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
This might seem like
sending coals to Newcastle
a picture of mighty mountains
to a woman who lives on a fiord
with her back to
mountains of her own
but these mountains have
never known the touch of glaciation
these mountains in Crete
where we spent lockdown
may be capped with Winter snow
but from their tops
you could see Africa
if only you were young enough
to climb and not locked down
so every day we just
admired from afar
Andrew
© Andrew Wilson, 2023
Amy’s card was only my second to arrive from Group 15 which I belonged to – I was the only non-American on the list! Her card was glittery and featured a drunken fairy and the mossy rocks which I imagine abound in the Washington landscape… I only wish I could share her poem!
