George Bowering reads from My Darling Nellie Grey at Talons 2010 Cross Canada Poetry Tour

In December 2005, stalled on a novel he was writing, George Bowering thought he needed a challenge. By the end of the year he had made a New Year s resolution: write a poem a day for the 365 days of 2006. While working on Crows in the Wind, in January, he decided each monthly sequence should have a rule: something for the writing to attend to. So for February, each day s piece had to have one sentence and two stanzas, then off he went; inventing ten further formal monthly compositional frames. As it happened, 2006 became fraught with personal challenges for Boweringincluding a second marriage and a death in his new familybut he kept going, never cheating. The result of this uncompromising personal and formal discipline is one of the most fascinating books of poetry ever