Kundiman’s 20th Anniversary Postcard Poem Exchange: Imagining AAPI Futures

For 2024, Kundiman organized our annual Postcard Poem Exchange during National Poetry Month to promote poetry within our daily lives and communities. The theme for this year was “Imagining AAPI Futures,” in honor of Kundiman’s 20th anniversary and our organization’s growth from grassroots beginnings. Especially now, in these tumultuous political times, it is important that we fill our community’s mailboxes with creative messages that imagine a new world. Building a better future is a collective effort, and we are grateful to be in solidarity with organizations such as Canto Mundo, Cave Canem, In-Na-Po, Mizna, RAWI, and others in this work. We encourage you to check out the incredible work that they do. As we reflect on the history of Kundiman, and look forward to the next 20 years, we honor our roots in poetry and the amazing community that has made us who we are.

Kundiman’s postcard-writing project has historically been a part of the Poetry Coalition’s annual programming centered around a theme of social importance. For the eighth year, we continued the tradition of writing and mailing postcard poems, and engaging with the theme. Weekly photo recaps of the Postcard Poem Exchange are shared here and on our social media!

2024 Postcard Gallery

Weekly Prompts and Suggested Readings

PROMPTS: 

Week 1 — Personal Futures:

• Write a poem to yourself, as far into the future as you’d like. Consider forward-looking actions you can take with your mind and body that will lead you there. How can you turn towards hope when imagining this new phase? What can you do to care for your future self?

• Who or what has given you strength in the past, and how do you carry that strength into your future?

Week 2 — Artistic Futures: 

• How has your writing changed throughout your life? In what direction is your art headed?

• Write a short poem to a writer who has affected your life. Then, write another poem addressed to a writer in a future generation, that you may have inspired. 

Week 3 — Liberated Futures: 

• Meditate on the idea of a liberated future: what does it look like, what does it sound like, and how does it smell? In times of grief and crisis, how can we use our dreams of liberation to inspire change?

• Write a poem to someone who has the power to bring about change, big or small. What will you ask of them? What does the act of asking make you feel? 

Week 4 — Collective Futures: 

• How can we work together to create a better future for the generations to come? How do our actions resonate far beyond ourselves?

• Write a poem to someone you see yourself working alongside to build a better future. How can working together help us get there?

SUGGESTED READINGS AND LINKS: 

“Letter to Someone I Do Not Know” by Jennifer Crystal Fang-Chien

“First Snow” by Aria Aber

“Notes on Staying” by Hieu Minh Nguyen

“Orbit” by Suman Chhabra

“Mixed with always” by Soham Patel 

“Forest of Beginnings” by Mai Der Vang

“Love Letter to the Eve of the End of the World” by George Abraham

“Without my enemy who would I be” by Arumandhira

“Return” by Neil Aitken

“I am talking about joy” by Jessica Yuan

“Interrogation of an Alternate Timeline” by Hazem Fahmy

“Imaginary Photo Album or, When We Die, Our Polaroids Speak to Our Living Descendants” by Lehua M. Taitano

2024 Postcard Poem Exchange Testimonials

This project was supported by the Academy of American Poets with funds from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.