13 Weeks of Poetry Postcards

Would you like to receive a handwritten poem through your letterbox, on your doormat, once a week?

For years I’ve sent random poems-on-postcards to individuals and to schools and classes on an ad-hoc once-in-a-while basis, usually by posting a message on Twitter and sending them off to whoever responds. But I thought it might be nice to have a more sustainable (stamps are expensive!) method of doing this, and I decided to make this offer: for a one-off payment of £35 I will send you a poem-on-a-postcard once a week for three months (13 weeks).

If you’re a teacher who wants to generate a bit of interest in your class around poetry, or a parent who wants to confuse their child, or a person who just likes getting post, then this might be of interest.

The thirteen poems will be randomly picked, but will all be different (I’ll keep track to ensure you get no duplicates), they’ll all be quite short, most of them will be funny, some may be new and unpublished, others might already be in some of my books, all will be suitable for children, and they’ll all be written by hand by me, as legibly as I can. And the posctards will be random too, from my collection which at any one time consists of several boxes of the ‘100 Puffin Covers’ and ‘100 Alice in Wonderland’ type, along with a whole bunch of weird old things I’ve picked up on e-bay. (I do try to ensure I’ve got an interesting selection of varied stamps as well, but I can’t guarantee no duplicates on that front, sorry!)

I usually write the postcards on a Sunday morning and get them in Monday’s post, but this may slip and slide a little if I’m away from home. Nevertheless I can guarantee you will receive 13 poems-on-a-postcard, more or less weekly.