Andrew Hall and Adelia MacWilliam are two people helping me curate a series of online readings that were conceived of by SICA, the Subud International Cultural Association. Subud is the spiritual community with which I have been associated since 2004. The Zoomuse Poems for Peace project has evolved from two separate SICA projects: Zoomuse started by Emmanuel Williams and Poems for Peace started by Latifah Taormina.
Andrew Hall is the Executive Producer for the series and handles all the logistics, hosting the Zoom room, editing and posting the recordings and doing what he calls “video teasers” which are almost as meaty in content as the actual event, a testament to Andrew’s journalism skills. Adelia is Chair of SICA-Canada and co-curator, and we agreed I should be the feature for this monthly event’s February session due in part to the fact that Koon Woon’s Goldfish Press in Seattle has just published a book of my poems, Haibun de la Serna. I get into the background for the new book in the teaser segment, which you can see here:
THE DETAILS:
Paul E Nelson’s upcoming SICA ZoomMuse Poetry reading:
Thursday, February 17 This event is part of a monthly series of ZoomMuse Poetry Readings, Poems for Peace, co-sponsored by SICA USA and SICA Canada.
Zoom Meeting link on February 17 is https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81799264950 Meeting ID is 817 9926 4950
The time on February 17 is:
11 a.m. Pacific time
2 p.m. Eastern time
7 p.m. UK time
8 p.m. Central European time
6 a.m. on February 18 in Sydney, Australia
I am in the middle of refining my talk about the link between poems and peace-building efforts, but you might expect my skepticism of rhetoric that passes itself off as poetry will be a huge part of the subtext for this and you’d be right. How does bioregionalism relate to peace-building? I hope to make that a little more clear on the 17th. I hope to see you and consider buying a copy of my new book. The cover was created by Amy Evans McClure from a photograph of a painting by Bill Turner who passed not long ago and i think it looks very good. I include the bio Andrew put on the YouTube page for your perusal.
ABOUT PAUL E NELSON
Poet & interviewer Paul E. Nelson is the son of a labor activist father and Cuban immigrant mother. He founded the Cascadia Poetics LAB (formerly SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB)) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, CPL has produced hundreds of poetry events & 700 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others.
Paul’s books include Haibun de la Serna (2022), A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020) American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015, 2021) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Paul is co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017), Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) and Make it True meets Medusario (2019).
Paul has presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Los Angeles, Nanaimo, San Francisco, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & 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, Paul serves as Literary Executor for the late poet Sam Hamill; he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed with his daughter Ella Roque and his fiancée, yes fiancée, Bhakti Watts.
Paul is an active member (since 2004) of the Subud spiritual community, serving as Chair of the cultural wing of Subud, SICA-USA, as Local Helper, former webmaster of the Subud Pacific Northwest website, webmaster of the SICA and has had other positions in the past.