Participants commit to writing a poem a day on a postcard and send it out to another poet on the list.
From the call for participants:
"Here's what's involved:
Get yourself at least 31 postcards. These can be found at book stores, thrift shops, online, drug stores, antique shops, museums, gift shops. (You'll be amazed at how quickly you become a postcard whore.)
On or about July 27th, write an original poem right on a postcard and mail it to the person on the list below your name. (If you are at the very bottom, send a card to the name at the top.) For crying out loud WRITE LEGIBLY!
Starting on August 1st, ideally in response to a card YOU receive, keep writing a poem a day on a postcard and mailing it to successive folks on the list until you've sent out 31 postcards. Of course you can keep going and send as many as you like but we ask you to commit to at least 31 (a month's worth).
What to write? Something that relates to your sense of "place" however you interpret that, something about how you relate to the postcard image, what you see out the window, what you're reading, using a phrase/topic/or image from a card that you got, a dream you had that morning, or an image from it, etc. Like "real" postcards, get to something of the "here and now" when you write.
Do write original poems for the project. Taking old poems and using them is not what we have in mind. These cards are going to an eager audience of one, so there's no need to agonize. That's what's unique about this experience. Rather than submitting poems for possible rejection, you are sending your words to a ready-made and excited audience awaiting your poems in their mailboxes. Everyone loves getting postcards. And postcards with poems, all the better."
I'm thinking of signing up this year. I'm looking forward to the treasure of poetry I will receive in return.
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