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…
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…
Westward a bunch of flowers adorns the table in the living room upstairs sent by kind neighbours after person(s) unknown threw an empty bottle through a downstairs bedroom window
Northly I sit in the yard garden smiling wearing a new shirt and waistcoat bought by my love finally getting a photo I like for all my online avatars
A Buddha sits on the window sill South view over his shoulder sheltered beneath a tree size avocado final success after countless failures to grow from a pit
A Buddha head sits among plants on a garden shelf, contemplating fossils garnered on English beaches and brought East by our son from Mexico but not from its yellow hills
Clematis blooms pink against the impossible blue of the May sky fluffed with clouds each year the Montana climbs to such height
Photos call us home in a sixth dimension of the heart
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 Shari
Each stranger’s name and address is like a mini detective challenge I follow police protocol and locate you on a map so I know you are in Seattle home to the PoPo Fest Beyond that your name gives me nothing but for no better reason than that you are one “O” short of a monsoon I picked this picture of Indian shoes some years past at the Leeds Asian Festival so blinging I couldn’t resist…
Shari was quick out of the blocks, her postcard poem being my fourth to arrive – which means she had no more idea about me than I had about her… Her card was beautiful, her poem short and sweet…
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 Amy
Do you believe in coincidence because what are the odd of two Millers at 6 and 7 in the chart? Could you be related even brother and sister, wife and ex just plain friends joined by matching nomenclature calling to remind that sign-up is beckoning for the Poetry Postcard Festival and leaping into un-poet like action – registering almost simultaneously like quantum entangled pairs I choose not to believe in coincidence…
The three poems by dead poets I have chosen to read for last night’s Dead Poets Society challenge by kim881 in Poetics, Uncategorized over at the dVerse Poets Pub are all from poets I studied at school and have continued to love all my life – great teachers have a lot to answer for…
Andrew Marvell 1621–1678
Andrew Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress‘ is surely one of the most famous poems of attempted seduction ever written. I live within a day-out’s journey from Marvell’s birthplace, Hull where the muddy tide of Humber is about as wide as the Ganges and I wonder whether sailor’s tales informed Marvell’s poem. The last time I visited Hull, I met two young lovers sitting on the plinth of Andrew Marvell’s lifesize statue and acquainted them with the poem…
WB Yeats was also a favourite at school and later, when I moved to Sligo in the west of Ireland and Yeats’ home town, I was commissioned to paint a mural of the poet and his work and you can see a much younger me from 1995 being interviewed on television whilst up a ladder painting the mural. Searching for a poem suitable for this challenge, I came across The Mask, an unusual (for Yeats) Question and Response format with an ABABA rhyme scheme
Hughes in 1986. PHOTO: NILS JORGENSEN/REX SHUTTERSTOCK
Lastly, I chose ‘A Grin‘ from Ted Hughes’ wonderful collection of poems ‘Crow’ although this is not one of the poems referencing the scurrilous Crow. If I had to keep one volume of poetry it would be this…
Having read these three dead poets, I’m afraid I could not write a poem based on just one of them and so my offering below channels all three, Yeats for the form, Ted Hughes for the title and theme and Marvell for the intimations of mortality and perhaps the poetic shot at immortality…
A Grin
‘Centre stage on the birthing bed Did you grin for your role through the pain?’ ‘I thought how easily I could end up dead And grinned to think you’d never touch me again Don’t fucking touch me! I shouted!
‘Did you grin at the banality of death by car crash You who imagined yourself great and with longevity?’ ‘I thought of my wife who always thought me rash And my secretary always seasoning work with levity Urging me to slow down – but I had to dash…’
‘I watched your grin, my eyes open, yours closed And wondered, coming together, if we really were?’ ‘You were so deep the thought never arose That we were two, a separate him and her I never thought at all as into me you flowed…’
‘Whatever before death caused your rictus grin Will be replaced in time by the skull’s secret smile’ ‘What tales within my skull locked in Now deliquescing, bodily integrity defiled In the game of Life, none of us can win.’
‘Your poetic attempt at seduction Already lived three hundred and fifty years Is poetry the way – immortality to win?’ ‘I never won that girl nor any like her But it makes me grin – the onward admiration…’
P.S. I realise now that we were supposed to write based on one of Kim’s chosen three poems but when I saw the challenge last night, my Covid head was stuffed with cotton wool and it is only this morning that I was feeling better sufficiently to write something and by then, the idea that we choose our own three poems had settled in… Sorry Kim! And so below is a response to one of your poem choices Dylan Thomas’ ‘Once It Was the Colour of Saying’.
Once It Was the Colour of Saying
Once a year at least, I listen to Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas and steep myself in the poetry of his play the play of his poetry as he carries us around the small Welsh town of his imagination borne into the night and through the waking day revisiting the cast of characters until we love their foibled ways and wish like the Reverend Eli Jenkins in his poem within a poem “To stroll among our trees and stray In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down, And hear the Dewi sing all day, And never, never leave the town.”
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 Christopher
Can you surf in the Gulf on the outer edge of the Keys is there enough fetch to raise waves suitable for surfing and which way does the wind blow or is it calm enough to paddleboard- the latest craze! I took these brightly coloured boards at St. Ives in Cornwall where surf and art mix I thought they were surf boards but looking now I am unsure perhaps kayaks – another way to breast the brine I savoured their beauty in the sun too old to try them out…
Christopher’s poem was a fine metaphor of the various times of data, and night, on the peaks, seen as music – perfectly prompted by his card – Maurice Baquet playing Chamber Music…
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 Peggy
To live by a great water is to have a special sense of place and you live in a place of Great Spirit by the Great Water. The moods and music of water change every moment and as well as the water the reflections of great clouds and huge skies dwarf our mortal constructions and remind us of the power of nature. We lived six months in lockdown with this stunning view of mountains and Mediterranean in Crete, winter of 2020 – I for one loved the cloud mountains…
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 Cecil
If I were a West Coast biker I would roar into Lincoln City on my Harley hog down the 101 El Camino Real – The Royal Road swooping up and down the hills over bluffs between Pacific beaches. My tattoos might inspire fear by association with terrible tales but if I was like this biker from West Yorkshire hanging out in Hebden Bridge famously home to hippies and lesbians I would have you know my bark is worse than my bite I am a big softie at heart too shy to let people get close…
Cecil may or may not have received my card before writing his postcard (below) – coincidentally, I sent my card on the 17th of July and his was the 17th card I received – on the 25th of August. His poem (which I am not allowed to show you) referenced nothing more frightening than a predatory Robin in a nature documentary – enough to make his wife hide her eyes – I do hope my card did not scare them…
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 Rachel
Passing the end of this street I saw these sun-painted shadows depicting the neighbouring houses chiaroscuro – light and shade. Morning sun swinging round is what we notice both creating and destroying shadows but at eventide it is the shadows winning steadily reclaiming surfaces for the night. I started seeing shadowplay everywhere best of all – shadows invaded by reflected sparkles from third-party windows Chiaroscuro…
Rachel fulfilled the PoPo brief perfectly, an epistolary postcard poem that referenced the picture on her card (below), and since she had presumably received my card, also referenced my theme of light and shade – perfect! I only wish I was allowed to show you…
Hold onto your hats! Myrtle and High Street Bellingham WA
