Poet. Filmmaker. Musician.
About
Roseanne Watt is a writer, filmmaker and musician from Shetland. Her dual-language debut collection, Moder Dy, was published by Polygon in May 2019, after receiving the prestigious Edwin Morgan Poetry Award for Scottish poets under 30. Moder Dy subsequently received both an Eric Gregory and Somerset Maugham Award in 2020, and was named joint-winner of the Highland Book Prize 2019.
In 2019, Roseanne completed a funded doctorate from the University of Stirling in the disciplines of creative writing and filmmaking. Her research project, ‘Aa My Mindin: moving through loss in the poetic literary tradition of Shetland’ received AHRC funding, as part of the Scottish Graduate School for the Arts and Humanities. She also holds an MLitt in Creative Writing and a BA Hons in English and Film Studies, also from the University of Stirling.
Roseanne is currently poetry editor for the online literary journal The Island Review. She also performs in the bands Lukkie Minnie and Wulver, where she plays fiddle, vocals and (occasionally) guitar.
Awards
Eric Gregory Award 2020
Somerset Maugham 2020
Highland Book Prize 2019
(joint winner)
Edwin Morgan Poetry Award 2018
Aesthetica Creative Writing Award 2018
(runner up)
RSPB Mersehead Artist in Residence 2016
Out-Spoken Poetry Prize 2015
(Poetry in Film)
AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership 2015
AHRC Professional Preparation Masters 2014
Carnegie Vacation Scholarship 2012
Praise for Moder Dy
“To some extent, a debut poetry collection will always be an act of navigation, with the poet as pathfinder. Moder Dy, however, the first book of poems from Shetlander Roseanne Watt, is an extraordinarily intricate and multi-layered exercise in literary triangulation… Poetry books are rarely described as unputdownable. This one is.”
— Roger Cox, The Scotsman
“In the same way as Watt spells and respells the places of her memory, the language she uses is extremely private and yet communal. The identity of Shetlandic … assumes the hues of an intimate history. This is the core of the knowledge in Moder Dy – the awareness of the distance between the private and the public, as well as of the points in which they overlap; the inner knowledge of the spaces in between.”
— Marina Martino, The Scores
“Watt’s poems are entirely and unadornedly human. They also explore life beyond the human, moving meaningfully and flexibly between the two rooms of Shaetlan and English … Archibald MacLeish resonantly concluded ‘Ars Poetica’ with ‘A poem should not mean / But be’. Watt’s poems make a false dichotomy of MacLeish’s disjunction: they both mean and be.’”
— Ian Brown, The Bottle Imp
Recent Blog Posts
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October 2020
- Oct 31, 2020 Shetland Moon Lore Oct 31, 2020