Rebecca Watts

Rebecca Watts is a poet, literary critic and editor. Her debut collection, The Met Office Advises Caution (Carcanet, 2016), was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and was shortlisted for the 2017 Seamus Heaney Centre First Collection Poetry prize. Her second collection, Red Gloves, was published by Carcanet in 2020. In 2019, Rebecca edited Elizabeth Jennings: New Selected Poems (Carcanet), introducing a new generation of readers to one of the twentieth century’s best-loved poets. As a critic, she has contributed essays and reviews to the TLS and PN Review, and is known for her 2018 polemic ‘The Cult of the Noble Amateur’, which sparked widespread debate about contemporary trends in poetry.

As a freelance editor and tutor, Rebecca supports poets and nonfiction writers at all stages of their careers to improve their writing and develop their skills. Her work is underpinned by her conviction that writing is an act of communication: an offering, across time and space, from one human to another. Choosing the most expressive form and language to convey an idea or an experience is the writer’s fundamental skill — one that is developed through practice, experimentation, wide reading and careful observation.

Rebecca has collaborated with visual artists and composers, and completed poetry commissions from the BBC, the Polar Museum and Addenbrooke’s Hospital. Her awards include residencies at Hawthornden Castle and Gladstone’s Library, and grants from the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative, the Society of Authors and Arts Council England. She is currently working on poems, creative essays and songs.