I’m one of the featured readers on Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at C&P Coffee Company, 5612 California Ave SW. The monthly open mic, facilitated by Leopoldo Seguel, has invited me yet again and I will read from my last DaySong writing ritual. I am grateful to be part of this reading and it seems to have settled into an annual event.
On September 1, 2024, I engaged for the 5th time in a day-long poetry-writing ritual which we’ve come to call the DaySong. Greg Bem of Carbonation Press was kind enough to publish my Sept 8, 2023, DaySong as DaySong Miracle (Past 62). This past September, I wrote DaySong of Thoughtless Openness after Ray Grigg and an epic visit to British Columbia in August. I am delighted that Greg has taken on this poem as a book project.
The poem takes about 36 minutes to read, so I’ll only be reading an excerpt, but it should be a lively event and I hope to see you there.
WHAT: Paul E Nelson featured reading
WHEN: Wed, Dec 11, 7pm
WHERE: C&P Coffee Company, 5612 California Av SW
https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Inside-the-Day-Song-The-Temporal-Epic-.pdf
From Leopoldo:
Hello PoetryBridge community
It’s happening this Wednesday December 11th! A marvelous PoetryBridge reading featuring three wonderful poets, Paul Nelson, Raul Sanchez and Sibyl James. Starting at 7 PM (PST) at C&P Coffee, a most welcoming place to immerse yourself in poetry and your favorite beverage! I am very excited to hear them read which will be followed by the Community Micers, who never cease to delight me. I hope to see many of you there as we put a wrap on 2024, a most eventful year, indeed!
Paul E. Nelson, poet & interviewer, is the son of a labor activist father and Cuban immigrant mother. Born on Chicago’s west side in 1961, he’s lived in King County since 1988. He founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Paul’s books include: DaySong Miracle (Past 62) (2024); Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023) (2024); Haibun de la Serna (2022); A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020); American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018); American Sentences, A Time Before Slaughter; and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies. Co-Editor of Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now, Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia, 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards, Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill, Make it True meets Medusario (a bilingual anthology in Spanish and English.) He writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he serves as Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill, is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed alongside dxʷwuqʷǝb Creek. Paul is a member of Eishoji Soto Zen Temple in Rainier Beach, taking the Buddhist precepts on December 11, 2023 and being given the dharma name Ryukan. (See this.)
Raúl Sanchez is the former City of Redmond Poet Laureate 2019-2021. He teaches bilingual poetry through the Jack Straw Cultural Center. He has volunteered for PONGO Teen Writing at the Juvenile Detention Center. He runs the Poetry in the Park bi-weekly readings at the Meadowbrook Pond as well as the neighborhood “Poetry Pole” in front of his house. His most recent publication “When There Were No Borders” was published July 2021, by Flower Song Press.
Sibyl James is the author of fourteen books–poetry, fiction and travel memoirs–including In Chinawith Harpo and Karl (Calyx Books), The Adventures of Stout Mama (Papier-Mache Press), China Beats(Egress Studio Press), The Last Woro Woro to Treichville: A West African Memoir (StringTown Press), The Grand Piano Range (Black Heron Press) and most recently The Mother of Invention (a children’s book from Calyx) and Plum Blossom Wine (Empty Bowl Press). She has taught at colleges in the U.S., China, Mexico, and–as Fulbright professor–Tunisia and Cote d’Ivoire. As writer in residence, she has worked for the Washington State Arts Commission, the Seattle Arts Commission, Seattle Arts and Lectures, and the Seattle School District. Her writing has received awards from Artist Trust and the Seattle, King County and Washington State arts commissions.
Leopoldo, Chief Provocateur inciting suspected poets, storytellers and other word-artists to commit the act of sharing their art.
