Poetry Postcard Activations
Free Poetry & Community Events in Rainier Beach!
Postcarding & DaySinging 2026 Workshop
This session will be a presentation of how the postcard fest developed, how the daysong developed, how I prepare for the fest and how participants attending prepare for the fest, as well as how to prepare for a successful daysong. The similarities of the daysong to serial poetry could be discussed, as well as the effort to put one’s self into the open, which has benefits in one’s own life. Registration is open to all registered 2026 Poetry Postcard Fest participants for a suggested donation starting at $1, which is the lowest our CRM will allow! See: https://bit.ly/4uwpnLG
Postcarding & DaySinging
- Sunday, June 14, 3-5 PM PDT
- Open to 2026 Poetry Postcard registrants who make a contribution. https://bit.ly/4uwpnLG
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Poetry Postcard Fest 2026
Early Bird Registration
The Poetry Postcard Fest is an annual 56-day experiment in spontaneity and community building. This literarary event is a self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition where people sign up to send 31 original poems on postcards to folks on a participation list before the end of August. The fest was initiated in 2007 by poets Paul E. Nelson and Lana Ayers, and has grown to include poets participating worldwide. Registration opens annually on September 1.
Interview with Mary Norbert Körte
Open the anthology Women of the Beat Generation to page 256 and read the words of Brother Antoninus, William Everson, who said, “A series of women poets emerged in San Francisco who identified with the establish Beat Poets even as they challenged them on their grounds, including Joanne Kyger and Mary Norbert Körte. Of these, the career of Mary Norbert Körte most sharply defines the historic tension between the women of service and the women of passion. The strongest woman poet to emerge in the west, she became a student of Lew Welch, cracking convention within the bastion of the religious order.” Raised in a devout family, joining the convent right out of high school in 1952, and stunned by 2 events in the tumultuous 1960s, Mary Norbert Körte continued to make striking poems deeply connected to the land where she lived in extreme southern Cascadia, in a town called Willets, California, until she passed away in 2022.
To hear the original audio from this interview, click here.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 40:46 — 56.0MB)
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We recognize that our home office is on the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Muckleshoot and other Coastal Salish tribes. Our dedication to bioregionalism is to co-exist on this land in the sacred manner as practiced by the traditional ways of these indigenous people.
Statement on Ahimsa by Board Member Jason Wirth
January 20, 2021
The (Poetry Postcard Fest) and the Cascadia Poetry Festival (are) connected… When you’re writing poetry… part of poetry is the craft… rules (to be understood) in a variety of contexts… (Craft is…) a necessary but not sufficient condition. You’re also… experiencing your mind, at a very deep level. And that mind as you experience it more deeply, is not in a vacuum… It’s now and here… rooted in the socio-economic and ecological conditions that make it possible. And participating in… the spiritual exercise of these postcards, is already entering into… a deep bioregional awakening and conversion. In a way we’re trying for something like a spiritual revolution, and that poetry is not just an interesting thing that you can do, if you like. It’s a fundamental exercise of being here in a less harmful way… it’s a deep ahimsa, a deep practice of non-harming and cultivation. And so, it’s all connected… And… our ambition is… trying to have a mind that would be capable, of being in this place in a better way… We’re going to live or die, by how we come down on these issues going forward.