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 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…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
Robi sent the arrangement of fans and other objects bearing the Stars and Stripes and wrote a charming Haiku about waterskiing…
