'Charlie Sherpa' to Serve as a War Poetry Postcard Project Judge

Author of the award-winning poetry collection “Welcome to FOB Haiku: War Poems from Inside the Wire,” U.S. Army veteran, journalist, essayist, and literary activist Randy “Sherpa” Brown (he/him) will serve as one of the contest judges of the first-ever War Poetry Postcard Project.

Contest organizers seek short poems (equal to 26 lines or less, including line-spaces) regarding effects of armed conflict, state violence, and military service.

The contest is co-sponsored by Collateral Journal and Middle West Press. On a panel of three judges, Brown joins Collateral Journal founding editor and WPPP keynoter Abby E. Murray (they/them), as well as poet, fellow editor, and literary activist Lisa Stice. Brown is also the founder and editor-publisher of Middle West Press.

A cohort of three winning poems will be selected, then produced, printed, and distributed as ready-to-mail 4x6-inch postcards later this summer. 

Contest deadline is May 3, 2025.

EVERYONE WHO ENTERS will receive a set of the three winning postcard poems. Organizers hope that the postcards will be used to instigate and inspire conversations with friends, family, politicians, and others. Entry fees will subsidize production, printing, and postage. 

As part of the design team that also prototyped examples of potential War Poetry Postcard Project products, Brown points to a treatment of his 2015 poem, “here and theirs.”

“That poem surprised me when I first wrote it, and it’s never stopped surprising me," says Brown. “First, my pro-gun friends thought it was anti-gun-control, while my anti-gun friends thought it was pro-gun control. Then, with the so-called ‘Fall of Kabul’ in 2021, readers of all political beliefs responded to it as a comment on the follies of empire and nation-building. And lately, with the daily erosion of Constitutional rights and rule-of-law in the United States, people have commented on the poem’s apparent prescience.”

“In all interpretations, however, this quirky little poem served as a non-partisan way to open constructive and empathetic conversations with people, about experiences, concerns, and beliefs,” Brown says. “That’s what we hope to deliver with the War Poetry Postcard Project!”

Learn more about the project at: linktr.ee/warpoets

Submit poems via Submittable: middlewestpress.submittable.com/submit