It has become part of an annual rhythm thanks to the pandemic and the emergence of Zoom. Coming after the Poetry Postcard Fest is the workshop season. For two years it has only been online. While the online classes are filling up, I am also facilitating a series of free poetry workshops in West Seattle and Des Moines areas this fall: https://paulenelson.com/poetics-as-cosmology/ Our web genius Roberta Hoffman put these beautiful and goofy bookmarks together:

I’d love to see you in the Zoom room or in person and I would love to travel and present this material. I have found it life-changing. It is an outgrowth of the interviews I’ve done over the last 30 years, which now come in the form of my Cascadian Prophets podcast. Workshop testimonials are here: https://paulenelson.com/testimonials/

How do we, as humans, ground ourselves more deeply in the now and here? The parallels to Zen are significant and help deepen ALL of our gestures, not just the poems. See what Cascadia board member Tetsuzen Jason Wirth said about this here. An excerpt:

You’re also going into your mind and experiencing your mind, at a very deep level. And that mind as you experience it more deeply, is not in a vacuum.

It’s not anywhere. It’s now and here. It’s rooted in the socio-economic and ecological conditions that make it possible. It’s rooted in those conditions now and here. And so participating in, I would say, the spiritual exercise of these postcards, is already entering into something that is, if you think it all the way through, a deep bioregional awakening and conversion. In a way we’re trying for something like a spiritual revolution, and that poetry is not just an interesting thing that you can do, if you like. It’s a fundamental exercise of being here in a less harmful way.

Want to take your own poetry practice to the next level? Consider signing up for our online workshop or coming to our in person workshops. I look forward to engaging you!