POSTCARD POEM MONTH 2017 COMES TO AN END

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2017 Postcard Poems Received

plus this one (Ted just came in with today's mail)

2017 marks eleven years I've been writing poems on cards to strangers. Strangers who have become less (and yes, occasionally more) strange because at the same time I'm on the receiving end. The idea is to write directly onto the card, which I now do without giving it much of a thought. While I'm rarely pleased with the resulting blurt, of the thirty-plus cards I write usually one or two have something worth salvaging. 

I keep track of all these cards, both incoming and outgoing so I know for a fact this is the best year yet for receiving cards from almost everyone on the list—twenty-eight—out of thirty (all but two of which were signed) plus seven or eight  "bonus" cards from people I've been exchanging cards with for years now as well as some of the folk I interact with online (of course there's a Facebook group). 

This year I had to scrounge a bit to find cards to send. I knew for a fact I had hundreds—yes, it's come to that—as I have friends who give me cards and I stop in at The Postcard Place on Granville Island in Vancouver every chance I get (that's where I found the box of Nancy Drew covers I used in 2011 and one of my poems wound up in an anthology) 

and I culled scores of them from my late aunt's photo albums after she died (she used to both take photos and buy cards when she traveled, and boy, did she travel). But do you think I could find the damn things when August rolled around? Nope. So I drew one



and collaged a couple

and even painstakingly coloured one, which was a lot of fun but took forever, although as my friend and fellow August PoPo person, Judy Wapp (Group 4), pointed out, I could just mail those ones and let the recipient colour them if they wished.

 I bought half-a-dozen or so new ones from Cartolina, a nifty little paper and stuff store in Nelson, BC and the rest I had lying around. 

No sooner had September rolled around when I found my big stash, including more stamps and last-year's list, so I'm definitely all set for next year. 

If you sign up you might get one of these next year!

Soon, very very soon, there's going to be a tenth anniversary anthology of postcard poems called 56 Days of August. Soon as I get my hands on my copy I'll be posting about it here.

Huge, heartfelt thanks to all you wonderful poets in Group 2 and to those who sent bonus cards and to Paul Nelson and Lana Hechtman Ayers for starting this movement. Once again, you made my August!

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POSTCARD POEMS, YEAR TEN

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Please note, this year the cut-off for joining is July 17th at midnight. If this sounds like something you'd like to try, sign up now.  

The other day I received an email from Judy Kleinberg who is working on a blog post of tips for poets interested in participating in the 10th Annual August Postcard Fest and wanted to know if I had any suggestions as to how to organize/manage/write postcard poems. To celebrate a decade of this poetry-writing frenzy there's going to be an anthology published next year and Judy's one of the editors. Judy produces wonderful found poems like this one:

The Condition — found poem by Judy Kleinberg

I've been doing this since 2007, the year Paul E. Nelson and Lana Hechtman Ayers, two Seattle-area poets, came up with the idea. For the paltry sum of USD$10 you sign up, get a list of 31 names and addresses, find yourself a bunch of postcards and stamps (mostly US; the majority of participants are from the States), and get writing.

Paul posted a comprehensive list of instructions here. The idea is to write your poem directly onto the card (ie. no practice drafts!). I don't think I was able to do that for the first three or four years, but now I find the process to be exceptionally liberating. Combing through old blog posts to do with August postcards, I found the following: 

For the first few years I found this (writing directly onto the card) 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. 

It just so happens that I've been busy cleaning up my basement studio so Judy's tip request couldn't have come at a better time. 

As far as organizing goes, I live for file folders. 

I take photos, front and back, of every card I send. Mind you, with changes to hardware over the past decade I would be hard-pressed to find the earlier ones, but I can locate them from 2011 on. I use keywords: postcards/postcard images (for when I just want to see the pix, as in the attached)/the year, and thus can find them pretty fast. 

Once written, I transcribe the poem into a Word doc with the name of the person who will receive it. (For some reason, 2010 has gone AWOL, but I'm sure it's around somewhere!)

I've prodded myself with various prompt devices over the years. There's a fabulous postcard store on Granville Island in Vancouver where I've picked up several cards. In 2011 I went with a box of Nancy Drew cover images. In 2013 I used  epigraphs culled from poems in that year's Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology.  

I've even started making some of my own cards, sometimes using coloured pencils, sometimes pasting together a collage from off-cuts of paper I use for the books I make. These are my favourites now, and for someone who felt like she failed any art class she was ever in, this is huge! 

I used one of my collage images as the cover for a chapbook I did for Ottawa-area poet Carol A. Stephen. 

Another became the cover for one of Jan de Bruyn's novels. (Jan, who's 98 now, is still writing novels "to keep his mind fresh". He gets me to publish six copies of each, for himself and his children. Jan was an English professor at UBC for many years and is responsible for starting Prism International, the university's lit mag). 

Five of my postcard poems appeared in the fall 2014 issue of the New Orphic Review.

Proceeds from this year's postcard exchange will go to support the 4th Annual Cascadia Poetry Festival to be held in Seattle November 3–6, 2016. 


If you want to exercise your poetry muscles, this is a great way to go about it.

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GO INTO THE WOODS WITH LANA HECHTMAN AYERS; I DARE YOU

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What Big Teeth–Red Riding Hood’s Real Life

            Lana Hechtman Ayers

                        Kissena Park Press, 2010

Lana HechtmanAyers is a cyber-friend. I met her via an event she and Seattle poet Paul E. Nelson started in 2006, I think it was. Postcard Poems has become an annual August event. I’ve blogged about it most years, even posted the cards I’ve sent out, and their poems. It’s a great little exercise in not taking yourself too seriously, and you connect with lots of interesting folk, Lana being one of them. In the way of the world these days we became Facebook friends, and a couple of years ago when she started posting pictures of a forthcoming chapbook I was sufficiently moved by the cover image (see? if you were wondering, yes you can!) to order a copy.

            The first story is not about light or apples.

            The first story is about the woods,

            the woman in the red hood, the Wolf.

So begins What Big Teeth, a collection of poems that explore the myth generated by the Little Red Riding Hood story, at the same time looking at other sorts of myths many of us grew up with. In this version of the tale, Red writes about getting hooked up with a man called Hunter because that’s what you did:

            A mop and a man

            to clean up after,

            a frying pan,

            a laying hen,

            that was supposed to be

enough for any woman.

Things are less than sunny at Red and Hunter’s place. And then she meets Wolf, at an art museum, no less, and Red is smitten.

Oh, my mother warned me

about wolves—

their scented necks, their feral ways.

But she said nothing

about the cultured wolves,

the white glove kind.

Red discovers the world of art and in so doing, discovers herself.

            Lost youth and art break you,

            two foxes slipping away

            into the underbrush.

I remember being home alone one time when I was about eleven or twelve. It was late spring, quite warm, and it started to rain. I suddenly wondered what it would feel like to be out in that rain, naked. Of course, I found out right away. (If you’re wondering, we lived in the country with no neighbors in eye-shot.) There’s something in these poems that make me remember that girl.

            I used to love to walk

            in the woods in the rain.

            Mother said it was because

            I was a brainless child,

            stupid and wild.

In What Big Teeth, Lana Hechtman Ayers takes a bold look at coming of age and what it can mean to women. 

She further explores the theme in a full-length poetry collection, also published in 2010 (Pecan Grove Press), entitled A New Red: a fairy tale for grownups. The poems in this book feel less raw, more worked on, delve deeper into the story, but I have to say I really have a soft spot for the chapbook ones, perhaps because of their rawness. I love the poet’s use of epigraphs throughout—a diverse parade of writers from e.e. cummings to Anne Sexton to Leonard Cohen to Alanis Morrissette to Gwendolyn Brooks to George Carlin add spice to what is already a rich soup of words. Bravo!

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