Tim Mateer 2020 postcard
I have such delight in tallying up the stats for Poetry Postcard Fest when registration is over. Maybe it is the buzz of registration being over giving me time to have my own Poetry Postcard Fest experience. Maybe it’s that Poetry Postcard Fest is “an institution” as EVERY YEAR PARTICIPANT Janet McCann calls it. Regardless, here are some stats as tallied today:
544 participants (a 28% increase from 2019 and our largest group ever!)
11 represented countries
46 states (Why no Alaska, Delaware, Mississippi and South Dakota?)
3 Canadian provinces
Registration is at 60% capacity for our first Zoom Poetry Postcard Fest workshop Poetics as Cosmology, scheduled for six consecutive Saturdays at 10am PDT starting October 3, 2020. See: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2020/07/18/six-week-fall-zoom-workshop/
Abhaya Thomas 2020 postcard
Huge thanks to all my Poetry Postcard Fest people for being part of this community. Registration for 2021 starts September 1, 2020 via Submittable.
This year, my 3rd or 4th, I attempted to learn about the city of each person on my list by researching the address. From that info I examined all my available postcards for a match based on my intuition. Then I wrote to the person and drew my poem from the image on card and where I was sending it. I still have a few more to go. I learned geography lessons this way.
Last year at the end of the fest, I organized all my cards and did Academy Awards . I created the categories so that each card received an award in the group of 31. For example Most Beautiful or Original or creative or Poignant . That process enabled me to recall the poem and card. Image. A fun way to end.