From PPF Committee Member Margaret Lee:
Last year, my theme for the Fest was Postcards from Where I Have Never Been. I was tired of reality and ready for fiction. My 31 cards named unfamiliar or imagined places. Did I connect the picture on the front to the poem on the back? Not usually. It was my summer for travel dreams.
I like marking time with postcards each summer, when the blistering sun blurs the boundaries between days. My cards distinguish each day from the next and enclose my poems within their edges. I study each recipient’s name and address. I often type the address into Google Maps to see exactly where they live. I try to imagine the weather there, the setting: woodsy, urban, lakeside, rocks, sandy beach? I wonder what else will come with their mail on the day they receive my card.
But what to write? Isn’t it hard to create a new poem every day? The answer is no. You already think like a poet, write like a poet. The words that come to you will always be right. They might land on your postcards in ways you didn’t expect! Each poem is a making: you make it, and it remakes you.
The point is, anything goes. If you want to get fancy, go for it! But the only rules for the Fest are spelled out in its name: Poetry Postcard Fest. Did you write a poem? Send a postcard? Are you celebrating? Then you’re doing it right! I hope you’re on my list!
Thank you for this article. Very inspiring. I may take a spin on your theme and use “My Bucket List” for this coming Postcard fest.
I immediately thought of a few far away places that I’ve never been; inner Mongolia, the Malabar coast of India the Kalahari desert and of course , Oklahoma ❗️ thanks for bringing those images forward Margaret, oh captain my captain.
Oh my gosh, that is such a cool idea!
Thanks for the inspiration!
Now I need to find a postcard from Mars!
Margaret,
Love this… I found myself smiling as I thought of the other things that might be in conversation with our postcards…
Lovely and light. Over the years my PoPo practice has evolved from painstaking to an easy flow. Yours in being remade by the making!
Ah Margaret! So inspiring to read this. And here’s a little something I intend to do. For those of you that kindly leave your address on your post cards, i will be sending out another haiku. (That’s because I frequently lose the original list that gets sent out). Cheers to creativity. May we be it and live it. Lulu
Live your idea to Google the recipients’ addresses! I’ve been getting postcards from places I’ve never been (I inherited a bunch of Siberian postcards from my mother-in-law after she passed) and going nuts on Wikipedia and finding my inspirational nuggets there. I love how you nailed the poet’s mind: when you get in that space the words just flow!