Today is the official release date for my first collection of poetry titled “Death is the Dismount.”

Mark your calendars now. I will join fellow Hood River resident Marin Smith to talk about the book, poetry and literature from 6 to 7 p.m. Aug. 13 at the Hood River Library, 502 State St.

Smith is an essayist word wrangler, editor and co-founder of the Abraxas Review literary magazine.

Written in reader-friendly vernacular free verse, poems in the volume wrestle with familiar joys, struggles, regrets and rewards of life. Aging. Friendship. Surprising discoveries about one’s ancestry. The daily wonders of life in the Pacific Northwest. A gentle sense of humor about life’s absurdities insinuates itself into much of this volume.

I wouldn’t say these poems have laxative qualities, but they do go well with a cup of coffee and your morning sit.

Poetry? Stu? Oh, the things I could tell you. But, yes. I’ve been a poet, mostly on the sly, since college. Bit by the bug as  a college freshman in southern Oregon, I took my first creative writing class with future Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada.

Another college literature professor, the late James Naiden, advised Watson to turn his professional focus to journalism, “unless you want to starve to death.”

During years with Pulitzer-winning newspapers in Medford, Anchorage and Portland, I poured my love of language into writing that was later honored by Oregon’s newspaper association for the Best Writing of 1983. State and regional journalism organizations also honored me for humorous essays.

All the while, I continued to write poetry and short fiction. Yes, I have it all filed in a deep drawer.

After retirement from a late-life foray into the restaurant business with my wife (you know her as chef and novelist Kathy Watson), I turned my entire focus to short fiction and poetry. Covid was an unexpected blessing, forcing me to stay home where I could focus on the short story and verse.

More than a hundred of my stories found their way into small lit mags, mostly online. He was second place winner in the 2005 Cambridge Short Story Competition. A collection of those stories (hint-hint) is looking for print publication (stu@watsonx2.com).

If any of this prompts a thought, yes, I’m available for readings and other public appearances.

“Death is the Dismount” is available for purchase from The Poetry Box Publishing in Portland. in print or for e-readers at major online retailers and through local booksellers.

Here’s some advance praise from people whose opinions I greatly respect, and whose work you also should read:

In his collection Death Is the Dismount, poet Stu Watson offers brand spanking new takes on aging replete with blush-worthy lust, tender declarations of love, honest appraisals of his family history, and eloquent reckonings with what comes closer every day, death. I will wave my crazy arms until they burst / into flame, announcing my departure / from here, and imminent arrival / wherever this hasty soul is meant to go. Couplets, tercets, quatrains and narrative are enlisted to accomplish his energetic mission in imagery and language—sometimes Michelangelo, sometimes Pollock, as he references in “Right Time.” There’s a surprise ‘round every turn of page, tripped up by the delightful word “nidge” here or, there, lost and found in lines such as: …a tree with denuded / branches, like a beautiful woman / who went out walking without her / clothes, then decided to stop and stay / outside our house…from “When Time Stood Still.” —ELLEN WATERSTON, Oregon Poet Laureate, author of As Far as I Can Anthem

What do I want from a poem? I never know until the poem presents the gift. The best poets offer them in surprise packaging. You read. You think. You read again and your breathing slows. You imagine a thing or feel a thing or think a thing you haven’t imagined or felt or thought before. That’s the kind of poetry Stu Watson offers. Call it a slow smolder. Then let it catch fire. —SUSAN PALMER, Eugene, novelist, author of The Tabernacle Bar and The Booker Rebellion

The poems in this fine collection sing of love and sex and death and donuts so sweet you cannot eat them and, of course, of the dogs who teach us how to live. Do yourself a favor and savor these poems slowly and let their jubilance uplift you from where you have sat far too long thinking of the daily news. —TIM SCHELL, Portland author of Road to the Sea