Postcard is a literary journal that features 10 poems by 10 poets published in a collection of 10 mail-able postcards with 10 original images inspired by the poems. It is based in upstate New York and is edited by David Wojciechowski who previously edited Salt Hill and NightBlock.
The magazine has been around for a little over a year. The idea for Postcard began in July 2023, submissions first opened in August 2023, and the first issue was released in January 2024. The third open reading period began in August and goes through the end of November.
Postcard began very selfishly. I had a lot of fun designing some broadsides in the spring of 2023 for the poets in the UNL writing program. I got to play with an art style that I had begun messing around with the previous summer. I never considered myself a visual artist, so it was fun having this outlet that also involved poetry and still felt like graphic design. Postcard was created because I was trying to figure out how I could do some kind of broadside series. Shipping costs for a project like that became a little daunting in my mind, so I went smaller and wondered if mini-broadsides could work. After a lot of overthinking, I realized postcards might be the perfect format. Not quite a broadside, but something very similar.
Not only was I excited by the idea of people buying the issue and reading it themselves, but the possibility of them sending these poems to the people in their lives really sold me on the format. Every now and then I’ll see someone post a picture on Twitter of a Postcard postcard they got in the mail and it completely makes my day. I also absolutely love the idea of mail carriers maybe pausing during their route to read these postcards if they come across one.
I’m only two issues deep into Postcard, but the 20 postcards published have featured 21 incredible poets including Donna Vorreyer, Leah Umansky, Kelli Russell Agodon, Todd Dillard, and Jenny Irish (and more!).
There is no specific aesthetic for the poems in Postcard. I mean, there have only been 20 poems published so far, and if anyone notices an aesthetic, I would love to hear your thoughts about it. I have published poems that are definitely beyond my typical tastes simply because they stopped me in my tracks when reading them. I guess that’s the kind of poems I would like to publish in Postcard: ones that stop me in my tracks. I want to exhale my held breath having finished your poem. I love the surreal and weird but I also love the every day—a good poem is a good poem.
There is a specific length requirement to the poems I publish. A poem in verse cannot be over 16 lines (stanza breaks absolutely count as a line) and the length of a line can’t exceed 3.5in. Prose poems have to be under 130ish words (minus 10 words for every stanza break). It’s complicated and probably annoying, but I’m working with limited space on a postcard.
Literary magazines have been a part of my life for over 20 years, and I’m happy that all of them lead me to Postcard. I know it’s weird of me to say, but I love this magazine. I hope people are mailing the postcards to friends or hanging their favorite poems in places they need them. It’s a fun format that makes me so happy. In the future I would like to do one-off themed postcards where the proceeds can go to various charities. I would love to do a bound anthology of all of the poems and their artwork after I have maybe 5 issues completed. I don’t know if there’s a market for that though…but I would love to put it together.
For whatever Postcard does in the future, folks can find information at postcardlit.com, on Instagram @postcardliterary, and on Twitter @litpostcard
