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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