It’s Time! August Poetry Postcard Festival!

Paul Nelson, poet and lead organizer of the August Poetry Postard Festival has sent the first update for this year’s event!

For you newbies, the August PoPo Fest goes like this: You sign up. You get a list of 31 names/addresses of other people who signed up. Starting late June, you write a poem a day on a postcard and mail it off to the next person on the list, so by the end of the month, you will have (hopefully) written and sent 31 poems and (hopefully) received 31 poems.

The poems are not supposed to be pre-written or something you’ve been working on for months. This is an exercise is the spontaneous, the demanding, the gut-driven, the postcard inspired – whatever it is that gets you to write once a day, each day, and send it off into the world.

I’ve done this event since it began, and it is now in its ninth year! I don’t always keep to a poem a day; sometimes I get ahead one day, or catch up another, with several poems in one day. But I try my best. The event does get me thinking of poetry in my every day, when I rarely have time for it, and writing it down – something I have time for even more rarely.

I’ve received poems from across the state, the country and around the globe. I’ve gotten postcards made from cereal boxes, some with gorgeous original artwork, and lots of the lovely tacky tourist cards from travel destinations. I have cards from “famous” poets, and some who have since become more famous, and some never signed, so I’ll never know, and it hardly matters. I’ve gotten poetry. Sent to me directly. From strangers. Lovely, strange, absurd, and funny. Poetry.

It’s an amazing event, and I hope you will take the challenge and join in this year. For the first time EVER, the organizers have decided to charge a nominal fee for the event ($10). I can only imagine the amount of work it is to run this (with up to 300 people participating), and keeping up virtual space to promote it. I’m not dissuaded by the fee, knowing the extraordinary event that it is, and knowing I’ve spent 100 times that on conferences from which I’ve gotten a great deal less inspiration…

So, please writers, wanna-bes and needs-a-kick-in-the-arsers, poetry lovers, postcard lovers – this event is for you. Join us!