Eungedup: A Wetland Summer Diary

by Giles Watson

274 pages, Paperback

Published January 6, 2026

About the author

Born in Southampton, Giles emigrated to Australia in infancy, and lived there for twenty-five years. His later experiences - in County Durham, Buckinghamshire, the Isles of Scilly and Oxfordshire - steeped his writing in British landscapes, history, archaeology, flora and fauna. In addition to poetry and fiction, he has written essays on the folklore of natural history and mediaeval visual culture. He is an avid walker, photographer and amateur naturalist. Much of his work is infused with a love of nature, a fascination for history, and a quiet sense of the spirit of place. He now lives in Albany, Western Australia, and enjoys collaborations with musicians (Kathryn Wheeler, Simone Keane) and artists (Buffarches, John Lincoln and Martin Williamson). An avid fascination for the interplay between text and image is a trademark of his work. His most recent projects have been the libretto and novel for MIMMA: a Musical of War and Friendship in collaboration with composer Ron Siemiginowski, and a book of lockdown poems, A Glister of Leaves.

Eungedup: A Wetland Summer Diary, a poetic exploration of a wild space in southern Western Australia, and an account of Giles's struggle with fibromyalgia, is due to be published by Fremantle Press in January 2026.

"He has a wonderful sensibility for the layered British landscape and for a kind of bright darkness."
- Vahni Capildeo
"Giles Watson's subjects and his poems are very much alike—wonders too little known... He writes not only of what he sees, feels, and has tasted... but of the soil that clings to these things—soil composed of tales about them, dense, ancient and complex as peat; history that surrounds them, be they small as a spore or large and unmapped as the insides of a certain tree; reputation fearsome, musty, and beloved. Always, and unusually for one who writes, he stands away from the centre of attention..."
- Anna Tambour

Reviews

[Stelly T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Like the mysterious track that leads the poet to the open waters of a secluded wetland, 'Eungedup - a wetland summer diary' seduced me right from its heartbreaking prelude.

We've all known places untouched by human development, where we can go to breathe only to find it destroyed one day. Giles Watson's despair is palpable as he describes losing place after place. He asks if Eungedup could now be the place where he can connect with the natural world. Will it be saved?

This extraordinary publication includes Watson's hand-drawn maps and bird silhouettes as chapter markers for the four indigenous seasons he spent visiting the wetland. Deeply personal diary entries focusing on the his health and the yearning to feel well again, juxtapose the beauty and wonder that is Eungedup.

A love for the birds and insects who inhabit the wetland is conveyed through rare, zen-like meditations in various poetic styles. It's as if the poet's yet-to-be diagnosed illness is helping him attune to a world beyond human, a welcome delirium, immersed in the wild world of a dragonfly, a reed warbler, a bird of prey or the most elusive of all wetland birds - the bittern.

Watson clearly breathes poetry, each poem brought forth in the flow of observation and absorption. It feels as if he is constructing his own web with these poems, both delicately and fiercely for his own survival.

Giles Watson has fallen in love with a fragile wetland, a love that is contagious, for I too am now in love with Eungedup.

This is a deeply spiritual publication that teaches without preaching, and gives with a generous, vulnerable grace.