Stephen Watson

Stephen Watson (6 November 1954 – 10 April 2011) was a South African poet. Most of his poetry is about the city of Cape Town, where he lived most of his life. His schooling was at Bishops (Diocesan College) in Rondebosch. He was a professor in English at the University of Cape Town. He was also the Director of the Writing Centre there, and one of the founders of the Creative Writing Program. Creatively, he believed that poetry and literature can stand on their own and need not refer to politics, or the struggle for liberation, in order to be valid. He took a strong stand on poetic relativism, believing it was possible and desirable to differentiate between "good" and "bad" poetry - a stance that has drawn criticism. As a literary critic, Watson suggested that "South Africa is held together by a nexus of peoples 'dreaming' each other in terms of the myths that the distance between them creates."