As Ed Madden begins his final year as the city’s poet laureate, he has given himself the challenge of writing a short poem every day on the back of a postcard. And then sending that card to someone in the mail! Many are going to people he knows, but many are also going to strangers and random addresses.
Before they go in the mail, he’s posting images on social media. You can find them on Instagram and Facebook (and sometimes Twitter) with the laureate or project hashtags: #columbiapoet and #postpoems2022.
Madden says that after the isolation of the past two years, he wanted to do some kind of poetry project that would emphasize human connection, even if at a distance, even if through the mail. He said also hopes that picking out random postcards and trying to write a tiny poem every morning helps kickstart his own creativity, and he hopes it inspires others—to write, but more than that, to reach out to other people.