August Postcard Poem Fest Returns

June 22, 2013

by Ryukan

Poetry Postcard by Brendan McBreen

From Brendan McBreen:

Once more it is almost August!

The August Poetry Postcard Project is an exercise in responding to other poets. You write a poem a day for the month of August, write it on a postcard and send it to the next name on your list. When you receive a postcard poem from someone, the idea is that the next poem you send out will be a response to the poem you just received, even though it will be sent to a different person. Ideally you will write 31 new poems and receive 31 postcard poems from all over the place.

To participate, send your name, mailing address, and email to stripedwaterpoets@gmail.com

please include the word “postcard” in the subject line

I will be sending out one long list this year instead of individual lists of 32 names.

You can send postcard poems to the 31 names below your name, please do not use this list for advertising or for any other purpose than postcard poems. If your name is toward the bottom of the list, when you reach the bottom you go to the top of the list and finish your 31 from there.

I will send out the list three times, our international participants often require an earlier start due to longer delivery times, so I will send the incomplete list out on July 16th and July 23rd. The final version I will send out on July 30th. The 30th is the cut off date, I will not be adding any more names to the list after that, the list sent out on the 30th will be the final list for this year. So Please be sure to send in your information before that. I will email the list to the participants in an attached word document as well as in the body of the email.

If you know anyone who would like to participate, feel free to forward them this message!

Thanks for putting up with this long winded explanation!

Hope you enjoy the Poetry Postcard Fest!

Brendan McBreen

Directions:

On or about July 27th, send postcards to the 3 people on the list below your name. (If you are near the bottom, send a card to anyone below you then start again at the top.) Ideally, you would write 3 different short poems — remember they are being composed on a postcard and please keep your handwriting clear. (If you start with folks outside your country, you may want to start sending poems early…)

What to write? Something that relates to your sense of “place” however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you’re reading, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like “real” postcards, get to something of the “here and now” when you write. Present tense is preferred… Do write original poems for the project. Taking old poems and using them is not what we have in mind. Letting a card linger for a while before you respond to the next person on your list is cool.

The blog for the fest is here: https://poetrypostcards.blogspot.com/

A workshop handout for the poetry postcard writing exercise is here: https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Postcard-Exercise.pdf

You may also view that handout at this link: https://paulenelson.com/workshops/poetry-postcard-exercise/

David Sherwin’s article from a couple of years ago is worth reading: https://changeorder.typepad.com/weblog/2010/08/sending-postcards-to-strangers.html

The fest started in 2007, so this is the 7th year.

2 Comments

Andrew M. Bell on July 17, 2013 at 5:23 pm

Hi Paul,

Would it be contrary to the spirit of the August Postcard Poem Fest if the international poets received their postcards as emails? The old post can still take 8-10 days to arrive from America to New Zealand, down here at the bottom of the world.
Splabman on July 17, 2013 at 9:41 pm

Andrew, thanks for asking. Simple answer? Yes it is contrary. There is poetry all over the web. To get something someone wrote for you in the mail from far away? How cool is that? Maybe you can recruit additional kiwis to participate? There’s time. I do hope you’ll do it this year.

Many BLessings,

Paul