A quick update and reminder to those who either picked up an LR Postcard Project card at AWP or requested one in the mail: please don’t forget to write your response poem and send it back to us! April 15th (the postmark deadline) is fast-approaching, and the sooner you send in your responses, the earlier we’ll be able to feature them on the blog.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or concerns regarding how the project is meant to work, please do not hesitate to send us an email: editors [at] lanternreview (dot) com.
Fill-In Style Postcard for the 2011 LR Postcard Project
A warm welcome to all those who are joining us for the first time after encountering us in D.C.! We are back from AWP, and we’re getting ready to roll once again over here on the blog. The conference and reading went wonderfully (look out for more about our experience in our upcoming post-AWP reflection posts), and we were delighted to be able to hand out 103 postcards as part of our 2011 Postcard Project.
For those of you who are just joining us, or who didn’t catch the explanation that we posted before the conference, the LR Postcard Project is a special venture that we’ve devised in order to encourage creative responses to the poems that we’ve published so far in Issue 1 & Issue 2. We made up a series of 116 uniquely-numbered postcards, featuring either pre-selected “shimmery bits” (quotes, excerpts, lines, images, what have you) from poems that appeared in our first two issues or a blank front (where you could fill in your own favorite “shimmery bit” from an LR poem), and asked people at AWP to take one home, to write a response to their chosen excerpt in the form of a poem on the back, and to mail it back to us by April 15th. The idea here is that we will post the cards that we receive to the blog (as they come in) and that we’ll even choose a few that we particularly like to publish in an upcoming issue.
You can expect to see more about the project—including reminders, and (hopefully!) responses, in upcoming weeks, but for those of you who were not able to make it to the conference, we wanted to offer you the opportunity to participate, as well, and so we are going to give away our 13 remaining postcards (all of which are of the fill-in-yourself variety) to the first 13 commentors on this post. Here are the rules:
Leave a comment on this post with your name, a contact email address, and the title of your favorite poem from Issue 1 or 2 of LR.
We will contact the first 13 (human/non-spam/individual) commentors for their mailing addresses and will send them each a postcard via snail mail.
If you receive a card, all you have to do is to inscribe a short quote or excerpt from a poem in Issue 1 or 2 on the front of the card, write a poem on the back in response to that quote, stick on a postcard stamp, and send it back to us by April 15th.
Yesterday evening, Mia gave you some suggestions of panels that might be of interest to you at AWP 2011. Today, I’ll be giving you a more detailed overview of some of the ways that you can connect with us at this year’s AWP.
We’ve talked about it before, but it deserves another mention here—the best way to show your support for Lantern Review at this year’s conference would be to come out to the joint, off-site reading that we’re hosting with Boxcar Poetry Review on Friday night (the 4th) at 7:30 pm, at Go Mama Go! (1809 14th St. NW). Entrance is pay-as-you-wish ($5 suggested donation, but we won’t turn anyone away for lack of funds). We have a great lineup of about 16 readers (from both journals) planned, and will provide light refreshments afterward. You don’t have to be a registered conference attender to come to this event, so even if you’re not going to AWP but live in the DC area, please consider coming out to show your support. More information, and the option to RSVP (not required, but it helps us to get an approximate headcount) are available at the event’s Facebook invitation page.
2. AWP Bookfair: The LANTERN REVIEW Postcard Project 2011
LR Postcard Project 2011
Last year, we gave out bookmarks and a special edition run of mini-books at the AWP bookfair. This year, we are trying something different—and it requires your participation! We’ve made a set of 116 numbered postcards, each of which displays either a unique quote from a poem that’s appeared in an issue of Lantern Review, or a blank front for you to fill in with your own favorite line from an LR poem, and will be distributing stacks of them between the tables that have kindly agreed to display some of our materials (Boxcar Poetry Review and Notre Dame Review). We would love for you to stop by and sign out a postcard (or postcards) that appeals to you—and then to take your selection(s) home, respond to the content on the front by writing a poem on the reverse side, and mail your creation back to us by April 15, 2011. We’ll post most of the responses on the blog as they come in, and will publish any that we particularly like in a special section of a future issue. Not to fret if you can’t make it to the conference, though; if we have postcards left over after the conference, we’ll be opening up the project to blog readers, too.
3. Panels and Readings (Follow us on Twitter)
As Mia mentioned yesterday, we plan to be at the Kundiman panel and would love for you to look us up there. But we’ll be also attending other panels and events sporadically throughout the conference and will try to Tweet about our plans for the next day each evening before we go to bed. So if you’re not already following us on Twitter (@LanternReview), please do so!
