Mini Autobiography

Autobiographical Notes by Greg Watson, March 2024

I was born here in the capital city [Saint Paul, MN] on All Saints Day in 1970. When I was very young our mother tried to kill herself, and was nearly successful. She was loaded up with barbiturates and given extensive rounds of ECT, what they used to call shock treatments. My half-siblings and I were placed in foster care, with my older brother and I staying together. 

Dad was non-existent. I met him when I was ten and my mom was taking him to court for support. I guess he was curious. Then he was over it. 

We bounced around a lot from place to place because we were poor. Sometimes we stayed with family or friends of friends. Everything was always very uncertain, which caused me to become withdrawn. I was the perpetual new kid in school and learned to keep to myself.

When I was 14, my mother shipped me out of state to stay with relatives.

I was sent back at 15, then my mother sent me packing for good when I was 17. I had to find an apartment and a full-time job before my senior year of high school began. I somehow managed to graduate, the only person in my family to do so. 

High school is where I began writing poetry, doing so for myself, and not sharing it with others. 

In 2003, my brother was murdered. The book Things You Will Never See Again is dedicated to his memory.

In 2015 my daughter was born. It's given me both unconditional love for someone else, and a sense of purpose to my life. 

I am not interested in being overly clever or ironic with my poems. I write about love and death, the multi-generational trauma within families, the Finnish-American experience of my ancestors, and being a single father in a violent, dangerous, and uncertain age. 

Currently, I am working on a series of grief and remembrance poems for the woman I lived with for over a decade in my youth. She taught me a lot, and I want to honor her.

She died suddenly at the age of 55. 

I can't imagine a life without writing poems. Poetry has been, and continues to be, a life raft. It is not hyperbole to say that poetry has saved my life. When I write, I am given back as best I can to the thing that has given so much to me.