“I read this book with relief that someone is writing poems like these. The music of Dawn Watson’s poems – pointy beaked, just acutely alive – feels necessary to this moment.”
ASHLEIGH YOUNG
The Stack of Owls is Getting Higher
The Emma Press (June 2019)
‘Watson’s juxtaposition of the realistic and metaphorical is ever- surprising. This short collection showcases a huge range of skills and topics, but most of all, Dawn Watson’s powerful imagination and slanted world view.’
— The London Grip
‘Watson’s poems consider positions of uncertainty as a valid and important ideological standpoint. These poems think seriously about anxiety, and rightly so, given their attention to a queer life in Northern Ireland, and to same-sex parenting […] Watson is a skilled technician. ‘Hello, I Am Alive’ demonstrates Watson’s utter ease with maintaining the long poem, with vernacular aplomb.’
— Michéal McCann, Ambit magazine
‘I read this book with gathering excitement to have found a new writer I love, and relief that someone is writing poems like these. The music of Dawn Watson’s poems – pointy-beaked, just acutely alive – feels necessary to this moment. It is a music that rises from wit, daring, and weird, beautiful yarns.’
— Ashleigh Young
‘Droll, unsettling, never dull, there is a rare effervescence to Dawn Watson’s poems which fizzes with curiosity and wit.’
— Doireann Ní Ghríofa
Dawn Watson 