Rattle Magazine & The Joy of Postcards

Dig what Rattle Magazine has done/is doing for poetry postcards!!

Photograph by Chad Peltola (CC0)

Editor’s Note: Issue #68 of Rattle (Summer 2020) will feature a tribute to Postcard Poems. In the following essay, Paul Nelson describes his experience running the annual August Poetry Postcard Fest. It is our hope that more poets will participate this year and will save and submit their poems to our issue afterward, but participation in this festival is not required. If interested, though, the August Postcard Poetry Festival registration deadline is July 14th. For information on submitting to our postcard poems issue (deadline: January 15th), click here.

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Thank you Tim Green & Rattle Magazine!

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APPF Press Release (Call for 2019 Participants)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SPLAB ISSUES CALL FOR 13TH AUGUST POETRY POSTCARD FEST

Seattle, WA, June 5, 2019—Seattle Poetics LAB (SPLAB), a literary arts-oriented nonprofit organization and organizing entity of the Cascadia Poetry Festival, is now registering writers for the 13th August Poetry Postcard Fest. The fest, an exercise in spontaneous composition and community building, celebrated its 10th anniversary in 2017 with the release of 56 Days of August. Registration for the 13th edition of the fest is open until July 18.

To participate in the Postcard Fest, writers first register online at https://appf13.brownpapertickets.com/. Then after July 4, lists of participants will begin to be sent out in groups of 32. Each participating poet has until the end of August to write 31 original poems on postcards to be sent to each other person on their list. Postcards can be as simple or as elaborate as the poet wishes.

In 2018 the fest had 293 participants, spread out as far as the United States, Australia and Japan. It also has a popular Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/AugustPoetryPostcardFest/.

The fest is the largest annual fundraiser for SPLAB; registration is set at $10 per poet, with donations over this amount also accepted. The main information page for the festival is https://www.paulenelson.com/august-poetry-postcard-fest/.

Over the past 25 years SPLAB has been instrumental in leading a bioregional cultural investigation using poetics, poetry festivals, publications and education and to building community through shared experience of the spoken and written word. Through the Cascadia Poetry Festival, the organization facilitates an annual gathering of writers, artists, scientists and activists to collaborate, discover and foster deeper connection between all inhabitants and the place itself.

SPLAB (www.splab.org), a Seattle-based nonprofit, was founded in Auburn, Washington, on December 14, 1993.

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For more information, contact Paul Nelson at 206-422-5002 or splabman (at) icloud (dot) com.

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Reviews of CPF-Anacortes 2019

CPF-Anacortes 2019 PosterSome reviews of the 6th Cascadia Poetry Festival are coming in and are being posted on the festival website here:

http://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/cpf-anacortes-2019-reviews/

The Cascadia Poetry Festival is absolutely unique, offering both attention to local conditions (both social and geograpical/ecological), and to general matters of aesthetics (what poetry is up to right now–what matters to poets, and how are they responding to what matters). I know of few communities like this in the world – the other I am familiar with is in the UK: open, focused, exploratory, welcoming, democratic and engaged to its very core. The Cascadia Poetry Festival is a vital necessity.

– Stephen Collis

The Cascadia Poetry Festival, held in Anacortes, WA from May 9-12, was a wonderfully fulfilling experience for both participants and invited guests. The festival programs consisted of readings and discussion panels by well-known, accomplished poets and writers who were colleagues, collaborators and friends of the late poet Sam Hamill. The connection with Sam was in fact the theme of the festival, but the festival discourse, especially the panels, took on a life of its own and developed into a series of heartfelt discussions about Zen, the strength and frailties of the human spirit and the nature of one’s relationship with those whom we admire.

As someone who attended as both invited guest and workshop participant, I especially enjoyed the afternoon readings by the other festival participants. The attendees of the readings consisted of local poets, writers and students. Some of these folk were published, some not. Some of them read from memory and some from notes or the printed page. Some were experienced readers, others were not. But what connected them all was a heartfelt desire to translate their experience of the world into the medium of words to share with others.

And this got right to the heart of the matter.

Christopher Yohmei Blasdel,  Shakuhachi performer, writer,
Adjunct Lecturer, The University of Hawaii, Manoa

And copies of the two anthologies that were launched at the fest are now available:

Samthology: A Tribute to Sam HamillSamthology: A Tribute to Sam HamillCover of the bilingual poetry anthology Make it True meets MedusarioMake It True meets Medusario
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APPF13! Registration Now Open

APPF Promo PostcardRegistration for the 13th August Poetry Postcard Fest is now open and we’re already at about half the total of participants from 2018. https://appf13.brownpapertickets.com/

The first few lists will go out on July 4 and registration for 2019 will end and will OPEN for APPF14 (2020) as we move to year-round registration so no one misses out on the deadline.

Rattle MagazineThis year Rattle Magazine will put out a call for postcard poems for a special issue they will be doing and that will include an essay on the August Poetry Postcard Festival written by your humble narrator and postcard master general. Yes, we will keep you apprised when that is available. Their issue will NOT be limited to current APPF participants, but getting 31 poems written this August will surely increase your chances of getting a poem published in their postcard issue.

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