There are two major blogging challenges that occupy my year, Te A to Z Challenge and PoPoFest and each year of each Challenge/Festival, I seem to heap ever higher expectations on my particpation, and this year has been no exception! For the postcards, I like to make my own and so in 2023, I used favourite photographs I had taken, in 2024, AI generated images that hadn’t made the final selection for particular projects but which were good in their own right, and for 2025, I decided to revive my very intermittent painting skills.
I have painted since my teenage years, which you can read about in this year’s A to Z here. However, whi;st I spent much of my life in applied arts, signwriting, graphic design and the like, pure painting languished – how many times did I take my paints on holiday only to bring them home unused – so making at least 31 postcard-sized paintings (in the end I did more for bonus cards sent to me on the International List) was a challenge. I produced about 4 on most weekends through July and August, sometimes working on 2 at a time as each dried. Many were watercolour, many acrylics, some mixed, and one pencil drawing.
I’ve decided to post them in a single Exhibition post (Exhibit if you’re American) together with their handwritten (excuse the writing, please) poems, which according to the aims of PoPoFest, are to spontaneously write an epistolary poem to a stranger, preferably one which references the image on the postcard. I blew up photographs from years past, which I had hoped would make paintings and in particular, pictures from Crete where we spent 6 months during lockdown in 2020 – enjoy…
20256 Received Poem Cento
This is a Cento poem made from lines found in all the Poetry Postcard poems I received in 2025…
I: Destruction
People are waking in the night,
hearts racing, blood pounding
dreams, fantasies, deceptions, escape
The future is – unexplainable
I try not to disturb them
when I slowly reach my hand toward
the culture that informed my values…
Cruel and crude, greedy old man
— shouting, destroying
the Bad King who demands from him,
the Good Kingdom
his world has become much smaller
a pretty close second
Puppets! Who is pulling the strings?
Like my heart, they did not weep
another missed connection, warped, failed
shouting colour into gray
streets where no one listens
the beauty of the Badlands
We know so little – despite knowing so much
Consumption society has chewed up
spit out this vast and beautiful continent.
transported in cardboard boxes
to lockers at hub food
discouraged now as our progress is torn down,
a government being dismantled
thinking then it can’t happen here. But it does
I’m not sure there is enough of me today
bobbing movement of nature
you are missed daily
somewhere unknown,
another world away;
it was there
….no more
what if I told you
still, I hope for forgiveness…
the suggestion of brokenness
the promise of wholeness
we are all a part of everything
– I can’t help hoping
II: Redemption
if humans could fly,
would we ever walk?
around my imagination
whatever you want’s okay!
I close my eyes
and breathe in fireweed
your magic encapsulates me
waiting for the perfect day
that clear blue sky
is here year round
stairway to heaven
sun drops sparkle air
to reach, always, for the light
someone is thinking of me
remembering gratitude’s
call to learn what
was above and
below
today’s sun reluctantly begins
to set…
Poets and lines:-
Penelope Moffet 1-2, Jerrold Narland 3, Kerfe Roig 4, Susan Montgomery 5-6, Lawrence Pevec 7, Nancy R. Parr 8-9, Emily Bernhardt 10-11, Anon. 12, Grant Swados 13, Margie Ripperger 14, Anon. 15, Akua Lezli Hope 16, Jeannine Jordan 17-18, , Mary Mueller 19, Cassandra Bissel 20, Suzanne Harris 21-22, Karen Keltz 23-24, Ruth Vanklstine 25-26, Laura Gamache 27, Anon. 28, Lulu 29, Dava Wharton 30, Margaret Roncone 31-32, Rebecca 33-34, Muriel Karrr 35, Lisa Humphrey 36, Anon. 37-38, Nitya Prema 39, Karen Loeb 40, Amy Leonard 41-42, Donita Ries 43, Sandra Gadjewski 44, Diana Kolpak 45-46, Margaret Hill-Daniels 47, Cathy Wetter 48, Mary Skeen 49-50, Lynn Caldwell 51, Susan Vespoli 52, Julie Naslund 53, Angela Marie Ebba 54, Lula 55, P. O’Neill 56-58,Pence 59.
Beautiful paintings. That rag-rug is so colorful that it inspires many paintings.
Thank you, Cai, I looked at that rug (and others) for years, thinking that would make a painting and this year I finally got round to it!
Beautifully crafted cards.
Thanks, Sadje – it was hard work but I am so glad to have reclaimed my painting skills…
Awesome. 👏🏼