Colin has been writing, plays, stories and poetry since the late eighties. He's had plays performed professionally and otherwise in and around Liverpool, including Real Dreams, Snoopers, She-He, Call Mr Robeson. He wrote and performed agit prop with Liverpool Network theatre in the late 80s and early 90s, and had poems and stories broadcast regularly on BBC Radio Merseyside.His poetry has been published extensively in magazines and anthologies, including Ambit, Envoi, Fatchance, Interpreter's House, Orbis, Poetry Nottingham, and Smiths Knoll. He has been successful in many poetry competitions (Split the Lark, Mirehouse, Poets Anonymous, Ragged Raven, Sentinel Poetry, The New Writer), and was poet in residence in Liverpool Ropewalks in 2000 and in Kirkby Library on National Poetry Day in 2001.To help support his writing habit, he works part-time for the Liverpool Adult Learning Service, managing a community grants fund; and has taught writing for theatre, performance poetry and general creative writing for the University of Liverpool, the Workers Educational Association, the Liverpool Adult Learning Service, Liverpool Hope University and the Windows Project. He has also organised and run workshops and readers' groups for the Dead Good Poets Society in Liverpool, and run poetry sessions in Bootle and Crosby Schools.
Colin Watts was born in Staines to the sound of doodlebugs overshooting London. He trained as a town planner, but turned to community development and training in the early 1970's and adult education thereafter. Since then, he has been stepping from one ladder to the next, in a Liverpool career spanning over thirty years.