ISBN: 978-1-915108-17-3
Publication Date: 20 February 2024
Nuala Watt’s poems lead us through the bureaucratic labyrinth of government assessment, the anxious joy of expecting a child and, with verve and originality, the realities of being a disabled parent. The book isn’t only about disability though. It’s about authenticity, justice, passion – life in dynamic fullness – conveyed in verse that is formally astute and spiritually attuned. It’s about anger, hope, frustration, love, and “how to take up a life and walk away.”
Receiving My Poems in Braille
My thoughts have arrived in the post.
I don’t know which ones.
I think they may be cyclists in the dark.
I was a bright child. Nobody else touched sound,
so I shuddered away from the raised dots
that captured my name. Braille cells.
At playtime I was an empty space
among footballs. I stayed bilingual
for only minutes, afraid to be trapped
in a lonely alphabet.
Now silence arrives, enveloped. The dense paper
spins in my hands. Is it upside down?
Is this the love poem in which I’m a cobra?
My thoughts have arrived in the post.
I guess I’m somewhere, embossed.
*
“Sit down before you read these poems. Open the window. Open the door. There’s a bolt of pure electric coming for you. Nuala Watt looks without flinching, and then crafts her vision with wit, tenacity and rhythm. I’m in awe of this work. It’s kaleidoscopic, disturbing, revealing: these poems challenge the white space of the page and wake it up, shake it until it gives back something that’s beyond the constraints of society’s myopic ways of thinking and categorising. Daring, skilful, urgent – I’m already impatient to see what this poet does next.”—Alyson Hallett
“Watt’s words glow. This is a collection that morphs and moves like glass – a body reforming, reshaping, refracting.”
—Jen Campbell
The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish by Nuala Watt
Obol
You blank the sanctioned surfaces of toys –
soft, squishy, made deliberately safe –
in favour of torn paper or cat fluff,
food wrappers, whoknowswhats and houseless keys.
You bounce towards our corner chaoses,
ensconced for many years. I babyproof
wild floors as best I can, but stuff, stuff, stuff,
slow shoddy reflexes, haphazard eyes.
It’s half my life since I felt this disabled.
What if I miss ten pence? The small change locks
your windpipe. You go flop. You travel care
of Charon, the ethereal curmudgeon.
My partial sight sends you across the Styx
and as your mother I have paid your fare.
*
Sounds
I once heard a river as a car,
hovered on a kerb to let the breeze pass.
Traffic is each walker’s indrawn breath.
Cyclists make the darkness move nonstop.I walk on my ears,
the road changing shape as I eavesdrop.*
Disabled Person’s Travel Card
Council, council, let me on the bus
That you let me on last week.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus
For we don’t know where you live.
So off I went to get proof of address
And I thought I’d sorted out the mess
But the council tore it up.Council, council let me on the bus
That you let me on last week.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus
For we need a doctor’s note.
So I got them a note to make it clear
That I’m still disabled, like last year.
But the council tore it up.Council, council, let me on the bus
That you let me on last week.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus.
We need two sick notes, not one.
The neurologist said I know you know
That cerebral palsy won’t just go.
Still, here’s a form to tell them so.
But the council tore it up.Council, council, let me on the bus
With my lifelong reasons why.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus
For your picture isn’t straight.
So I sent a note to my MSP
And he wrote a poem in praise of me.
But the council tore it up.Council, council, let me on the bus
With my lifelong reasons why.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus
For you’re trying to rip us off.
I showed the form to my sister-in-law
And we typed all night till our nerves were raw
But the council tore it up.Council, council, let me on the bus
With my pile of paperwork.
Oh no, Ms Watt, you can’t go on the bus.
We require a note from God.
So I went to church and knelt to pray.
God sent me a letter the very next day.
But the council tore it up.Council, council, stop. I’ve had enough.
I’ve had all that I can stand.
Oh good. Your application went
Exactly as we planned.*
Nuala Watt is a disability activist and Quaker. She has taught English Literature at the University of Glasgow. Her poems have appeared on BBC Radio and in magazines including Bad Lilies, Ink, Sweat and Tears, and Wordgathering. She views poetry as a form of activism and a method of thinking. The Department of Work and Pensions Assesses a Jade Fish is her first full collection.