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…
Ghosts
Dear R
Do you like ghost stories
for that is what you see here
the ghosts of Death Notices
once tacked to this telegraph pole
to tell the community
who has passed in the night
and where the funeral will be.
In Crete during lockdown
I saw this post and had to
ask a local what it meant
– ghosts telegraphing their
passing to the world…
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
And below is the card RJ sent me with a poem of environmental concern which according to the rules I cannot show you…
