One of the highest honors in my career as a poet has been to be elected poet laureate of Napa County this May. Poet laureates have typically read their own works at public ceremonies, such as Robert Frost’s astounding reading at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy. The tradition of poet laureate has also recently included projects such as Robert Pinsky’s “Favorite Poem” project (www.favoritepoem.org), and I have felt that the local “grassroots” poets of Napa County need more “exposure.” Thus, this is my first “Napa County Poet’s Profile.”

I met with Michael Waterson over lunch at Gillwood’s restaurant in downtown Napa on a Tuesday afternoon. Waterson is the editor-in-chief of The American Canyon Eagle and through his work there he helps us stay aware of what is going on in our beautiful Napa Valley. His poetry is insightful, witty and filled with images, and as I read some of the poems he sent me, I was intrigued by the references to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Waterson grew up in the 1950s and ’60s in Pittsburgh. “It’s got the history of heavy industry and steel,” Waterson said, and “Washington nearly drowned there during the French and Indian War. It’s quite an interesting town — it’s a little different than California.”

 In his song, “Ballad of the Bridge to Nowhere,” Waterson chronicles the amazing story of the bridge that was left unfinished for four years and the young man who drove off the end into the river and survived, and how this event spawned a bumper sticker craze.

Waterson said his interest in writing bloomed at Allegheny Community College, where “my favorite poet, of course, was Dylan Thomas. I’ve always been sound-oriented, you know. It’s part of the actor … Even in my writing, I’m very sound-oriented.”  

Who else influenced Waterson’s writing?  “James Wright really continues to have a big effect on me because of his similarities. He’s writing about an area (Wheeling, W. Va.) 50 miles down the river from [Pittsburgh].”

Waterson is also a member of Kith and Kin, a folk group that specializes in Irish music. They just recorded, in 2007, an energetic and diverse collection of Irish ballads, “Music for to Play.”  And, of course, he continues to write and publish poetry. He recently won the Jessamyn West award through Napa Valley College for his poem, “Elvis in Hell.” 

When I asked him what kinds of subjects he likes to write about, Waterson quoted Philip Larkin, “You don’t choose your subjects; they choose you.” 

“I find the moon is in my writing a lot,” he added. “The fact that men landed on the moon when I was 19.

“I’m trying to understand my life experience,” he said. “I try to keep as much self-pity out of my work as possible, [but] in every poet there’s an element of Hamlet, this self-absorption that you have to be aware of.

“Writing is a process,” Waterson said. “Something clicks; you put a sentence down, and you put a word down and there’s something about it, that it just feels good.”  He quoted Bruce Springstein, “I like the way it makes me feel. I like the way I can make other people feel.”

The excerpt below from, “The h in Pittsburgh,” uses imagery to create a portrait of the city of his past, with the music of the letter h permeating the poem:

Heaps of slag and open

hearths igniting the night sky —

Hell with the lid off.

Honor stained with a history

of betrayal …

Henry Clay Frick.

Homestead lockout, Pinkerton hoodlums,

hate-forged steel — hot a hundred years ago,

that burns now like the furnaces that forged it,

in the slow, cold fire of rust.

A high hill

to climb and gaze homeward with

a ghost of a sigh.

As the tape on my mini-cassette recorder clicked to a stop, we ended our interview, shook hands, and off I went, feeling like I had read an excellent book, the book of a Napa County poet’s life, Michael Waterson!

Watch the Register for future columns, and please check the Arts Council website (www.nvarts.org) for upcoming literary events in Napa County.

Gary Silva is poet laureate of Napa County.