Though she had a considerable background in poetry by age 18, Mila Cuda ’22 initially resisted the urge to major in English at Wellesley. A spoken word poet at home in L.A., she thought studying creative writing would be too obvious a path—but she kept finding herself in English classes. “I started getting more interested in things like titles and line breaks and all of that, as opposed to performing,” she says. With renewed interest in words on the page, she pursued English after all.

Taking time away from Wellesley in 2018, Mila became the Youth Poet Laureate of the West Coast and published her debut chapbook, Dishwater Blonde. Later, she was poetry editor for the 2020 feature film Summertime. Teen Vogue, Rookie, and Poetry Online, among other outlets, have featured her writing, and Game Over Books will publish her collection Still in 2024.

Today, she grounds herself both in her L.A. community and in her new community of Somerville, Mass., where she lives with other alums, including her partner. Working remotely, Mila is head of curriculum for Get Lit, an L.A.-based youth poetry nonprofit she’s been part of in varying capacities since high school. As a Somerville Arts Council literature fellow this past year, she was prompted to lead a Somerville community benefit project. “I could have done an open mic or a workshop, and I would have loved that—an opportunity to connect with people face to face,” she says. “But in the end—with COVID, with people working full-time—I just wanted to find a way to have poems reach people on the street.” During National Poetry Month in April 2023, Mila filled jars with hundreds of poems and placed them in high-traffic areas; a passerby could stop to pull a poem from a jar and take it with them.

In 2017, Mila had resolved to write a poem every day. That fall, she started at Wellesley. “Sometimes I look back at those poems, and it’s just sort of a funny catalog of life at Wellesley,” she says. “Even if those poems don’t go anywhere or do anything, I still get to keep them.” Whatever post-college life brings next, it’s clear Mila will continue collecting poems, every step of the way.