poetry ecard contest (the read write poem version)
by Dana Guthrie Martin
 Hawk by sabeth718 Some of you might be familiar with Postal Poetry, a site Dave Bonta and I managed for a number of months from 2008 to 2009. (Mostly Dave did the managing, while I was an absentee manager. Sorry, Dave.) Anyway, we’ve decided to try something similar here: a contest for electronic poetry ecards.
How does it work? Simple. You take the image above and add a poem to it. As with Postal Poetry, the text must appear on the image itself. (This hearkens back to the days when it was not legal to write on the back side of a mailed postcard, only on the front side.)
This exercise is sort of like our monthly Read Write (Image) Prompts, but you’ll have to be very concise, since all the text must fit on the image. You will also have to think about how to arrange the words so they fit the image. (Postal Poetry is a great place to look for examples of treatments that work well.)
You can add the text to the image however you want. If you’re feeling artsy, why not print the image out and add the text by hand, or use a collage method? You could also use photo-editing software to electronically add your poem to the card. (If you don’t have your own software, try Picnik, which is free and easy to use.)
To enter, send your completed piece to us at ecards (at) readwritepoem (dot) org. Make sure you keep the image at its current size once you’ve worked with it: 425 pixels wide. If you have worked with your card as a printout, simply scan it in color and send it to us at full size.
What will you win? Great question! Two things. The winning card will be published here at Read Write Poem. All entrants will also be entered into a drawing to win a comfort user.
What the heck is a comfort user? Another great question! You might have noticed a few fanciful creatures and eccentric individuals roaming about here at Read Write Poem. There’s Koshari the Kachina, Karl Marx and Feldman the Robot, to name a few. These are comfort users owned and operated by Read Write Poem managers. In short, they are a way for the managers to de-stress by logging in not as themselves, but as their comfort users.
Comfort users are sort of like alter egos, and they confer many benefits, including allowing us to think, act and speak in a voice that’s different from our own. (Think adult pacifier meets mechanism for engaging in method acting. The latter is an especially important practice for poets writing in personae.)
All entrants must submit their cards by Oct. 1. That’s not a lot of time, so get out there and get your electronic poetry card on!
(We know you probably have lots of questions. Please leave them in the comments, and we’ll respond as quickly as possible. And feel free to help other members out if someone asks a question and you happen to know the answer.)
 Dana Guthrie Martin is the founder of Read Write Poem. She writes things and stuff. Most of the time, her things and stuff happen to be poetry, or at least they call themselves poetry. She has a robot named Feldman. He’s writing a book of poems.
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get the read write poem badge! 
Wear it loud, wear it proud! Display the Read Write Poem badge on your site. Just click here or on the image above to get the code! read write poem news- yes, yes, here’s another virtual book tour stop for ‘a walk through the memory palace’
February 6, 2010 | 11:37 amFind the latest tour stop for Pamela Johnson Parker’s debut collection, A Walk Through the Memory Palace at Jillypoet, Jill Crammond Wickham’s blog, where you can find an interview with Pamela that discusses how she creates manuscripts.
Previous stops include Daniel Romo at his blog, Peyote Soliloquies and James Brush at his blog, Coyote Mercury.
You can find all our plans for the tour here.
- the best of the web is in our ranks
February 6, 2010 | 11:35 amSarah J. Sloat’s poem,”Attending the Tasting” (published in The Literary Bohemian) has been selected for Best of the Web 2010. Congratulations, Sarah!
- another (w00t!) read write poem member on the joe milford poetry show
February 6, 2010 | 11:34 amOn the Joe Milford Poetry Show tomorrow (Feb. 6): W.F. Roby at 9 AM (PST). Find the show here!
Joe describes Will as a “great language poet and bad-ass.”
- ‘literary podcasting made simple with wordpress.com’
February 6, 2010 | 11:33 amDave Bonta has published a how-to article that might be of interest to WordPress users: “Literary Podcasting Made Simple with WordPress.com,” based on his and Beth Adams’ experience at Qarrtsiluni.
Thanks, Dave, for continuing to help make the community aware of technological resources that can expand our art.
- the latest (virtual) book tour stop for ‘a walk through the memory palace’
February 3, 2010 | 3:53 pmThe latest tour stop has been posted for Pamela Johnson Parker’s debut collection, A Walk Through the Memory Palace. Find out how Daniel Romo responded to the work at his blog, Peyote Soliloquies.
James Brush provided our first tour stop at his blog, Coyote Mercury.
You can find all our plans for the tour here.
- planning for napowrimo in april, and you are invited!
February 2, 2010 | 6:12 pmHello, hello dear Read Write Poem community members! We are in the planning stages for NaPoWriMo. (What? Is that a groan I hear, or an excited exclamation?)
We are planning another prompt-every-day for those folks who love to write a daily poem in April (which is, as most of you know, National Poetry Month in the United States — although there is an international following of writing poetry every day in April, too, so it is not just about the States).
Anyway! This is a call for prompts because we want to run your ideas, one every day, in April. So here’s what to do:
- Prompts must be no more than 250 words, and we will take the first 30 that we receive.
- Include “NaPoWriMo Prompt” in the subject line of your email as well as your username (e.g., the name you use when you log in) so we can match you up with your prompt and give you the link love.
- Email your submission (in the body of the email — no attachments please) to prompts (at) readwritepoem (dot) org!
We’ll let you know when we’ve got the 30, but don’t delay because it takes a lot of time to format the posts and we want to be ready come April Fools’ Day. Woohoo!
- new senior contributors at read write poem
February 2, 2010 | 11:51 amWe are thrilled to announce that Ren Powell and Dave Jarecki are moving into the senior contributor role at Read Write Poem. Both have been writing feverishly for the site, as well as providing ideas for content and for the community as a whole. In short, they make this site a more lively, and better, place.
Ren and Dave will fill the roles vacated by Carolee Sherwood and Jill Crammond Wickham, who have moved into the manager role.
Everyone please thank Ren and Dave for their hard work and commitment to Read Write Poem.
- rounding out the virtual book tour of sarah j. sloat’s ‘in the voice of a minor saint’
January 31, 2010 | 1:53 pmOur last stop on the Virtual Book Tour of Sarah J. Sloat’s In the Voice of a Minor Saint is with Ren Powell. Find Ren’s review at More Babel.
Joseph Harker provided our first stop in December, and you can find David Moolten’s review at Edible Detritus. David’s was followed by Dave Jarecki’s. Dave’s review is at his blog. Find Jill Crammond Wickham’s at Jillypoet: Mom Trying to Write.
In case you missed the introduction, we are (virtually) hosting Sarah J. Sloat’s In the Voice of a Minor Saint. For complete tour information, such as how you can get your own copy of the collection or how you can get involved in future tours, read this post.
- make your own book: get off the computer and onto the paper
January 30, 2010 | 4:19 pmBeth Adams has posted her latest project at The Cassandra Pages. “A Handmade Book” may not explicate all the details of bookbinding, but Beth shows readers the “Secret Belgian Binding.” It’s a beautiful as well as inspiring post.
If you would like more detailed instructions, Google “secret Belgian bookbinding” and find sites such as this one. Or look for a local book arts class for hands-on instruction.
As Beth says, ” … it did me good to get away from the computer and feel my hands at work!”
 Archive for read write poem news »
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This is GREAT!!
I had so much fun making mine.
Super idea guys. (:
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Oh, geesh. For me, Picnik won’t be no picnic. I’d like to try this challenge, but will have to ask my teenage daughter to help me with the software, which may take me until Sept. 30 to figure out.
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In case it helps prevent falcon references, the bird is a juvenile red tailed hawk. Can’t judge size/sex well, but my gut says male. And it looks like a hot day from the panting and wing position. All of which rather works… hm.
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Kathy (A~Lotus) replied:
September 5th, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Awesome. I’m glad it was a hawk as that was my first thought when I wrote my poem.
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For those of you who haven’t seen the Postal Poetry site, go take a look. There is so much great work there.
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May we try more than one?
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Barbara, good question! We are limiting submissions to one per person — just so we aren’t overwhelmed with entries. But we encourage members to experiment with as many versions as they like.
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Cool prompt! Can’t wait to read the winning cards
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my comfort user is named dave
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 2nd, 2009 at 8:50 pm
I suspected that was the case.
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Neat. Looking forward to see what everyone will come up with.
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A quick question – when you pull the photo from this page, it pixelates pretty badly when put into photo editing software like Picnik. The original Flickr image is 500 pixels wide – is that too big to use for the contest? Thanks.
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Andre Tan replied:
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
Donna, you can try using the original Flickr image and then resize it to 425 pixels wide once it’s in Picnik.
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Andre, one person had some bad pixelation because they added text, and *then* sized the piece down to 425 pixels wide. So would you suggest this process:
1. Download the 500 pixel-wide image from flickr.
2. Resize in Picnik (or other editing sofware) to 425 pixels.
3. Add text.
Also, I don’t know why the piece would pixelate in Picnik if someone uses the version they get when they right click on the image in our post. Can you explain that?
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Andre Tan replied:
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 pm
Yup, it’s best to scale before adding text in a lot of cases. Unless you’re using software that will keep the text in vector form (like Photoshop) until you save it, it’ll generally degrade as you resize.
The reason why the image in the post is getting “pixelated” as it gets resized is because it’s a GIF which only supports up to 256 colors. Photo editing software will generally try to preserve the image’s palette, so when the image is resized all the colors don’t get resampled (a few pixels might need to change to shades of gray from black to maintain a clean looking curve or diagonal in a letter, for example) and since it’s locked into the original colors and can’t pick those new colors required to anti-alias (smooth things out), it’ll try the closest available color in the palette which might be WAY off.
So the bottom line is that if you’re editing a GIF, you should change the color mode from “8-bit color” or “indexed” (a locked palette up to 256 colors) to 24 or 32-bit “RGB color” (millions of colors) before doing anything to it. I’m using Photoshop terminology there, but any decent imaging software should allow for something similar.
In this case, it’s easier to just work with the JPEG from Flickr.
Too detailed an explanation, perhaps.
Feldman the Robot replied:
September 4th, 2009 at 12:25 am
Andre, would it be better for the photo in this post to be uploaded again, but instead as a high-res image at 425 pixels wide? Would that keep it from getting pixelated when it’s uploaded into a photo editor? My concern is only that people have to take that extra step of editing the image from 500 pixels to 425 pixels wide when they download it directly from Flickr. It would be best if that extra step weren’t needed.
Andre Tan replied:
September 4th, 2009 at 12:38 am
Swapping out the GIF with a JPEG of that size sounds like a good plan. I’ve gone ahead and done that.
If anyone wants to create a larger version of your piece (maybe you’d like to print out for yourself!) you can get much larger versions from Flickr (just click the image to go to the photo’s page). Just be sure to resize your piece to 425 pixels wide to conform to the submission guidelines AND to make sure that you’re satisfied with how your text looks at that size.
You consider me a “comfort user”? How demeaning. I can’t believe you think of me that way.
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hmmm, resize? i submitted my ecard yesterday afternoon and didn’t resize it. i did notice the image was 500 pixels not 425 but i assumed someone made a mistake and wrote the wrong pixel dimensions. i thought it was best to keep the image at the exact size i found it since we were instructed to do so. is a difference of 75 pixels really a big deal?
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 5th, 2009 at 1:35 am
We can size it down, but the text might get fuzzy-looking. It’s best to work with the text when the image is the final size. Andre says more about that above, and in a more complete, accurate and eloquent way than I can say it.
In short, we’ll work with what you sent. We’re still working out the details and glitches with this column/contest, so bear with us as we get everything sorted out in terms of instructions. We will only judge the pieces on content — not on fuzziness or clarity of the image and text.
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nubia bint aqeel replied:
September 5th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
ok, that’s cool. thanks. i could always re-submit if that makes it easier.
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Another precedent for this form, aside from early postcards, is the Japanese haiga.
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Dana Guthrie Martin replied:
September 5th, 2009 at 1:36 am
Cool link, Dave.
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Yay! Good luck to everyone!
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Are we allowed to add anything in addition to words, such as collaged tissue or art papers, so long as the original image stays intact?
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