Thank you Mary Beth Frezon, veteran postcarder, for these wise words:
Yes I’m one of those people who mark your card as arrived when it does but I don’t worry about it if it doesn’t. I’m grateful for all the cards that arrive and stick with my notion that the Poetry Postcard Fest is really about the writing and sending of cards and anything that arrives is great!
What a joy for me to read this in your poetry postcard fest afterword linked here:
& dig that hashtag #dothework Amen!
We need to learn from Fujitaro and see the gardens that can grow from our wastelands, from the Pacific trash heap to the City of Seattle dump to the logged former forestland to the filled in estuaries of rivers like the Duwamish that make the Port of Seattle or Marshlands that make Baltimore’s inner harbor to the sprawl of LA and suburbs around all cities in this country to the merciless businesses of insurance and pharmaceuticals and lobbying and media (social, in particular) and AI and bottled water and so on.
A workshop for poets interested in making the most out of the summer Poetry Postcard Fest and the end of fest daysong, day-long writing ritual,
Writing poetry in a time of crisis, Ukraine, postcards.”War tries to destroy culture because culture sustains identity and memory. Literature is not only a victim of war, it is an instrument of survival, resistance, witnessing – and, sometimes, welcome refuge…”
Yes #dothework resonates as a first-time participant. My writing benefited from the motivation provided by my Group 14 poets sending and receiving. This has been such a positive experience that I have already registered for next year.
I,too, feel this year is a wrap. Last week I composed a quasi-Cento with lines adapted from each postcard I received. Revisiting, and mine the cards made me appreciate all who had sent them.
I’m wondering if it is okay to share the patchwork poem that resulted or is that not in keeping with the spirit of the Fest. Thanks to all.