Twenty-Four Hours

(These are the hours of the day, between the earth and the air)

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Twenty-Four Hours is a remarkable prose poem meditating on time, memory, and childhood, and one of Stephen Watts’ earliest works. Written in the mid-1970s and published here for the first time, Twenty-Four Hours is an unforgettable burst of lyricism — melancholic yet playful, allusive yet sharp — and a significant work from one of the UK’s most treasured poets.

Published in collaboration with Prototype.

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...marvellous is the smell of rain, marvellous the gentle eyes of the foal, the old man’s bloodshot mirrors of childhood...

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Stephen Watts is a poet and translator born in London in 1952, where he still lives and works. He has published seven books of poetry, including Republic of Dogs / Republic of Birds (Test Centre, 2016; Prototype, 2020), Ancient Sunlight (Enitharmon, 2014), and Gramsci & Caruso, a selected poems with Italian translation by Cristina Viti (MilleGru, Monza, 2014). The Republics, a film directed by Huw Wahl based on Republic Of Dogs / Republic Of Birds, premiered in 2020. His collected poems, Journeys Across Breath, is forthcoming with Prototype in autumn 2022.