This month we’re celebrating the release of Postcard Habitats by Jonathan Lowell, the fourth release in Raw Paw’s Mind Maze print celebration of Austin poets. Join us for refreshments and readings from local poets, with hosts Wade Martin and A.R Rogers.

Raw Paw was founded in Austin, Texas, in 2010. Their new poetry title, Mind Maze, is released every month and showcases twenty poems by one of Austin’s best—all wrapped in a patterned, screen-printed cover designed by Nicole Carleton.

From Jonathan:

For me, a postcard is a unique mode of expression, a kind of fragmented signal from a moment that is long past by the time it reaches its destination. They are often written from a feeling of exhilaration of movement and a longing for home. They are attempt to casually fix the motion of life into words. Postcard Habitats grew out of pondering the relationships between movement and place: the pains and pleasures of each, the way our bodies and identities shift and change as we constantly remake our habitats in this world. For awhile these poems were journeys, constantly in motion and swirling around me. Now that they are fixed and bound to a page, they are, for me at least, a place. I feel both pain and relief for that. But perhaps for you they will put you on your own journey, something to write to your home about. And so it continues…

Jonathan Lowell has lived in Austin for over three years as a graduate student in geography at the University of Texas at Austin, fitting in poem writing in whatever gaps he can find. His poems have appeared in Echo and the Raw Paw issues 4 and 5.