Anne Swannell

WHEELBARROW

Illustrations by Anne Swannell

—from Rattle #68, Summer 2020
Tribute to Postcard Poems

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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!”