Giles Watson Biography

Giles Watson was born in Southampton, but emigrated to Australia with his parents at the age of one, and lived there for the next twenty-five years. In addition to poetry and painting, he writes essays on natural history and mediaeval visual culture, is an avid walker, photographer and amateur naturalist, and has a keen interest in theatre. His academic work has included a doctoral thesis on religion and culture in England during the Second World War. As a secondary school teacher, he has taught English, History, Drama, Sociology and Film. Much of his work is infused with his own idiosyncratic spirituality: awed by nature, steeped in history, and inspired by a quiet sense of the sacramental. He currently lives in rural Oxfordshire, where the landscape, archaeology, flora and fauna provide continual inspiration for his work. He has a daughter living in Australia.

Giles's long-standing fascination with mediaeval poetry has led to a series of paraphrasing and translation projects, including modern English versions of Pearl, The Three Dead Kings, The Anturs of Arther and the works of Dafydd ap Gwilym. He also writes poetry of his own, most of which is inspired by his local environs, and by British folklore. He has a long-standing song-writing partnership with a composer, Kathryn Wheeler. An interest in early scientific expeditions to Australia has been a further inspiration.