J. S. Watts
Bio:
J.S.Watts’ poetry, short stories and book reviews appear in a wide variety of publications in Britain, Canada, Australia and the States including Acumen, Envoi, Mslexia and Orbis and have been broadcast on BBC and Independent Radio. One of her poems, recently published in the U.S. magazine Fantastique Unfettered, has rather excitingly been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. J.S. has been Poetry Reviews Editor for Open Wide Magazine and Poetry Editor for Ethereal Tales. Her debut poetry collection, Cats and Other Myths, is published by Lapwing Publications. It is a collection that finds contemporary relevance in the echoes of myth and legend and the mythic in the day to day world around us. Her first novel, a work of literary fiction with a mythic edge and currently titled A Darker Moon, is due out from Vagabondage press in autumn 2012. For further details see: www.jswatts.co.uk You can also find her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/J.S.Watts.page.
Why she writes: I breath, therefore I write. It's almost as simple as that. I love words and I've written since childhood without a significant break. Yes, there have been fallow periods, but it's never been long before that internal bell has started to chime again and the words have tumbled out onto paper, sometimes as poetry, sometimes as short stories and two and a half times now as novels. The first of these, "A Darker Moon", is being published by the US publisher Vagabondage Press in autumn 2012. The second is out there looking for an agent (you can read the first five chapters at http://www.authonomy.com/books/37742/witchlight/read-book/.) The third is still a work in progress. These days I also review other people's writing. It's a joy (usually), but of itself it doesn't stop the internal bell from chiming; only fresh, creative writing does that.
As an English writer, living in the UK, I give poetry and short story readings across the country and have been lucky enough to have performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. I enjoy performing and find it very rewarding, but it's the written word that calls out to me, again and again and again.
Dead Certainty
Only from the dead can certainty grow.
Those of us who remain behind are too irresolute,
too inconstant to leave a mark that is permanent or true.
Our patterns change, contradict and shift.
Who can believe us when tomorrow we will be other?
It is the dead alone who offer consistency,
a changeless image etched with the acid of their leaving
into our own mutability.
They, our sole constant, show us the truth,
both theirs and ours.
J.S.Watts
As displayed as part of the 2012 “Not the Oxford Literary Festival”
Sleepless
Child like, you can sleep anywhere, anytime.
Oblivious to all but your body's rest;
The untroubled sleep of the unknowing.
You lie beside me,
Semi-foetal, closed in on yourself.
Strange, that one so giving when awake
Is so miserly of himself when asleep.
Your breathing, rhythmic, gentle,
Your own self-fulfilling lullaby.
I modulate my breath to yours,
Hoping to hear the same berceuse
On which you now drift,
But your harmonies remain unknown to me.
Tonight, as on other nights,
You have left me to go I know not where.
For I am a stranger to your alien land
And may not pass through its portals of sleep.
I am left without, in the grey-ash wilderness
Of the waking night,
Mourning your loss and fearful
Of the nightmares that taunt my waking.
From the poetry collection Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts
Vase of Daffodils
Bright enough to burn
Into a bleakly urban Tuesday morning -Vase of yellow sunshine on my window sill.
Brewery sketched greyly behind
Is not redeemed, however.
Opened during the night,
Their faces now crane upwards
Towards Mother Sun
As she peers downwards
Through concrete fingers.
Charm and pathos mixed.
What price such effort
When beauty is already
Severed from purpose?
Theirs is a brief moment
Without perpetuity.
Now is given up
In favour of a posterity
Already gone.
Purposefully purposeless,
They earn a certain dignity
And in cauterising today's pain
Who is to say
That they lack meaning.
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From the poetry collection Cats and Other Myths by J.S.Watts
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