Martin Willitts Jr.: “As a person who lives in Syracuse, I thought I might warn others not to visit. I thought about postcards I have received. I decided to create an Alice in Wonderland card. We see less sunshine than Nome, Alaska! We have 50 shades of grey! If we see the sun, we’re stupefied. We think we get a tan during a snowstorm. I have even made a miserable cartoon for the postcard front. Even our artwork looks like three-year-old children could do better.”
Anne Swannell: “Writing a poem as a postcard changes it. The poem becomes personal, to-the-point, shorter and more succinct—and not just because there isn’t much room on a postcard! Brevity happens because, since I’m writing to someone I ‘know,’ even if it’s an imaginary someone, I can take for granted certain things that he or she understands, and therefore I don’t need to spell everything out. Because it’s a postcard, I can assume that either we have some background in common or that we will have some connection in the future. I’m now re-writing every poem in my latest manuscript before I send it out again to seek a publisher! It doesn’t change the subject matter, it changes the stance, the occasion of utterance … and that can now become different for each poem. In other words, the speaker of the poem need not always be me per se. Just as the imagined recipient of the postcard can change, so might the imaginary sender, and that’s a revelation, a mind-expander!”
Jennifer Sheridan: “While I hold an MFA in fiction writing, and write a great deal about the books I champion as a sales rep for HarperCollins Children’s Division, I had never really tried writing poetry. A dear friend, with whom I’d recently reconnected at a Macalester College reunion, urged me to join the annual PoPo festival with him. So, I gave it a whirl. I now have a chapbook collection I hope to publish! I have grown so much as a writer due to this marvelous ‘exercise in spontaneity’ and encourage others who are looking for a little creative nudge to check it out.”
Lindsay Shen: “As a poet and a visual artist, I enjoy the unruly way images and words interact. Instead of using words to explain or expand a picture, I like the process best when they’re having a bit of an argument.”
C.R. Resetarits: “I like edges. I like the edges of things coming up against the edges of other things. This is what I like best about collage art, and it is what I like best about poetry coupled with images: all that edgy minglement. I like small vignettes: in composition, pattern, palette, visual rhythm, so postcard poems made for my postcard collages seems natural for me.”
Laura R. McCullough: “I am such a chronic over-editor. I love (and shudder at) the word sketches postcard poetry forces you to create. What you can capture in a moment, before your subject walks out of the frame.” (web)
Sarah T. Jewell: “When I received Adam’s drawing in the mail, I thought, wow, it looks like Death is coming after Death! Then I thought more about what that would mean, and I decided to call the plant-like tentacles coming from behind the window shade: Life. I imagined how Death might feel if he lost his job and his very existence was threatened, and the sonnet grew from there.” (web)