Into the Blue Wavelengths

Roderick Watson is a poet of introspection and retrospection. In the rich distillation of his language, the images of a remembered picnic, a Tuscan encounter, an out-of-date postcard, a holiday cottage -all these assume an iconic intensity in the quiet deliberation of this verse. Roderick Watson is a poet who ponders rather than postures. Each one of these poems, in his accomplished Scots as well as in English, is a pleasure to read, to re-read and to remember. --Philip Hobsbaum

Roderick Watson Roderick Watson was born and educated in Aberdeen. He graduated in 1965 and taught at the University of Victoria in Canada, before going to Cambridge to do research on the poetry of Hugh MacDiarmid. His books include Hugh MacDiarmid, The Literature of Scotland, The Poetry of Scotland and (with Martin Gray) The Penguin Book of the Bicycle. He teaches at the University of Stirling where he specialises in Scottish literature and has written and lectured widely in this field. Roderick Watson was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Writer's Bursary and was one of the 'Heretics' performers in Edinburgh in the 1970s. Previous collections include Trio (New York, 1971) and True History on the Walls (Edinburgh, 1977) and his poetry has since appeared in numerous magazines and many anthologies. He has read his own work in Scotland and Europe and works with creative writing classes, schools and writers' groups. His other interests include cycling, motorcycling and modern jazz.