POPO 2020

each day be
side itself with all
fresh waves of
surprise—all
gathered believing in be
longing everywhere

This year I participated in POPO the August POetry POstcard Fest–where the challenge is to send a different postcard with a poem you’ve composed for each day in August, 31 in all. After you register, you receive a list of names in your participant group, and go down the list until you get back to your own.

I decided to do shadormas, as they would fit easily on the back of a postcard, and to connect them through repeating part of the last line of each poem to the first line of the poem for the next day. I made over 40 postcards in anticipation, and sent some to my friends as well as to the people on my list.

everywhere
what we see is what
we don’t know
and more than
enough remains unanswered
to  fill many books

I received 27 cards back. The mail has been unreliable as we all know, so that’s a pretty good percentage. I enjoyed both the giving and the receiving and looked forward each morning to picking out a card and composing a poem. Below is a photo of all the cards that were sent to me. I’ll be posting the ones I sent, along with the poems, from time to time, and at the end I’ll tie them all together in a multiverse shadorma chain.

I highly recommend it! You can already sign up for next year, but you have until next summer if, like me, you wait until the last minute to decide these things.

I’m linking this to dVerse open link night, where Mish is hosting, in the hopes that it will inspire some pub members to participate in 2021.

43 thoughts on “POPO 2020”

    1. With stamps and all. Using great stamps was part of the fun too. I find that everyone enjoys receiving a postcard in the mail and I’ve been sending them to friends and family for a long time.

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  3. Kerfe, that’s really really cool. What a fun project. I will sign up for next year and am guessing they send out emails to remind the participants? Looking forward to seeing the ones you sent and your final shadorma chain. I love your this and that one.

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    1. Thanks Jade. I know you will enjoy it. I signed up at the last minute, but I would guess they do send reminders. Some days were more inspired than others, which was part of the process too.

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  4. What a fantastic project, Kerfe! When my daughter was little, we used to make postcard collages which we sometimes sent to my mother but mostly displayed on a pinboard. This is something I could do with her and my grandson when he’s a little older.

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    1. They don’t. Although I always write by hand before putting it onto the computer. It’s a much more direct connection between thought and word. I never was that enamored with making computer art for the same reason. (K)

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      1. You’re lucky they deliver postcards in the US. Not a single one of the postcards my second daughter sent from Naples arrived. The PO doesn’t even bother trying to decipher the address on them, I think, since so often people use all the space for writing the message and the address gets shoved into an illegible corner.

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        1. I can’t find a pattern to what gets delivered here and what not. Lots of regular mail disappears too. The city put bar codes on our absentee ballots so you can trace them and make sure they arrive–an incentive to the post office to make it works here in the city, anyway. Not that it’s any secret who will win in NYC–we had enough of Trump long ago. But the more “get lost” votes, the better.

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    1. It was wonderful! No, you can use a postcard you bought and just write a poem on the back. That’s what most of the ones I received were like (and some wonderful postcards they chose too). A few did their own illustrations, and some did no illustrations at all–they just used the USPS blank stamped postcards and wrote on that, both front and back. A few also did what I did–embellished a store bought postcard. The variety was also inspiring.

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  15. Pingback: POPO 2020 part 2 – K.
  17. Pingback: POPO 2020 part 3 – K.
  19. Pingback: Poetry Postcard Fest 2021: Pantoum and Moon – K.

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