Andrew Waterman

Answer


A single garden of roses, thickly wrought
red roses hoarding sun in the silence
of a low blind street end-on to a warehouse wall,
scheduled for clearance.
                                    Blistering paint,
broken panes, the other small plots abandoned
to weeds, dropped tiles, gaped blank to what
had determined this ummaculate aftermath.

Red blooms. Soft-burning still in vivid answer.





Andrew Waterman was born in London in 1940. After six years of miscellaneous jobs (including bank clerk, kitchen porter, bookshop assistant) he read English at the University of Leicester, was a postgraduate student at Oxford (Worcester College) and thereafter taught literature at the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland from 1968 to 1997. He now lives in Norwich. He has one son, Rory.

Waterman's first collection of poetry, Living Room in 1974, was a Poetry Book Society Choice. Subsequent volumes have included two Poetry Book Society Recommendations. His work has been broadcast on radio and television. He edited The Poetry of Chess (Anvil Press 1981), and has written a much literary-critical prose, on specific authors and more general topics. Andrew Waterman is a recipient of the Cholmondeley Award for Poets.

Of Andrew Waterman's Collected Poems (Carcanet 2000), which gathers within one volume his work up to that date, Marita Over wrote in Ambit: 'The "story" that emerges through these poems is moving and inspiring and the craftsmanship in its telling is superb.'

Of Waterman's most recent collection, The Captain's Swallow, also published by Carcanet, the Guardian said:

Andrew Waterman's latest volume is set among the coves and furrowed headlands of Sicily's spectacular Aeolian archipelago. Fishing boats and patron saints form just one aspect of a picture that also includes provincial elections, Juventus matches, mopeds and mobiles - and the poetry is the richer for it. There is a continuity here that seduces both poet and reader.

To read selections of poems from Andrew Waterman's books click Poems. Click Prose for pieces by him on creative whys and hows. Ongoing offers a sample of recent poems published in magazines but not yet collected. Life/Books details Waterman's career and publications, with a few crititcs' comments following book-titles. The Featured tab opens items, changed at intervals, either of Andrew Waterman's poetry or prose or of news and information. Links takes you to websites and web pages of use or interest in connection with Andrew's life and writings.

To buy Andrew Waterman's books now at his Author Page on the Carcanet website click here.

Andrew Waterman's archive - drafts and typescripts, of unpublished and abandoned as well as published poetry and prose, correspondence, personal documents and papers etc. - has been acquired by the David Wilson Library of the University of Leicester, where it is available for consultation. To link to the University of Leicester Library's 'Andrew Waterman Collection' web-page, which details the contents of the archive and the conditions of access click here.

Interview. To read 'Sparking Off: an Extended Interview with Andrew Waterman' by Rory Waterman, published online in the Summer 2010 issue of Able Muse, click here.  

If you'd like to comment on anything, ask questions, or involve Andrew Waterman in any literary activity, please use the email address at the foot of the page.