in us a bonfire and the will 
                                 to live,
and even from the embers there will glow
            a little light, a very little
                      shining light,
as we pass some words across the table,
            simply for the breath of 
                      staying alive.
 

All poetry on this web page is (c) Stephen Watts, and may not be reproduced without the written consent of the author.