Today, it was like the postcard senders knew me

I received my fifth and sixth postcards today as part of the Poetry Postcard Festival.  The first one I looked at featured a lovely illustration of a girl blowing the fluff off a giant dandelion: really pretty!  And then the second one was a flower fairy postcard!  I'm not sure how well-known of a fact this is, but I absolutely adore flowers and fairies, and I have a deeply entrenched childhood love of Cicely Mary Barker's "Flower Fairy" books and illustrations.  Alas, the postcard was not one of her images, but it was one of Amy Brown's, which I also like.  The poem on the second card was also really lovely.  And, by a nice conjunction of her card being late and me still trying to send mine early, the sender was on my list to send postcards to today, so I got to include a little note saying I loved her postcard.  That's the kind of thing I was looking forward to when I signed up for this whole poetry postcard exchange. 

1 out of 4

That's how many poetry postcards I've received so far: one out of the four days of August.  I don't expect to get one every day or to get them all on time, but I'm a little disappointed not to have more to respond to.  I did write one of my new postcards in response to the one I received (about the recent derecho storms). 

I'll be dropping three more postcards in a mailbox this weekend and hoping to get some more poems next week.

Poetry + Postcards

So much for being a more regular blogger this year . . .

Regardless of my recent blog slacking, I'm participating in a new poetry project and planning to blog about it.  I've decided to join the August Poetry Postcard Fest this year.  The idea is simple; poets sign up in advance and then each receives a list of names and addresses.  Every day in August, participants should write an original poem on a postcard and mail it to the next name on the list.  Theoretically, they should also be receiving a poem postcard every day as well. 

I love poems, and I love postcards, and I love collaborative projects, so this sounded right up my alley.  It reminds me in a vague way of a project we did in an art class in college, where each student began making a collage postcard and then passed it on to another classmate who add on to the image, and so on.  I remember my final postcard has a row of mismatched shoes along a beach.  It was pretty cool.

Now I confess I'm cheating a bit.  I actually wrote my first five postcards this past weekend and sent them out yesterday in the hope that one or more will arrive on the right day.  I used postcards I had at home already: a vintage vacation postcard, two vintage postcards of downtown Columbus, a free pug postcard I received from an Etsy artist when I ordered a batch of holiday cards, and a Penn State postcard featuring the Lion Shrine.  That last one yielded the most interesting poem, I think, given the clusterf*&% that's been consuming Penn State recently.

I have a few most postcards sitting around, waiting for poems, and I ordered a batch of vintage architectural postcards on ebay to round out the month's worth.  I am looking forward to receiving my first postcard(s), and hoping that they will inspire my next batch of poems.  I will probably post pictures of some of the cards I receive and possibly images of some of my poems as well.