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.

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

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 1975-2005 is forthcoming with Prototype in autumn 2022.