August Poetry Postcard Fest

Everyone loves getting postcards. And postcards with poems, all the better. That's the idea that lead to the August Poetry Postcard Fest: for 1 month, poets commit to writing a poetry postcard a day, and send it out. In return, they receive poetry postcards from fellow poets.

"What's unique about this approach: Rather than submitting poems for possible rejection, you are sending your words to a ready-made and excited audience awaiting your poems in their mailboxes. In addition to writing 31 wonderful poems yourself, you'll receive these wonderful postcards in your mailbox too."

The August Poetry Postcard Fest invites poets who are interested in taking part to register online now, more here: guidelines and registration link.

How the Poetry Postcard Fest works:
• Get yourself at least 31 postcards.
• On or about July 27th, write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name.
• Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you've sent out 31 postcards.
• 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, using a phrase/topic/or image from a card that you got, 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.
• Once you start receiving postcard poems in the mail, you'll be able to respond to the poems and imagery with postcard poems or your own. That will keep your poems fresh and flowing. Be sure to check postage for cards going abroad.

A reflection on poetry postcards:
"This was an exercise in community, in discipline (as poets were expected to average a poem a day) and in consciousness. Some poets used the image on the card as inspiration, as in an ekphrastic poem. Some would continue a theme from a card they received as they wrote to someone completely different. Other poets wrote with no connection to the image, or to the poems they received, but developed their own themes. Certain themes started to emerge." - Paul Nelson, Postcard Exercise
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