01 April 2024

Red Bull Poet Writes Humorous Odes to Black Coffee


With a tip of the campaign hat to both April Fools’ Day and National Poetry MonthMiddle West Press LLC has today launched a new digital chapbook featuring 10 humorous “war poems” about coffee.

The $3 sampler, available as a Kindle e-book, collects new and previously published poems by the award-winning citizen-soldier-poet Randy “Sherpa” Brown, as well as the classic drill-sergeant essay “Listen Up, Maggots! It's National Poetry Month!”

Find the digital chapbook at Amazon here at this link.

Red Bull Rising mil-blogger Randy “Sherpa” Brown embedded with his former Iowa Army National Guard unit—the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry “Red Bull” Division—as a civilian journalist in Afghanistan, May-June 2011. He served in uniform for 20 years, with one overseas deployment in 2003. He subsequently authored the award-winning poetry collection “Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire.”

He is a former editor of community and metro newspapers, as well as national trade and consumer newsstand magazines, and is now a freelance writer, editor, and independent publisher. His essays, journalism, and poetry have appeared widely both on-line and in print.

His on-cover book credits include co-editing the anthologies “Why We Write: Craft Essays on Writing War” and “Things We Carry Still: Poems & Micro-Stories about Military Gear.” Brown is a three-time poetry finalist in the annual Col. Darron L. Wright Memorial Writing Awards, administered by the Chicago-based literary magazine Line of Advance

Learn more about Randy Brown at: linktr.ee/randysherpabrown

Middle West Press LLC (www.middlewestpress.com) is a Johnston, Iowa-based editor and publisher of non-fiction, journalism, and poetry. As an independent micro-press, it publishes one to four titles annually. Its projects are often inspired by the people, places, and history of the American Midwest.