The Monthly interviews poet and prose writer, Dawn Watson – Part 1 – Playing the long game

Do you have any early memories of being attracted to literature, writing or poetry?

My best book I bought in Bargain Books in the 1990s and I still have it – a compendium of ghost stories. People getting pulled out of bed by the feet, invisible forces. The stories really transported me. I didn’t really care much about poetry until I studied Philip Larkin at A-Level. I liked his gloomy realness which offset the surprising beauty of his images – the “arrow-shower/ sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain”. Also, he was unafraid to just say: things are rubbish.

Can you remember when you first started writing – generally – or writing poetry specifically?

I wrote my first story (a ghost story) in first year at Belfast High. I was 11 and the teacher read the whole thing out to the class. However, she did pull me up on the ending (it was all just a dream). She gave me some good advice that I’ve never forgotten – don’t trick the reader. If you manage to earn that trust, then you better keep it.

From there, I pushed on and wrote some terrible poems in my school years – one about a vending machine springs to mind. I wrote a novel in my early 20s that I never did anything with. Then, I had a blog for some years. I always considered myself a writer but never took it seriously until my thirties.

Did you get support at home?

No, to be honest. Not in terms of parents, myself as a kid. But I was lucky in that I always was backed by my brother and sister, who did support me and believe in me. They reminded me, when I needed to be reminded (which was often), that I was a writer. I was running on pure vibes for 15 years and my siblings kept me going.

Did you get support at school?

Honestly, no. Maybe that’s how it was in the nineties. I didn’t do very well in school – I never really had the home structure in place to support revision or exams. I tried to learn my biology GCSE notes by singing them to the tune of Bon Jovi’s ‘Living On a Prayer’. I was one of those kids who ‘had potential’ but never ‘pulled her socks up’. I was kind of gutted not to be made a prefect – despite the awful grades I kind of hoped teachers would see the real me.

I did have an inspiring A-Level English teacher who wore Doc Martens, had a power bob, and seemed to see my ability. She gave me a card on the last day of school that said: “First novel in the year 2000?” That meant a lot. I still have the card.

Did you go on study literature or poetry at tertiary level?

Not immediately – I didn’t get good A-Level grades, so my plan to study English at Queen’s didn’t come off. I remember running down to Admissions on the day the results were posted to plead with them. I said something like: “Hey, you don’t understand, I’m really good at English – please believe me, I just didn’t get a good exam grade”. But rules were rules.

I went into newspaper journalism, then, as seemingly the only viable career option for someone who ‘liked writing’. It was that or become a librarian, according to the school careers library. I was a journalist until my 30s when I decided to do a two-year college access course allowing me to start a degree in English with Creative Writing at QUB. I won a bursary in my third year which allowed me to do an MA in poetry after that. Then, I went straight into a PhD in poetry, which I finished in 2022 – ten years after starting the access course. Playing that sweet, sweet long game, that’s me.