He’s been writing poetry postcards since, but that is just part of what he’s been creating these 16 years here. Half of that time he’s served on the board of the Cascadia Poetics Lab. He’s done erasures of an apocalyptic text that his fundamentalist father fully believed. In the work creating poetry that reflects a real spirituality & maybe exorcised some demons. He is the embodiment of the Sam Hamill dictum: “Don’t be in a rush to publish.” But now, he’s got a book out. Greg Bem’s Carbonation Press has just published The Outside. I am not a neutral observer, since I consider Matt a brother, but there are few books like this being published.
Starting with a daysong ritual, on Imbolc 2024, and dedicated to Bernadette Mayer, who created the first such ritual poem on Winter Solstice 1978, Trease plays on his place juxtaposing the name the indigenous people here (the Duwamish) call themselves – “People of the Inside,” with his “practice of outside,” of something way beyond “NPR poetry.” Using collage, parataxis, astrological references and a healthy hunger for liberation, his poetry is not “gotten” in one take, nor is it designed to comfort. Along with Bernadette Mayer, there are traces of Matsuo Basho, William Blake, Robin Blaser, Lynn Margulis and Mary Shelley among many others in:
“An empire
waterbed mess
civilization.”
Perhaps the main contribution Trease gives us is his long meditation on the Duwamish River. It is Seattle’s only river and it begins just north of his home, at the confluence of the Black and Green Rivers. (What’s left of the Black River.) From “River of the Inside;”
Yes, Michael McClure’s beast language mixes with references to the soft hits of the Doobie Brothers and somehow Trease makes it all work.
I am not a reviewer, as is likely evident from this post. My preference is to interview poets about their work and an interview with Matt is being planned, but I am pleased as hell I’m on the same poetry train as this guy, headed to a place where the poetry is steeped in duende and manages to be grounded and prophetic at the same time.
See you at the launch:
5pm, Saturday, April 12, 2025
Theosophical Society Library
717 Broadway E.
Seattle, WA 98122
Matt will be joined by:
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Tanya Holtland – author of Requisite (Platypus Press, 2020) and the chapbook, Inner River (Drop Leaf Press, 2016)
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K Van Petten – author of For Someone, (Hello America Stereo Cassette, 2023)
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Paul E. Nelson – founder and Executive Director of the Cascadia Poetics Lab and author of a number of books of poetry and interviews, most recently DaySong Miracle (Past 62) (Carbonation Press, 2024) and Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023) (Cascadia Poetics Lab, 2024)
We’ll migrate to Corvus & Co afterwards for socializing and celebrating.
