The Year of the Poet ~ January 2014 (The Year of the Poet: Poets Create Bridges of Cultural Understanding Poetry Series)

Preface Bill and I talk about a lot of things… from solving the world’s problems, to line ups of future radio show ideas, to life, love, control issues, healing, destroying, creating and uplifting. We talk about our families, recipes; we chat about the past, present and future Authors We laugh and cry; we tell jokes. Life is good. Our conversations are always fun, crazy and intensely thought provoking. This started out as a conversation with William S Peters and Myself, Jamie Bond. The average Author will publish maybe one book a year. The more productive writers, perhaps a few, and yet the average reader can read a typical novel in somewhere between 2 hours and 3 days. Statistics say, the average person will read about 6-7 books a year. Do the math for me because I already see a disconnection here. Somehow the readers have an unrealistic expectation that an Author of any genre has a hidden treasure trove of sequels lined up ready to make public at the word go. Unfortunately this couldn’t be farther from the truth. This was the conversation that sparked ‘just bill’ and I to consider and thus commit to publish a book a month for the entire year of 2014. This was never about who is the best or better than anyone else as far as their writing. This was to ensure that we exceeded the mundane statistics of being ordinary. We laugh about how we write all the time, but it may not be publishable, yet WE WRITE ! And so then, we challenged each other to post a poem EVERY DAY into HEY lets publish a book a month. The Light bulb went on and we were determined to be committed and WE ARE !!! Once we realized how incredible this opportunity was we felt compelled to invite a few more poets. With Gail Weston Shazor being the first to accept the challenge, the ideas and the names began to flourish. As you read the lineup, it will give you frissons to know that each one of the Writers on this team despite their location, culture, political and religious beliefs; despite what’s going on in each of their personal lives are dedicated to bringing this into fruition and creating history. Ladies and Gentlemen . . . This is simply and intricately historic. What else could we possibly call it besides, The Year Of The Poet. Look at the elite pens on this roll call that have committed and dedicated their creativity to give you brand new ink, straight off the dome. We are not doing it for the fame; WE are doing it to sharpen our pens with devotion. We will actually publish 12 books by this years end. This is a task and vision that we have undertaken to add to our poetic resume as well as share our offerings with you . . . We All Win ! I felt it was appropriate to grace each month’s publishing of this series, The Year Of The Poet with the Flower that represents it. Enjoy; Jamie Bond