I’m proud to announce the publication of Mario Writes a Poem a Day for a Year and So Can You. This project turned out to be my pandemic baby. I started it before the pandemic, but much of it was written during the pandemic and all the pre-publication preparation and editing was done during. It’s both a collection and a how-to and it’s a door-stopper, clocking in at over 570 pages. I not only include every poem I wrote for a full year, but I also have a mini-essay attached to each poem where I explain my methods, inspiration, difficulties, and triumphs. There are hours of good reading here. You can read it for the poems and my comments on each poem, or you can read it to see how you can do the same: take up the daily practice of verse-making. Here’s the back cover copy:
Mario Writes a Poem a Day for a Year and So Can You is a simple how-to, a collection of quickly-written, pleasing daily poems, and a trove of inviting prompts. Reading through Mario’s poems, notes of encouragement, and writing ideas recaptures the excitement I felt when I first discovered poetry and started thinking about each day through the lens of my next poem. Mario proves in this delightful and inspiring book that writing a poem a day is not only doable, it offers a daily dose of joy.
—Kathleen Flenniken, Washington State Poet Laureate, 2012-2014
Acclaimed poet Mario Milosevic occasionally decides to write a poem a day for a year just to keep his poetry muscles in good shape and to have some fun. His previous year-long projects have yielded three collections: Animal Life, Fantasy Life, and Love Life.
Now, in this new collection, he not only writes a poem every day, but also appends a commentary to each poem in which he details his writing process. You will learn where he got the idea for the day’s poem, how he dealt with meter and rhyme, his sources of inspiration, how he coped with poems that didn’t quite work, and many other aspects of verse-making.
This book is not only a collection of first-rate poems from a unique and inspirational voice, it is also a road map for aspiring poets who wish to throw caution to the wind and wade into the rich and rewarding activity of creating poems. Just reading a year’s worth of Mario’s poems is an enriching experience in itself, but to make the experience even more memorable, use this book as an aid to do the same: write a poem a day for a year and feel your creative spirit soar.
Mario Writes a Poem a Day for a Year and So Can You is available in paperback and in ebook format in all the usual online sources and from your local bookstore.
