The Sense of Place in the Cederberg Poems of Stephen Watson

This study is focused on Stephen Watson’s Cederberg mountain range poetry. It encompasses 12 poems published between 1986 and 2007. Watson provides a unique record of poetry of the Cederberg which is an iconic mountain range in the south-western Cape of South Africa. The methodology involved an analysis of the sense of place of the poems using map interpretation and three landscape and place theorists. I was particularly interested in the specifics of the sense of place, derived from landscape and place analysis, and associated sightlines in the poems. The findings show that the poet’s work reflects a deep understanding of sense of place, both in terms of consciousness and observation.