Hearing Eye

This is the second part of a long poem in bilingual form, with text and drawings by Stephen Watts and translation into Italian by Cristina Viti. Inspired by the migration of the author’s grandfather from the Italian Alps to London, the poem opens into a deep and lyrical meditation on language, memory and place.

“The Blue Bag [by Stephen Watts] isn’t like any other book of British contemporary poetry I’ve read. The poems have an ecstatic tone. They feel most of all like praise poems, whether Watts is writing about wild landscape, encounters with his often poor and lonely Whitechapel neighbours, or a local tree.”

“He is among the most fine and subtle writers I know on the relations of landscape and mind…”