Going into my 2nd Poetry Postcard Fest

I would like to take this space to do two things. One: reflect on lessons from last year’s fest. Two: set some intentions for myself for this year's fest.

My first thought upon casting myself back to last year's fest is of community building. I love writing letters, and with some of my friends I do it year round. One of the effects of this fest, by joining not just people who love poetry but love letters/postcards, is the potential for pen pals. Don’t let those opportunities go to waste!

Making all my postcards last fest was a difficult task, but well worth it for me. Something about the creation of the cards deepened that element of the fest. I think the fest is really about two things: what are the most important ways we can create things (thing 1) for others in our community (thing 2). I had the opportunity to hear some representatives from the Muckleshoot Tribe speak to my school in the past year, and one of the things they said really struck me - they have a tradition that the first thing someone makes should be given as a gift. That is exactly what this fest is about. For me, the exertion of creating the card to be given away is an effort of love for the community. What an important thing to practice.

I look forward to upping the challenge of making all my postcards this year by having the making of them included in the daily practice, as opposed to making them all in preparation for the fest. I am not sure this will be the way I go about it in future fests, but my idea is to make a painting inspired by the tide at the same time every day (I live near the Puget Sound). Together, the paintings should form a sort of tidal chart over the course of a month.

Finally, ceramics comes to mind. As I shared on the PPF Zoom Open House, I once read about an experiment done with ceramics students. You can read more about it, and the book it came from, here, but the gist is this. Half a ceramics class was given the instruction to make One Hundred bowls of any quality. The more shitty bowls the better. The other half of the class was told to make just one bowl, but of the highest quality possible. In the end, guess who made the higher quality bowls? The first half of the class, who made a hundred bowls. The lesson is what any talented person will tell you: if you want to be good at something, do it a lot. Thirty-one poems in fifty-six days is surely a lot, even if they are shorter poems. The other side of that coin, though, is that to make enough bowls to eventually make good ones, the ceramist needs to get out of the way of their hands. The poet needs to get out of the way of their words. So a spiritual component also works its way in, as you go through this intense practice. This serves a dual purpose. The connections forged through the sharing of the cards gains spiritual depth as well as your own practice of writing.

My intentions for the year, then, seem to be clear:

• make a pen pal

• witness the tide, get into the creation

• write poems! (forget the words good or bad)

• get out of the way of the words

Check out my cards from last year!