AUGUST TO OCTOBER — POSTCARD POEMS 2021

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And it's done. Over for another year. This was year 15 for me, and it marks the first year all my cards are done by me on both sides! If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times; I'm no artist, but I'm truly amazed at how much fun it was to attempt to draw things with coloured markers. 

Most of the cards were written at my desk. I love this desk. It used to belong to my grandmother and then my aunt. Now I get to sit at it and write things. 

As far as the poems go, every year I try to work towards some kind of constraint. This year's fest was in honour of Michael McClure and Diane di Prima, two poets who died in the past year. Diane actually participated in the August Postcard Fest in the first or second year and I was lucky enough to get one from her. It reads:

Just Like the Rules Said

some of them respond

to a card, or picture

some of them

are a vision in my head

some walk into or out of

the fog

or someone's dream

To be perfectly honest, when I first received that card I thought the poem was kind of a toss-off. But that was before I'd thrown myself fully into the game, the game being to write the damned poem directly on the card; don't overthink it; don't write a bunch of drafts on paper and copy what you think is the best one. Nope. The idea is to take your pen, apply it to the card, and let the words fall where they may. Took me a long time to get even slightly comfortable doing that, but now I find it incredibly freeing. 

This year I decided to honour Diane's Revolutionary Letters. I read them, made a list of all her first lines and then, without rereading the poem, I arbitrarily chose one and included it in the poem I wrote to each of the poets in my group. Most of the time I started with the line, just as she did. For example, Diane's Revolutionary Letter # 1begins with the line 

I have just realized that the stakes are myself

and I continued

I have just realized that the stakes are myself

however I decide to drive them.

Smoke hangs heavy among

the unburnt trees that tremble

in their nervousness

knowing they could be next.

We are all sentient beings.

We bring what we have 

to this party called life

to this game where the stakes

grow higher every day.

I throw mine in with the rest.

Sometimes Diane's line wound up in the body of my poem, like this one that begins her Revolutionary Letter #34

hey man, let's make a revolution, let's give

and my poem turned into this:

Being a teenage in the sixties

was both confusing—

all that fifties' modelling—

and exhilarating—

look Ma, I'm on the pill!

Instead of making accidental babies

it was

hey man, let's make a revolution, let's give

peace a goddamn chance!

I did this with twenty-nine of the thirty-one cards; missed the first two as I hadn't yet decided on the constraint. It was an interesting way to honour a poet whose memoir I took out of the library twice and brought it back late both times. She was, shall we say, a kindred spirit.

Last year, and starting again today as it happens, I took a number of Zoom courses/workshops/discussion groups about poetry and the next batch of poems I wrote went out October 1st to some of the people I met in those groups. So far this year I've written forty-five cards. This last bunch that just went out follows no constraint or theme whatsoever, but the poems were all written directly onto the cards.

And here are all the cards I received this year. It was a lovely haul with some great poems and lots of wonderful, original artwork. A huge thank you goes out to everyone involved! It was kind of a tough summer. First there was the heat dome and we got temperatures in the mid-forties Celsius (113F) and then there were forest fires all over the province so the air was awful. Covid numbers really blew up around here (southeast BC) and it finally got into my mom's care home so we couldn't visit her for six weeks. Hard to explain to someone who's 101 and can't remember things like she used to. 

Get the damned vaccine, people! It won't hurt you for more than a second or two and it might save somebody you love.

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IT'S POSTCARD POEM TIME AGAIN! COME PLAY!

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I have a stack of postcards that have been following me around for several weeks now. Since May, actually, when I agreed (with myself) to draw something on blank cards. Oxygen Art Centre in Nelson was doing a prompt a day event called "Big Draw" so I sort of followed that.

I am no artist. I remember Mr. Brown's Art Class in Junior High, how I'd watch enviously as one or other of my classmates would produce something gorgeous. A tree that looked like a tree. A mountain scene. A familiar street with houses that looked right (I must have been daydreaming when he discussed perspective.) Something abstract with fabulous colours. Watercolours that didn't run into each other. 

Writing classes, however, were different. Oh, they weren't just writing classes. "Compostion" was lumped in with English classes which were divided, in the earlier grades at least, into English Grammar and English Literature. I enjoyed both, particularly when we got to "write" something and even more particularly when we were studying poetry. In Grade 12 I actually had my father for English 91, as it was called then. It was the only A I got that year. (He made a point of assigning all the marking in that class to another teacher so he couldn't be accused of bias.)

So, back to postcards. It's almost time for August Postcard Poeming again! I've been doing this every summer since 2007. And this year, for the first time ever, I'm sending all orginals, as in both sides by me!

I still don't "get" perspective and I'm not sure Mr. Brown would approve of this hodgepodge of stuff, but by golly I had fun! And that's the main thing the Postcard Poem Fest is about; getting your inner-editor off your back and going for it.

The idea is to dash off a poem directly onto the card. It took me several years of the fest before I was actually able to do this so if you have to write out a first draft on a notepad who am I to tell you not to? You write a poem a day during the month of August—once you've got your list of 32 names including your own, feel free to start. Some days, to be honest, I don't get to it. Other days I might write two or three.

This year's fest is dedicated to the memories of Beat poets Michael McClure and Diane di Prima, both of whom died in 2020. In one of the first years di Prima participated in the postcard fest. Here's the card I got from her. See how she summarizes what the fest is about in just a few lines.

just like the RULES SAID

some of them respond

to a card, or picture

some of them

are a vision in my head

some walk into or out of 

the fog

or someone's dream

                                                                            Diane di Prima

If you want to play along, here are a few relevant links:

The blog for the fest is here: https://popo.cards 

Sign up via Submittable here. The $15 entry fee goes to support Seattle Poetry Lab and all it does for poetry. DEADLINE: JULY 18th, 2021

A workshop handout for the poetry postcard writing exercise by Paul Nelson who started this whole adventure is here: 

And finally, pay attention to postal rates. In Canada it costs 

$1.07 cents to mail a card within Canada (.92 if you buy in bulk) 

$1.30 to send one to the States 

$2.71 International destinations 

Not an inexpensive exercise, but I think of it as a nice dinner out.

If you're not in Canada (and most postcarders are not), PLEASE check with your own post office for your out-of-country rates. 

Here, mostly for my own records, are some of the posts I've made where I talked about postcard poems:

2021  2019 2019 again  2017  2017 again  2016  2014  2007  2007 again

Sisu just came in, saw the cards on the floor, and decided to make a statement. I think he's saying, "Not this again!" 

'Fraid so!

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Incantation

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NaPoWriMo 2021 Day 3

I am so stoked about this challenge!

"Today, I’d like to challenge you to make a “Personal Universal Deck,” and then to write a poem using it. The idea of the “Personal Universal Deck” originated with the poet and playwright Michael McClure, who gave the project of creating such decks to his students in a 1976 lecture at Naropa University. Basically, you will need 50 index cards or small pieces of paper, and on them, you will write 100 words (one on the front and one on the back of each card/paper) using the rules found here."

Would you believe I just happen to have one? Earlier this year I took an online poetry course with Paul Nelson who is linked in the "here" above and one of the things he had us do was to make a Personal Universe Deck! Mine lives in its own box.

True to form for me, I did it my way in that I wrote the two words on the same side of each card, so what I do is shuffle, draw three cards, and use the word that's right-side-up when I put them down. (Unless I'm feeling ornery, in which case I use the word that's up-side-down.)

Tonight I ended up with incense, stab, and woods.

Incantation

If you take a flower      and place it on a fire

heat from the blaze  s p r e a d s

 

       until it finds another      in need of warmth.

 

The night you came back

we burned the incense

 

       I had saved      for such an occasion. 

 

You took a stab at writing a poem

I pretended to like

 

       with its burnt out rhymes      and tumbledown clichés.

 

I put Billy Joel on the stereo

and we danced a little

 

       bottle of red      bottle of white.

 

We carried what was left of us

into the woods in search of solace 

 

       but only one of us      returned.

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