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 Katie
From the ashes of what fire
did the family name of Phoenix
flutter forth, what history sired it
and does your clan
live up to its name
re-emerging from
whatever disaster the times
heap on your homes
– challenge your lives with
to be reborn and renewed
tempered by the flames?
These bonfires fed with prunings
from the olive grove in Crete
likewise strengthen the tree
for a more fruitful future…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
This photograph was my favourite of all the ones I took in Crete during lockdown in the Winter of 2020. Katie’s card (below) was all about Summer and making the most of it…
