Portrait photo credits listed below
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem and Poetics as Cosmology 2025 Workshops
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP)
- Sundays, 3-5 PM PDT
- November 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, 2025
Poetics as Cosmology (PAC)
- Thursdays, 3-5 PM PDT
- October 30, November 6, 13, 20, and December 4, 2025
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem and Poetics as Cosmology 2025 Workshops
A five week online (Zoom) workshop best suited for continuing participants and more experienced poets (open to open form) in workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises. In Fall 2025, we’ll explore a short history of Projective/Outside North American Poetry, focused on:
- Whitman & Dickinson
- WCW & Lorine Niedecker
- Olson and Levertov
- McClure & di Prima
- Daphne Marlatt, Brenda Hillman & Nate Mackey
and related texts and assignments. How can one’s poetics be a cosmology and how can one maintain some experience of the Poetry Postcard Fest, & allow one’s life as a creative participant in the world to rise in one’s personal hierarchy of duties/activities? How is the projective poem an antidote to Silicon Valley attention fracking? An alternative to A.I. Slop? Will you let the machines do your thinking?
Registration $250. Canadians in need can pay $250 CAD. Some scholarships available.
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP)
- Sundays, 3-5 PM PDT
- November 2, 9, 16, 23, and 30, 2025
Poetics as Cosmology (PAC)
- Thursdays, 3-5 PM PDT
- October 30, November 6, 13, 20, and December 4, 2025
Link to purchase Cascadian Zen Volume 2
Also, this essay on Investigative Poetry will be essential. Please read it before the course begins and come with questions or comments.
by invitation only. Zoom link: (to be announced)
Course Materials Week One
LARFP:(Sunday, November 2, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
PAC:(Thursday, October 30, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
READ: Cascadian Zen Volume II, Basket Four (Pages 46 to 67)
LISTEN or WATCH: Anne Tardos Interview
WATCH: Good Enough Ancestor Trailer (The whole movie is only 22:00)
WRITE: Fucking Poetry Exercise or
WRITE a poem about the Good Enough Ancestor movie, using the Investigative Poetry method. The Kyger/Blavatsky chapbook is one example. This handout goes into that, with links. You can use any newspaper article or book. Here’s an article on Cate Blanchett’s hatred of leaf blowers, for example. Here’s one on a Canadian trapped by the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Course Materials Week Two
LARFP:(Sunday, November 9, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
PAC:(Thursday, November 6, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: Cascadian Zen Volume II (pp 67-91)
Watch: Fred Wah at CPF8 (Cue in to 42:48. Audio quality so-so.)
Read: Reportorial Poetics Blog Post Not Essay by (Brenda Hillman)
Listen: Malletismo
Write: Reportorial Poetics, Tariff Poetics, ICE Poetics, Gaza Poetics
Course Materials Week Three
LARFP:(Sunday, November 16, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
PAC:(Thursday, November 13, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: Cascadian Zen Volume II (pp 92-102)
READ: MAGA’s Underground Railroad
READ: AGAINST FORGETTING or WATCH IT HERE
READ: (or Listen): Telling The Bees
WATCH:
WRITE: Use the Reportorial Poetics or Kyger/Blavatsky method to create a poem based on the MAGA Underground Railroad DEI story or Telling the Bees, or any number of US students who’ve had their visa’s revoked, or READ this webpage with bee poems (you might prefer the Emily Dickinson bee poems the best) and write 1-7 “Bee Sevens.” These are 7 line poems with 7 words in each line. Maybe their relationship to bees is tangential. That’s ok. Get some honey in there, or plants around you now currently abloom and see where the 7s take you.
Course Materials Week Four
LARFP:(Sunday, November 23, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
PAC:(Thursday, November 2o, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: Cascadian Zen Volume II (pp 103-123)
WATCH: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2025/03/wilsons-bowl-video/
READ/WRITE: Found Duende, Erasing Duende, Duende Phrase Acrostic
Course Materials Week Five
LARFP:(Sunday, November 30, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
PAC:(Thursday, December 4, 2025, 3-5 pm PDT)
Read: Cascadian Zen Volume II (pp 124-148)
Read: Against Forgetting Complete Intro
WATCH: Waterfall Zen (extra credit if you do this.)
VIEW: Ronald Johnson erasing Milton
Write: Issei Zen/Cascadian Zen/Yourplace Zen
Register: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/poetrypostcards/
Take your spontaneous writing practice to a new level by participating in the 19th Poetry Postcard Fest. Finish on September 1, 2025 with a daysong. Find some daysong resources here: https://paulenelson.com/daysong/
Photo portrait credits:
- Lorine Niedecker: Lorine’s high school portrait. She graduated from Fort Atkinson High School in 1922. Photo courtesy of the Hoard Historical Museum and Fort Atkinson [Wisconsin] Historical Society.
- Charles Olson: John Olson photograph by Juangris
- Michael McClure: photograph by Gloria Graham during the taping of Add-Verse, 2004
- Diane di Prima: photograph by Gloria Graham during the taping of Add-Verse, 2004
- Nathanial Mackey: photographed by Gloria Graham during the taping of Add-Verse, 2005