Poetry Postcard Fest - How would you know...

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 25 – The End…

October 30, 2023October 30, 2023humanist55

This is the very last card I sent, to Elise, and hers was the very first card I received which is as it should be – I have enjoyed the whole experience and I hope you all enjoyed my sharing the cards I sent to Group 15. Finally, I have taken a group photo of all the cards I received in order – until next year…

Dear Elise

You were my first
and you are my last
to write a poem
to a stranger, that is
I saved this pearly treasure
for you who talked of
the remnants of human history
and these shells on a Cretan beach
unposed I assure you
also tell of lives past
moist forms departed.
So much easier to write
to a stranger when you
have received their’s first
and it has been fun and
I regret I have reached the end.

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 24

October 29, 2023October 29, 2023humanist55

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 23 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…
Before I post the last poem I sent but whose sender was the first I received – the next eight cards, two at a time, are ones on the list that I sent but didn’t receive from, – given what happened to the 23rd to arrive by way of Trinidad – I have not given up hope – so if you recognise a card you received and you know you sent one – please let me know in the comments and we shall presume it travelling still, the backwaters of the postal system…

Dear Julie

I see you live in the watery
maze that is Seattle
more water than land
but perhaps you have a beach
where flotsam and jetsam collect
like this one in Crete where
we lived in lockdown.
I thought of the things
that wash up on beaches
and added my thoughts
a refugee child from the small boats
a famous shipwreck in a Xanthos cove
a Russian tank destroyed in Ukraine
and a gas-masked Barbie
abandoned in Chernobyl
not all beaches
but flotsam nevertheless

Dear Emily

What gives a location
a sense of place that
makes it unique to it’s population?
I studied geography long ago
and still I love to read maps
and Gadsden is on a river
though that doesn’t guarantee
that your sense of place
is the one I imagine
or even that of your neighbours.
Perhaps the River Coosa
is everything to you
or is it a street or the climate
that makes, for you,
Gadsden’s sense of place?

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 23

October 27, 2023October 27, 2023humanist55

Dear Jesse

Forgive me for sending
coals to Newcastle for
Seattle must have many
tiny moss gardens
nestled in the crook of branches
but though we are strangers
and I have only your address to go on
as one poet to another
I hope you too see
moss gardens growing in the trees
on rock
by streams
wherever you look
and I would like to share
this garden of mine…

Harrison sounds like a surname
Andina a forename
but must I trust the form
as you filled it in?
So little to go on
in reaching out with a poem
to a stranger who may
yet turn out to be a friend
stranger things have happened.
I read about Seattle in “Stay”
by Nicola Griffiths and I
try to picture you living
across the watery way
and unknowing you
I send this picture of Friendship
Bracelets given by my partner
It’d some kind of message…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 22

October 23, 2023October 23, 2023humanist55

Dear Albert
I wish to report a crime!
On a recent visit to Blackheath,
London, I came across this
Jane Doe – provisionally
identified as Barbie.
The naked body dumped on a wall
evidence of torture with
a cigarette lighter
to the breasts – otherwise
no obvious sign of fatal injury
no witnesses, no motive.
Who would abandon
such a doll?
Who can fathom
the workings
of the human heart…

Dear Mario

In Washington State great trees abound
but Olive trees are not, I think there found
these are the flowers of the Cretan Olive
grown more for oil than eating
olives now are threatened by global warming.
Pray for the farmer’s harvest
when next year comes around
I am guessing from your
name that your family
is no stranger to olives…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 21

October 22, 2023October 22, 2023humanist55

Dear Lisanne
Like so many places in America
I knew the name of Berkeley
but I had to look at the map
to know exactly where it was.
Can you see the Pacific
framed by the Golden Gate Bridge
do waves cross the bay
to wash up on a Berkeley beach?
I first saw Dianne Arbus’ work
in a Sunday supplement
and I had my own Dianne Arbus moment
on the beach at Clacton
this lady pushing not
a baby in a pram
but a poodle…

Dear Rodda

I will not say Wish You Were Here
since this moment in time
was frozen digitally
a good few years ago
pre-Covid, pre-Trump, pre-War
and if we could have stood there
then it was a wet and windy day
not like the sunshine
eternally associated in the
imagination as shining down
on Stearns Pier, your pier.
Of course I know the Pacific
is not always peaceful
any more than the North Sea
splashing Blackpool is always stormy…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 20

October 21, 2023October 21, 2023humanist55

Dear Karen

I should like to say this
painting is my own work
and in a small part it is.
I prompted an AI to make
four pictures in sixty second
“Village beside lake style of
Charles Rennie Mackintosh
“La Rue de Soleil” palette
knife oil painting” – it obeyed!
I am still trying to wrap
my head around it
perhaps I will copy it into
real oil paint on canvas
pondering with each brush stroke
how an AI went from 0- 60
in sixty second times x 4…

Due to an error in reading my meticulous recording of what card was sent when and which arrived when, I posted Karen’s beautiful handpainted watercolour trees a few days ago when it should have been the equally beautiful ink colour sketch of Paul Klee’s “Conqueror” with an Ekphrastic poem to match – my apologies to Caren and Karen for the mix up…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 19

October 20, 2023October 20, 2023humanist55

Dear Allison

I see you live on a hill
perhaps on a road that encircles it
there are many Chapel Roads
in England, more still in Wales
where you are CHAPEL
rather than Church.
Writing to a stranger
in Epistolary form
there is little enough to go on
so I send you the view
from another hill
looking towards
Wuthering Heights where
I snooze for an hour
during Barbara’s Reiki session…

Allison’s card was the 23rd and last card I received – not that Allison was tardy in posting it – she posted on 5th of July and it arrived 3rd of October having been “Missent to Jamaica” (as rubber stamped on the back!) Who doesn’t love a well-travelled card!” And on the back of this angelic card was a Haiku on the subject of the relationship between music and angels.

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 18

October 16, 2023October 16, 2023humanist55

Dear Caren

No street photographer I
no Cartier-Bresson
but I do sometimes seize a moment
as with this elderly couple
reviewing their garden
and a lifetime of closeness
I imagine – in Upwhey
where the River Whey comes up
before plunging its short course
down to Weymouth
with my late mother
I snapped them…

As you can see from Caren’s postcard to me, which from the relative dates, I calculate means she had received my card to her and has responded in kind with a painting of trees and a poem to match (which I wish I could show you).

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 17

October 14, 2023October 14, 2023humanist55

Dear Robi

“The graves a fine and private place
But none I think do there embrace”
wrote Andrew Marvell
– marvellous metaphysical poet
but I like to think that
in this graveyard
at the back of my house
young lovers or even old
do venture into the dark
to woo – as Marvell’s poem’s
subject would do
creating fonder memories
than the daytime dog walkers
or even those visiting
the quiet residents do…

Robi sent the arrangement of fans and other objects bearing the Stars and Stripes and wrote a charming Haiku about waterskiing…

Poetry Postcard Fest Follow Up Post 16

October 13, 2023October 13, 2023humanist55

Dear Toni

A solitary crow does not
a murder make
I like to think
I am not even sinister
unlike the direction
sign I sit upon
I will not even defend my perch
if a bigger bird takes a notion
to supplant me, in a blink
I will fly away to keep the peace.
You thought different?
We crows get a bad press
but I don’t care a jot…

Toni told a tale of being scandalised by a (very young) naked Englishman! Below is her card to me…