I am still floating from my recent visit to British Columbia, which I took for a series of events centered around Cascadian Zen Volume I. Events at the Mountain Rain Zen Center in Vancouver, the Abbey in Cumberland, the Quadra Island Community Center and time at Desolation Bay, as well as a concert by the Howard Levy Four in Anacortes all figured in to my latest DaySong.
The DaySong is a writing ritual designed to use a day as a temporal restriction to balance the spatial restriction of poetry postcards the day after the end of the Poetry Postcard Fest. The exercise I wrote for this year’s September DaySong is here: https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Pre-Labor-Day-DaySong-Poets-Subject-is-Time-.pdf
Among the people who made my trip as terrific as it was, were Myoshin Kate McCandless and Shinmon Michael Newton, Adelia MacWilliam, Wedlidi Speck, Jan Zwicky, Robert Bringhurst, Ray Grigg, Richard Osler, Ursula Vaira, Lorin Medley, Zaylan Jacobsen, Scott Lawrance, Kristina Campbell, Ed Varney, Louie Stevenson, Miriam Nichols, Danika Dinsmore and Dan Clarkson. My experience seeing the Northern Lights from Galley Bay was one I’ll never forget, nor the generosity of the folks who attended our events and the poets and philosophers (like Jason Wirth) who shared their wisdom.
Concepts from Ray Grigg in particular, as he discussed them in person at our August 26 Quadra Island event, were taken in more deeply. We loved the essay of his in Cascadian Zen, but hearing a version of the essay by in Ray’s own voice was something that opened my ears and consciousness in a way that few talks do. Thank you Ray and thanks to all the folks who turned out for these events and especially Adelia, who organized them and turned me on to the concept of the DaySong. Let me know what you think. We are planning to return to Cumberland in August 2025.
Ray Grigg’s essay is among the materials we’ll read and discuss during my Fall workshops which start at the end of the month. See:
https://paulenelson.com/poetics-as-cosmology-cascadian-zen-basket-three/ and
Paul, I listened to your Day Song twice: once in the morning, once at night. What a beautiful thing! To HEAR you read, SEE the words, and follow your mind was a treat–I’m finally “getting it” about spontaneous composition and the potential of a day song. Still have my training wheels on, although I managed two sort-of half-days.