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Featured Radio
Air Date: Tuesday, September 24th, 2024
Station: 90.3 FM KFAI.org
Greg Watson reads selections and talks with Lynette Reini-Grandell and Liz Olds about his latest familial-centered poetry collection released one week prior - Stars Unseen.
Featured Press
Duluth News-Tribune Fall Reading Roundup
DULUTH — When your leaf-peeping hike is over and you've survived that haunted corn maze, fall is the perfect season to crack a book and enjoy the great indoors. Here are five recent titles of special interest to Northlanders.
THURSDAY, Oct 17th, 2024
Stars Unseen
Greg Watson's poetry collection, a product of Duluth's Holy Cow! Press, just hit shelves last month. The St. Paul writer's Finnish heritage is central to these poems, which touch on the author's childhood and his experiences raising a young daughter. The first poem is about watching a storm with his child ("we are snug and secure in this boat of a bed"), with the second chronicling a Finnish funeral in Aitkin circa 1939 (the Finnish language, Watson writes, offers "many words to describe the existential weight of snow and ice, but lacks all future tense").
As specific as the poems are, they also touch on universal experiences — as well as those shared among all of us who call Minnesota home. One poem is titled "Why I Live in a Cold Climate." Among the reasons: "Because you can follow the tracks of those who have trudged through the snow before you, making a path for others yet to come" (holycowpress.org).
Readers and Writers: Poetry and memoir, plus some mystery
Poetry. Paris. A variety of mystery/crime novels. We've got it all today.
SUNDAY, Sep 15th, 2024
“Stars Unseen”: by Greg Watson (Holy Cow! Press, $16.95)
It couldn’t have been much, whatever/could be tossed into two plastic garbage bags/and carried, from the station wagon/to the front porch of our new foster home. — from “Stars Unseen”
St. Paulite Greg Watson’s poem “What We Carried With Us” is one of several in his new collection that harks back to his difficult childhood, including a disturbed mother, a missing father, a stepfather who abused him, and always moving when the rent was raised, unless he and his brother were in foster care. And then there’s the scary grandfather who left prison to come home to die. He recalls stories of how a grandfather lost a finger and how farmers looked as they carried a coffin. Many of the poems pay tribute, in one way or another, to his Finnish ancestors.
Watson’s hardship memories lead to a through-line in the collection — his determination to make his daughter feel safe and loved. “I never wanted for you, dearest daughter,/to be anything other than the beautiful and sensitive/soul you have always been.”
Watson, who began writing poetry as a coping mechanism (why he did so is clear in the book), has released nine full-length poetry titles and three chapbooks. He is also celebrating publication of another collection, “The Days Between,” in which he spends time with his lost brother, his losses, his memories of different kinds and qualities of love. Published by Utah-based Kelsay Books.
Watson will introduce his books at 7 p.m. Tuesday at SubText Books, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul, with Michael Kleber-Diggs and William Reichard, and at 7 p.m. Oct. 1, Eat My Words Bookstore, 214 13th Ave. N.E., Mpls., with Dralandra Larkins.
Fall Arts and Entertainment Guide
Plenty of award-winning authors to read this fall.
SUNDAY, Sep 8th, 2024
“Little by Little, the Bird Builds Its Nest” edited by J.D. Hegarty (Paris Morning Publications): Anthology of poetry about birds of all varieties from some of our most accomplished Minnesota poets. [Greg Watson contributing author]
“Stars Unseen” by Greg Watson (Holy Cow! Press): St. Paul poet of Finnish descent uses snapshots of images and verse to navigate a path through multi-generational trauma and grief, exploring his Finnish-American heritage, and the joys and challenges of single parenting.
Featured Books
Video
Thursday, Mar. 13, 2025
Midstream is a monthly regional series of live readings of poetry and prose. It generally takes place on the second Thursday of each month, with four featured readers.
Readings are held at Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota. We are not affiliated with the church, but are always grateful for the use of the space.
Featured readers included poet Greg Watson. The host was Diane Jarvenpa.
Thursday, Jul. 13, 2023
Midstream is a monthly regional series of live readings of poetry and prose. It generally takes place on the second Thursday of each month, with four featured readers.
Readings are held at Unity Church Unitarian in St. Paul, Minnesota. We are not affiliated with the church, but are always grateful for the use of the space.
Featured readers were poets Claire Wahmanholm, Tracy Youngblom, Greg Watson, and Carol Rucks. The host will be Diane Jarvenpa.
Book Release Reading
Book Release Reading
Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024
Place: Eat My Words Bookstore 214 13th Ave NE Mpls, MN 55413
Greg Watson reading from his poem 'New Kid' from his latest collection Stars Unseen.
Words from the Valley
Words from the Valley
Reading of Ghazal for Trish
Monday, February 3rd, 2025
Stillwater Public Library, 224 3rd Street North, Stillwater, MN 55082
Podcasts
Featured Poems
Anthology & Almanac Contributions
Released Sept 3rd, 2024
Paris Morning Publications is pleased to announce an anthology of poetry about birds. Birds of all varieties, in all seasons, and in all experiences. Available on Amazon and from these local booksellers: Subtext Books, Drury Lane Books, Moon Palace Books, Next Chapter Booksellers, Magers & Quinn Booksellers
The prose poem is the literary sphinx, the literary chimera, minotaur, gryphon–part one thing, part another and at their best, they’re magical, mythical. Fantastic Imaginary Creatures collects the best contemporary prose poems that demonstrate the potentiality and plasticity the form allows. Some of these poems have been previously published, and some are brand spanking new.
Nerve Cowboy, Selected Works: 1996 -2004 published August 2023. 164 pages, perfect bound, jam packed with amazing poems, stories, and art.
From 1996 to 2022, Nerve Cowboy was a biannual journal of poetry, short fiction, art, and music. As we turn to our next chapter, our goal continues to be to feature work sensitive enough to make the hardest hard-ass cry, funny enough to make the most hopeless brooder laugh, and disturbing enough to make us all glad we're not the author of the piece.
Published by Nodin Press
This anthology contains a wide array of poems by Minnesota poets dealing with the experience of personal loss, grief, and recovery. Among the specific themes are divorce, the death of a child, and giving up a child for adoption. The selections also include moving descriptions of healing and the return of high spirits. Among the poets included are Greg Watson, Deborah Keenan, Wang Ping, John Berryman, James Wright, and Robert Bly.
Published by Nodin Press
The Center for Victims of Torture (CVT) is an international nongovernmental organization based in St. Paul, Minnesota, with locations around the world, including Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Uganda, and the United States. The center extends multidisciplinary rehabilitative care to torture survivors every day. In honor of their 30th anniversary, CVT asked individuals to share what hope means to them on a Tumblr webpage. From around the world, people sent original photos, poems, essays, and messages of hope, the best of which are reproduced here.
“There are stories of grief, anger and injustice as well as stories of love, affirmation, and celebration. There are stories of resistance that inspire us to hope for a more just world. We also noticed a thread of profound resilience: the courage to take a risk, the ability to adapt, the determination to follow one’s dreams, and the spirit of working together. We hope that these stories, poems and artwork will be treasured as representative of the beauty of Saint Paul as well as where change, inclusion, and healing are still needed.”
—Wendy Brown-Baéz
There are numerous books in print about parenting and family development, but few like this one, in which fathers offer their own accounts of being fathers from a startling variety of perspectives. Editors Greg Watson and Richard Broderick have masterfully gathered poignant, first-hand accounts of moments in a father's life from teething to burying; reflective poems describing the arc of fatherhood; accounts of insight, struggle, grief and delight gained while being a father; and epiphanies that occur only to parents.
Published by Magers & Quinn
"This generous collection of poetry includes writers of great sophistication and experience, as well as exciting poets relatively new to the craft. To borrow from Margaret Hasse, words themselves lent by Virginia Woolf, here are ""little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."" Mnartists.org has become an essential website for the Minnesota arts community. What Light - the weekly column and the anthology - illustrates its commitment to presenting the best new work in the state."
Published by Ramsey County Library
In early 2021, Ramsey County Library partnered with The Loft Literary Center to host a series of writing workshops online focused on writing about 2020. Led by poet and essayist Michael Kleber-Diggs, these workshops engaged participants through the written word and gave us tools to think and feel through our experiences of the past year. These workshops helped lay the groundwork for This Was 2020 as a collection of writings by Minnesotans of pandemics and social justice.
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