The Poetry Postcard Fest is a challenge which encourages poets to write an unedited poem on a postcard and send it to a stranger. Organised by the Cascadia Poetics Lab, who organise the participants into lists of 31 + yourself for you to address your offerings to. This was my first year and hearing about it just in time to register, I was on List 15. The lists are sent out in early July and you have until the end of August to send out your missives – to date I have received 20 of 31 possibles and now that we are into September, it is allowable to share the cards and poems you sent and the cards but not the poems you received. I will share these in the order of sending and I will miss out those which I have not yet received in case they arrive soon…
Although the original poem is to be sent as written – crossings out, blots and all, I have typed them out for people who can’t read my writing and I am allowing myself to edit if I feel like it…
Dear Julie
Wish you were here
is the common cry
of the holiday postcard
sent to a friend or relative dear
but I know nothing about you
beyond your evocative address
but I send this photo
with only a little fear
that you will not appreciate
the struggle of nature
to make this wild garden.
An upcycled tyre for a container
a Harts Tongue fern
a moss garden
what’s not to like…
Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
I wish I was allowed to share Julie’s beautiful response to my poem (perhaps she will see this and slip it into the comments) – she had received my card and it turns out that she had been thinking of the recuperative power of nature so no worries there! I cannot say where she lives either beyond naming the evocative address as Thunder Road… I can share the selection of beautiful skies Julie sent and which I am guessing she took herself…
