Last night, I was fortunate enough to be the featured reader in the William F. Laman Library Meet the Author Series, and I had a great time. Many, many thanks to all of the wonderful folks who came out in 103º temps (yes, we had A/C inside) to attend. Thanks also to the great people at the library. They have a wonderful lecture hall and a beautiful building in general, which is staffed by awesome and friendly people.
As promised, I'm here today to reveal what exactly it was that I gave away to audience members. I call them Poetry Trading Cards.
I had a damaged copy of Blood Almanac, which started the whole project. I clipped out the short poems from the book and made collages. (The card stock is 4.5" x 6.5".) Realizing that I might be a few cards short and wanting to highlight some newer poems as well, I printed out some newer work on cotton bond paper (I knew that old resume paper would come in handy some day) and clipped those out as well. On the back of each card, I glued a little notice of my blog title and address and hand wrote any publication information that went with each poem.
I made 31 cards and gave away 24. Guesstimates on audience numbers ranged from 25 - 35, which thrilled me. Many folks stayed after to buy a copy of Blood Almanac (thank you!) or to just say hello and make a comment or two about the poems. However, there were people in the audience who were strangers to me who didn't stay around. Those are the people I wonder about the most. I don't worry about them so much as I am curious about who they are and what brought them to the reading.
Of course, this project gives me a new direction in my collage obsession. I'm hoping to make more cards and stockpile a bunch to take with me to AWP in February. You, too, could become a collector of Poetry Trading Cards, and I think I'll include bubble gum the next time around, for the sake of baseball.
Coming soon: video clips of several poems from last night.
12 comments:
so wish i could have been there. i love the poetry trading cards project.
Thanks, Nancy. I hope to have the video clips up by tomorrow so all of my long-distance friends can catch a glimpse of the night.
I love the trading cards! What a great idea!
Thanks, Tawnysha! Appreciate it.
Brilliant idea--I'm going to start making some cards so that we can trade at this year's AWP!
Awesome, Kristin!
Totally awesome, Sandy! And highly collectible someday, too, I bet. ;o)
Oh, Marie, flattery works every time! Thanks. :)
Congratulations on the successful reading, Sandy.
The trading card idea is fantastic, and it gives me an idea. I've been into photography for a little while now and I might take some small prints and put a poem on the back of them for people.
Thanks for that bit of inspiration!
Thanks, Justin. Your idea sounds great as well. Maybe we can trade cards at some point?
I love love love this idea.
Beautiful use of your words & creative self-promotion, too. Brilliant!
Thanks, Drew.
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