Introducing the Poetry Postcard Fest Project Board, a committee of the Cascadia Poetics Lab dedicated to improving the experience of the annual Poetry Postcard Fest and expanding participation. Chaired by longtime fest participant Ina Roy-Faderman, along with her co-editor on 56 Days of August, J.I. Kleinberg, and featuring Sally Hedges-Blanquez, Margaret Lee (co-author of the astute essay on PPF and the link to Black Mountain) and Zach Charles, this team is helping things go from here on out. There will be some tweaks for PPF2024 and registration starts on this website at 12M September 1. Stay tuned and welcome PPF PB!!!
Poetry Postcard Fest Project Board*
Dr. Ina Roy-Faderman
Poetry Postcard Board chair since its inception, Dr. Ina Roy-Faderman (she/her) has been a yearly participant in the Poetry Postcard Festival for over a decade and co-editor of the Poetry Postcard Fest anthology, 56 Days of August (Five Oaks Press, 2017). Her writings, focusing on the natural world and non-human animals, can be found in Trash Panda Magazine, Pigeon Papers, The Rumpus, Minding the Future (Springer Verlang, 2021) and the forthcoming Purr and Yowl anthology, among others. When she’s not writing, providing editorial assistance for Right Hand Pointing, or herding the human and non-human animals in her household, she teaches medical ethics and philosophy of science at Oregon State University.
Sally Hedges-Blanquez
is a poet and educator. Her work appears on the Seattle Poetic Grid, in the anthology Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty, as well as on postcards in mailboxes. She lives on the traditional land of the Coast Salish people where she writes, gardens, and shares plants and berries.
J.I. Kleinberg
An artist, poet, and freelance writer, J.I. Kleinberg lives in Bellingham, Washington, USA, and on Instagram @jikleinberg. Her poems have been published in print and online journals worldwide. Her visual poems were featured in a solo exhibit at Peter Miller Books, Seattle, Washington, in May 2022, and displayed at the 2022 Skagit River Poetry Festival and in The Cutting Edge: Art of Collage in Asheville, North Carolina, in April 2023.
Zachary Brett Charles
is a young artist and teacher living in Seattle, WA with his partner, their cat, Frankie, and their dog, Earle. He loves writing of all kinds but mostly works on poetry and short stories. He has poetry published in the ezine breatheeveryone.net. They also make multimedia works that involve painting, drawing, and collaging. They have lots of thoughts and feelings about the state of the world which can hopefully be deciphered in their works of art. Above all, they consider themself a storyteller weaving a tale they cannot finish. Other works of theirs can be found on Twitter @brettspoems, Instagram @bretts_poems, and now on their website https://brettcharles.wixsite.com/brettspoems. As a member of the Poetry Postcard Fest Project Board, they hope to get other young writers involved in the project and spread the love and connection of poetry.
Margaret Lee
Margaret joined the Poetry Postcard Fest in 2020. She is a poet, scholar, fiber artist, watercolor sketcher, and aspiring naturalist in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She finds poems in the Oklahoma prairies, New Mexico deserts, Oregon seashores, and inner landscapes. Margaret is retired from a career in higher education as administrator and college faculty member in the Humanities. Her academic research and previous publications focus on the language, history, and culture of the ancient world, and she has published three chapbooks with Finishing Line Press: Someone Else’s Earth (2021), Sagebrush Songs (2022), and Oklahoma Summer (2023).
*CPL Project Boards are committees of the organization and do not have fiduciary responsibility, which remains with the CPL Board of Directors. Project Boards offer suggestions to CPL on best practices, improving the experience of participants and increasing levels of participation. Project Board members act as ambassadors for the project they represent and for CPL.
I know there are a still three days left in the month of August… but I am concerned that although I finished sending out my 32 postcards last week I’ve only received about fifteen. This is my first year participating. Is this typical?
Thank you
P.S. I did receive a few inspiration gems, just wondering on the reliability of the U.S. Mail.
I have had some issues with USPS chewing up some cards. Some cards will probably arrive late. The earlier the registration the more the return rate goes up because the long time postcard poets tend to sign up early and get in the first few groups. Thanks for being a postcard poet.
Alo-HA Nadja and welcome to the PoPo Fest…We live in a small town in the high desert of New Mexico and ALL of the postal workers are very aware of the PoPo Fest…as long as the cards somehow get to Deming they get delivered to either our house or Diana LeMarbe’s po box…NO MATTER WHAT THE REST OF THE ADDRESS LOOKS LIKE…:-) and there have been many this year that barely are even semi-readable…the main intention that I take into the Fest is to have fun and discipline myself to write an uplifting postcard to someone that I may possibly never have a face to face earth contact with…so far I have sent out 55 and received 43 which is a good receiving year because today as Jessica (post person) was handing me my mail she dropped a postcard between her seats without knowing it…I mentioned it and she reached down and smilingly added it to the mail…as to the time frame…I received a card last week from the 2022 fest from Egg Harbor Michigan!! Above all, have a very creative joy-filled time both sending & receiving cards Namaste StanleydelGozo
A newbie this year I had no problem with the instructions about from when you could send but I saw lots of comments on the blog suggesting confusion and like the first commenter I have still only received 15 or so which suggests that many are sticking to the August sending date.
That said it’s been great fun!
Hi. I am also concerned. Today is August 29th. I have sent out my entire list, all handmade cards. To date, I have only received 19 postcards. I hope that the ones I sent were received. Last year I received 30!
Hi from Vancouver Island! I sent out 32, sent two cards to number 31 on my list twice! Have received 16. My 4th year. Pretty normal. Usually I receive back 25 or 26. I too received a card from 2022 this year. It had fallen behind a bench and the sender found it there months later! One of the poems I received is one of the best poems I have read all year from any source. What a gift.
I just counted & have received 26 cards to date but 2 of those were bonus cards & one was from a popo poet not on my list so I have received now from 23 people out of 32 on the list.
I completed & sent to all 32 long enough ago that all on my list should have received one from me by now. I had intended to send everyone a bonus card of a different ilk & haven’t followed through yet with mailing those
Unfortunately there’s not really a way to know if there’s been a delivery issue & someone hasn’t received. I made a list of what I sent to whom when & should potentially be able to email any of those. It’d be nice to know if something didn’t make it.
Last year I think I sent most via envelope as mine tend toward quirky nonstandard & I thought that a better delivery bet but this year I’ve sent all as postcards with beaucoup stampage as insurance
Once I got one back in the mail about 2 months later so its good to post a return address. I think I had put a wrong apartment number or something so it was on me & so that person finally got their intended card way late
I’m trying the first one over again as the one I just submitted posted…..
I just counted & have received 26 cards to date but 2 of those were bonus cards & one was from a popo poet not on my list so I have received now from 23 people out of 32 on the list.
I completed & sent to all 32 long enough ago that all on my list should have received one from me by now. I had intended to send everyone a bonus card of a different ilk & haven’t followed through yet with mailing those
Unfortunately there’s not really a way to know if there’s been a delivery issue & someone hasn’t received. I made a list of what I sent to whom when & should potentially be able to email any of those. It’d be nice to know if something didn’t make it.
Last year I think I sent most via envelope as mine tend toward quirky nonstandard & I thought that a better delivery bet but this year I’ve sent all as postcards with beaucoup stampage as insurance
Once I got one back in the mail about 2 months later so its good to post a return address. I think I had put a wrong apartment number or something so it was on me & so that person finally got their intended card way late
I had fun creating and writing and sending my cards and keeping track of what was coming in – what a gift to have personal handwriting in the mailbox! There was definitely a range of effort put in with some handmade cards and lots of content and some simply store-bought and stickered.
I have to admit my disappointment that I’ve only received 2/3 of what was expected. A bit of a let down. Talked to a friend who said he used to participate but stopped because of the low return rate. Wish it were otherwise. I haven’t decided about next year yet.
I had at least 3 cards chewed up by the USPS this year and it is liberating for me to not to worry about this and send folks a pdf version of the card I tried to send them. There is little we can do to compel the USPS to be kinder to our cards, or to enforce compliance with each participant’s agreement that anyone who registers sends 31 postcards by August 31. Some people have taken two years or more to fulfill their agreement. My parents and the Baptist church I attended as a boy instilled the notion that “it is better to give than to receive” and I view the fest FIRST as an opportunity to write 31 new poems spontaneously. I sent at least 40 this year, but get such joy in the act of composition and creating cards, the fest shapes every summer for me and sets me up for autumn in a very creative way. Thank you for being part of this community Kristina. It is not for everyone, but as I write, there is at least one group registered for 2024 and a second forming. These are the people who have participated in the fest for many years and, like me, can’t envision the 56 Days of August without writing postcard poems.
I enjoyed my first PPF! I put a lot into creating both poems & cards & sent all 32 (long list). Challenging & fun. I’m up to the rafters in paper & postcards & ephemera & vintage postage stamps & cereal boxes & pens, that I’m sad to tidy up till next year. I share the same disappointing visits to my mailbox, but felt all the more elation when there was a postcard there! I received 18 (so far), & treasured every one.
I learned a lot about the whole process & feel of the PPF. I’ve wanted to try it for years. Good friends have done it & loved it. I began “practicing” for it in 2020, astonishing myself by producing my version of “seriality,” 350 poems long. My current serial poem served as the anchor for my postcards this year. In the PPF flow, I expanded the growing edge of my poem-making, ever trying to sneak around that old paradoxical demand: “Be spontaneous.”
It turned out to feel more like a solitary project than I’d expected, rather than a sense of community. That could grow over multiple PPFs, perhaps.
My local post office felt like community of sorts. The folks at the counter kindly hand-cancelled each postcard, admired them, & offered to put them in “non-machinable” mail to keep them out of the canceller/sorter monster. (My other local p.o. would NOT do this.) But, of course, who knows if they did that or how delayed or chewed up the postcards actually were as they traveled through the postalverse. Or if they even arrived! it’s an exercise in the practice of “letting go of outcome.”
I had such hopes of signing up immediately yesterday for 2024. I want to be on an early list this time! But some tech glitch is shutting my PayPal transaction down. Multiple tries. I’ll try again, but maybe I’ll be sending my reg asap by…mail. Thanks Paul & all!
Nadja, just know that sometimes “life happens” to poets. Everyday busyness keeps them scrambling, as well as do unexpected emergencies. You may find cards dribbling in till the end of November. And yes, the post office has become notoriously unreliable. Enjoy the cards you received and be pleased with your efforts in getting yours all out there. I’ve done PoPo about ten times now, with breaks between years at times. I always enjoy the process of both sending and receiving, although some years are definitely trickier to finish than others.