Season’s Fever
Stephen Watt
Outdoors holds the allure of risqué postcards
scrawled in a lamented one’s handwriting.
The inexplicably white skyline
is franked by kites and magpies
and tides of starlings
aerating the yawning shafts
of abandoned city buildings.
In burnt slippers, I traverse the apple field gardens,
sharing strawberries with squirrels
while the tonsils of angels
clang inside Glasgow University’s chapel.
How wonderful it must be to be religious.
It is Sunday after all. There is tennis
and cricket
and football
where the air hums in bees mother tongue
and in the birch trees, rattling red chaffinches
compete with squabbling blue tits
for branches departed by swifts
in their lifelong hunt after the consummate sun.
I breathe in the season’s fever,
shouting loudly as the tanned leather
oscillates between goalmouths.
The vast sound of my own voice catches me by surprise
but is drowned out by the melee rising around me
so I proudly curse vulgarities
into the compact pavilion’s ground
which red ants secrete like dabbed ash
beneath the floorboards.
We are in this together. Drunk on ceremony.
Smoke spouts from nearby chimneys
and stars poke holes in the night sky,
consigning shards of ebony ravens
to fall upon us.
I catch one feather, like the moulting
dress of a Moulin Rouge dancer,
then clasp it tightly to my chest.
This is a gift, a scent
slipped inside my pillowcase,
of a beauty existing outside my small room
but a scream spikes from the laundry shelter
and the nurses scatter in trajectories
akin to bats at dusk, bolting doors shut
like they will stave off
the threat from World War Two.
Commentary
Due to my background in writing football poetry for both Dumbarton FC and Nutmeg Magazine, the Scottish Football Periodical, I was given excerpts from the Gartnavel archive which entailed sports undertaken at the hospital grounds.
As the poem would necessitate the area outside the hospital, I visited Gartnavel (for a dog walk) one rainy morning to gather some thoughts and notes about both the layout and biodiversity which coexist.
I let my eyes scan the immediate foreground, but also sought details in what lay beyond the hedgerows, and considered the date of the second photograph I was provided with – 1939.
I wanted to ensure that the football I referred to was of the correct mould; that references to Moulin Rouge were within the correct timeframe; and the creatures which live in the grounds were correct and present in the areas I was choosing to write about. The image, being on the cusp of the Second World War, leant itself to how I wanted the poem to conclude – and this was an important point.
The peace and reflection which seams the poem were intended to provide a feeling of tranquillity and contentment. The line referring to the “vast sound of my own voice catches me by surprise” was planned to shake the poem awake – to give the reader meaning to the piece rather than a simple commentary of what the patient was seeing. Sport is supposed to offer stimulation – and the secret of swearing and shouting, and enjoying it, is something which many newcomers to this sport find themselves pleasured by. The ‘shock’ of the outside world infiltrating the patient’s enjoyment is a bolt out of the blue, and only known to me as the writer by the date of the image which I had been sent.
I would finally add that Gartnavel is somewhere I came a few years ago to visit friends and family who were staying in the psychiatric wing. I believe that trying to relate to the trauma engulfing their lives would have appeared insincere, ergo I opted to take the route of positivity/recovery, up to that final line because no one truly knows what lies ahead of them.
[Photographs of sports day and football team at Gartnavel, 1930s, HB13/15/232]
Stephen Watt is the author of five poetry collections.
Since being appointed Poet-in-Residence at Dumbarton Football Club in 2016, Stephen has also held titles which include the Hampden Collection Poet-in-Chief, Federation of Writers (Scotland) Makar, and Nutmeg Football Magazine Poetry Editor.
Stephen has edited three poetry collections: Horsepower (celebrating James Watt) for the FWS (Federation of Writers Scotland), Ashes to Activists (celebrating Joe Strummer) for the Joe Strummer Foundation, and Pogo Serotonin (celebrating Pete Shelley) for Buzzcocks.
Stephen’s work has been displayed in churches in Germany, galleries in France, the metro transport in USA, and turned into a mural at Dumbarton FC. He was the winner of the Stanza International Digital Poetry Prize, Poetry Rivals slam winner, first prize in the Tartan Treasures award, and inaugural winner of the Liverpool Poetry Prize which was selected by Roger McGough.
Season’s Fever
Stephen Watt
Outdoors holds the allure of risqué postcards
scrawled in a lamented one’s handwriting.
The inexplicably white skyline
is franked by kites and magpies
and tides of starlings
aerating the yawning shafts
of abandoned city buildings.
In burnt slippers, I traverse the apple field gardens,
sharing strawberries with squirrels
while the tonsils of angels
clang inside Glasgow University’s chapel.
How wonderful it must be to be religious.
It is Sunday after all. There is tennis
and cricket
and football
where the air hums in bees mother tongue
and in the birch trees, rattling red chaffinches
compete with squabbling blue tits
for branches departed by swifts
in their lifelong hunt after the consummate sun.
I breathe in the season’s fever,
shouting loudly as the tanned leather
oscillates between goalmouths.
The vast sound of my own voice catches me by surprise
but is drowned out by the melee rising around me
so I proudly curse vulgarities
into the compact pavilion’s ground
which red ants secrete like dabbed ash
beneath the floorboards.
We are in this together. Drunk on ceremony.
Smoke spouts from nearby chimneys
and stars poke holes in the night sky,
consigning shards of ebony ravens
to fall upon us.
I catch one feather, like the moulting
dress of a Moulin Rouge dancer,
then clasp it tightly to my chest.
This is a gift, a scent
slipped inside my pillowcase,
of a beauty existing outside my small room
but a scream spikes from the laundry shelter
and the nurses scatter in trajectories
akin to bats at dusk, bolting doors shut
like they will stave off
the threat from World War Two.
Commentary
Due to my background in writing football poetry for both Dumbarton FC and Nutmeg Magazine, the Scottish Football Periodical, I was given excerpts from the Gartnavel archive which entailed sports undertaken at the hospital grounds.
As the poem would necessitate the area outside the hospital, I visited Gartnavel (for a dog walk) one rainy morning to gather some thoughts and notes about both the layout and biodiversity which coexist.
I let my eyes scan the immediate foreground, but also sought details in what lay beyond the hedgerows, and considered the date of the second photograph I was provided with – 1939.
I wanted to ensure that the football I referred to was of the correct mould; that references to Moulin Rouge were within the correct timeframe; and the creatures which live in the grounds were correct and present in the areas I was choosing to write about. The image, being on the cusp of the Second World War, leant itself to how I wanted the poem to conclude – and this was an important point.
The peace and reflection which seams the poem were intended to provide a feeling of tranquillity and contentment. The line referring to the “vast sound of my own voice catches me by surprise” was planned to shake the poem awake – to give the reader meaning to the piece rather than a simple commentary of what the patient was seeing. Sport is supposed to offer stimulation – and the secret of swearing and shouting, and enjoying it, is something which many newcomers to this sport find themselves pleasured by. The ‘shock’ of the outside world infiltrating the patient’s enjoyment is a bolt out of the blue, and only known to me as the writer by the date of the image which I had been sent.
I would finally add that Gartnavel is somewhere I came a few years ago to visit friends and family who were staying in the psychiatric wing. I believe that trying to relate to the trauma engulfing their lives would have appeared insincere, ergo I opted to take the route of positivity/recovery, up to that final line because no one truly knows what lies ahead of them.
[Photographs of sports day and football team at Gartnavel, 1930s, HB13/15/232]
Stephen Watt is the author of five poetry collections.
Since being appointed Poet-in-Residence at Dumbarton Football Club in 2016, Stephen has also held titles which include the Hampden Collection Poet-in-Chief, Federation of Writers (Scotland) Makar, and Nutmeg Football Magazine Poetry Editor.
Stephen has edited three poetry collections: Horsepower (celebrating James Watt) for the FWS (Federation of Writers Scotland), Ashes to Activists (celebrating Joe Strummer) for the Joe Strummer Foundation, and Pogo Serotonin (celebrating Pete Shelley) for Buzzcocks.
Stephen’s work has been displayed in churches in Germany, galleries in France, the metro transport in USA, and turned into a mural at Dumbarton FC. He was the winner of the Stanza International Digital Poetry Prize, Poetry Rivals slam winner, first prize in the Tartan Treasures award, and inaugural winner of the Liverpool Poetry Prize which was selected by Roger McGough.