IT'S ALMOST AUGUST. WANT TO PLAY POSTCARD POEMS?

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If you've been thinking about joining the August postcard poem exchange this year, you've got six days to get yourself on the list. All the information you need is here. 

You just have to commit to writing an original poem on 31 postcards and sending them to the people who are below you on the list. This year we're already up to 350 participants. I've been doing this since the first year (2007) and it's been so much fun watching it grow. 

The idea is to write your poem directly onto the card. For the first few years I found this to be well nigh impossible. What if I got going and ran out of room? What if I got the line breaks wrong? What if it was too bad to send? What if I thought of a better subject to write about? Well, honestly, after a few years of sketching the poems in a notebook first, I came to realize that I could write directly on the cards and the world would't end. Now I love the process. I love surprising myself with what comes out of my pen. And there's something very satisfying about the physical act of mailing the card to someone — most often a stranger, and it's both amazing and gratifying that many of those strangers have become "friends" through Facebook. Many of us send the requisite number of cards to the assigned people plus several others to folk we've exchanged with in the past. 

And it's nothing short of delightful to open your mailbox and find a postcard poem just waiting to be read. 

Paul Nelson is compiling the list of names this year. If you want to be on it, get in touch with him no later than July 26th. 

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BEGIN WITH THE CORNERS — ALMEDA GLENN MILLER'S NEW POETRY COLLECTION

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A few weeks ago I had occasion to spend part of the day in Trail, so I headed up to Rossland to Café Books West in search of a copy of Almeda Glenn Miller's new book of poems, the wonderfully titled Begin With the Corners from Big Bad Wolf Press.  

The young lady who took my money said, "This looks interesting." 

"Yes," I replied, "and she's local!"

She studied the cover. "Really?" 

I didn't have the heart to tell her Almeda and her husband used to have that bookstore when it was called Gold Rush Books. 

The poems are rich and fruity and sparkle with Almeda's trademark humour coupled with intelligence. 

Coffee and poetry, with a river running by. Doesn't get much better than this!

Begin With the Corners was launched when I was still in Mexico, and I was away when she read from it in Castlegar, so I've not yet managed to hear Almeda read from this collection. I knew she's been presenting the poems with the local group Motes and Oats providing backup musical arrangements and I was dying to see how that worked, so you can imagine my delight when a CDBaby download card floated out of the book when I was reading it down by the Columbia River near Gyro Park in Trail. The card gives you a free download of five of the poems that appear in the book, including The Book of Failures which I really enjoyed, both on the page and through my speakers. You, too, can listen to these poems by downloading them at CDBaby or on iTunes. Or, for an even better deal, buy the book and get the download card!

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LOWELL MURPHREE'S E-BOOK, "BINDINGS" ~ A MODPO COLLABORATION

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Lowell Murphree is one of the legion of poets I met online via that MOOC, ModPo (Modern and Contemporary American Poetry) a couple of years ago, then in person in Seattle at the beginning of May. One of our number, Jamie Zoe Givens, was slated for cancer surgery and Lowell wrote a poem for her that wound up in a lovely e-book, Bindings. 

With Lowell Murphree, at the Cascadia Poetry Festival in Seattle, May 2014

I know, I know, I'd still rather hold poetry in paper form, but the way this collaboration came together an e-version is absolutely right. Jamie wrote the introduction, Professor ModPo, Al Filreis, provided a foreword, and Jeremy Dixon, another ModPo enthusiast who happens to be Hazard Press in Wales, designed and edited it. 

You can read and/or download a copy of Bindings free of charge here through Dropbox. Neither Lowell nor Jeremy is making any money from this project, but if you're so inclined you could make a donation to Jamie's health recovery fund via this gofundme campaign.

                           Somebody else’s hands are

                           doing my hand’s work today

                           on a keyboard never mine

                           in a chair in a country never mine.

                           (from Diction of Unemployment

                                  by Lowell Murphree)

ModPo is happening for the third year this fall. If you're curious about MOOCs and you like poetry, check it out. Here's the link again.

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