Richard Watt: One Poem

Richard Watt

Richard was born in Tayside and writes in Scots dialect and in English. A journalist for a daily newspaper, he keeps unsociably late hours, in which he scribbles for work and pleasure. He studied English and philosophy at university, and was tutored there by Picador poet Colette Bryce. He won the Dundee poetry prize in 2004; has had work printed in Gold Dust, Fuselit and New Writing Dundee; and has read at the Dundee Literary Festival. An enthusiast about the ethical philosophy of Benedict Spinoza and the writing of Hart Crane, he has given seminars on these subjects. Richard’s favourite books are by George Douglas Brown, Franz Kafka, Philip K Dick and HP Lovecraft. His favourite poets are Aonghas MacNeacail, Hart Crane and Ezra Pound. Richard lives with Abigail and a black rabbit, Mr Eccles.

Gawain in the Green Forest

At the centre is the sun
but our man can’t mind the path.

Kids won’t play on his estate
and all that’s left is to tilt
for older, darker lakes.

At right, bronzed selkie brides
sea monsters, sirens, nix
hum their seductive centennial
as loach lap the black ink in ratio.

Tractors wallow idle in the fields,
clung to by moss and rust;
silage mires their treads, lodged inside
a corona of flecked paint — golden hair
lionised in the warming sun.

Ahead, our man finds him
like a child found static
at the 1939 world’s fair

Green knight asks if
his revenant bones
still gird the worthies round;
if tubers reach for his dead boot-soles
to aid him in his hiding from the cold.

Gawain’s answer, tough as jail
weakened by temptation to the ground –
hasten to me, sir knight
your king’s no longer in the green.