Paul E Nelson presenting at Cascadia Poetry Festival 8, photo by Leszek Chudzinski
“Paul formally received the Mahayana precepts of Zen Buddhism in 2023, becoming a lay practitioner within the tradition, but I believe he had long lived in accord with them. His poetry, in its sensitivity, its humility, and its deep listening, embodies practice-realization — the understanding that practice and awakening are not separate. His writing was his zazen. This collection, FLEXIBLE MIND, is more than a book. It is a continuation of that practice. A testament to a man who lives by attention, who bows to language but does not cling to it, who seeks what lays beyond words by walking straight into them.”– Kosho Itagaki, Soto Zen Priest
Lesley University COS 24 Talk
Lesley University COS 24 happens March 29, 2024 and I will give a talk on my graduate education and what has developed since then. COS stands for Community of Scholars and I am proud to be one,...
Red Pine Documentary
The last time we reported on Bill Porter (aka: Red Pine) we had traveled to his Port Townsend home for an interview. See: https://paulenelson.com/2019/10/14/red-pine-bill-porter-interview/ Now he's...
Poetics as Cosmology at Holden Village
Thanks to poetry hermano Raul Sanchez, I'll be facilitating my Poetics as Cosmology this summer in the North Cascades and you are welcome to hang out. The place is Holden Village. "Over the course...
Tessa Hulls Interview (Feeding Ghosts)
Tessa Hulls and I met when she donated a poster for the 2013 edition of the Allen Ginsberg Open Mic Poetry marathon. On February 20, 2024 I caught up with her on Zoom to discuss her first book, a...
Article on Cascadia by a Writer in London
The notion of bioregionalism and Cascadia has spread at least to London. I was interviewed on the subject of Cascadia by Gus Mitchell, a London-based free lance writer and was delighted to see my...
Pie & Poetry @ C&P on Valentine’s Day
Poetry Bridge is celebrating 14 years of community mic readings at C&P Coffee Company in West Seattle on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. 6:30 it's time for pie and signups. 7pm a reading that will...
Colleen McElroy Interview
In the wake of the death of Colleen McElroy on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, we are re-posting this interview conducted in 2016. This interview will be part of the next book of transcribed interviews...
Cascadian Zen Launch at Elliott Bay Dec 4, 2023
I am thrilled to present Cascadian Zen at the legendary Seattle independent bookstore Elliott Bay Book Company, Monday, December 4, 2023, 7pm (sharp) at 1521 Tenth Avenue in Seattle, WA. This will...
Rainier Beach Arts & Crafts Market
I'm delighted to again participate in the annual Rainier Beach Arts & Crafts Market on December 2, 2023, from 10AM – 3 PM. The address is 6038 S Pilgrim St., in Seattle, in Upper Rainier Beach...
Online Winter Workshops
The Zoom workshops we started in 2020, when we were already sick of the pandemic and not yet sick of Zoom, continue in their fourth year and frankly, I do not have the Zoom fatigue the mainstream...
Cultural, then Political
I'm honored when I can be of use, or my writing or interviewing or organizing inspires someone. The latest example of that comes from my friend Andrew Engelson, who created the Cascadia Journal and...
The Dawn of HATE Postcards
Never in my 19 years of being involved with the Poetry Postcard Fest would I have have thought someone would take the time to lash out at a postcard recipient with a hateful message, but here we are...
The Singing Bullets of Soft Secession
For three years now since Sept 2022, I have written a day-long poem in a ritual that I've come to call the DaySong. There is much information about my history with this project here:...
How does one make literary art about this time in history that avoids rhetoric and facile political positioning in this era of the spectacle? How does one avoid being consumed by the simultaneous collapse of so many systems — some being eviscerated by people in positions designed to protect such systems? Deborah Poe has some idea based on her submission to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Still.
Deborah is the author of several books of poetry including keep, Elements, and Our Parenthetical Ontology, as well as a novella in verse, Hélène. Her visual works–video poems and handmade book objects–have been exhibited throughout the US. She lives on stolen Coast Salish land, specifically the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot People.
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To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.