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PAUL E NELSON

Cascadia Poetry Festival 8 Paul E Nelson at the microphone

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

Up a Creek with Brett Nunn

Today I found out I will require bilateral laparoscopic inguinal hernia surgery. Ugh. Not a fan of surgery but quickly becoming a fan of Project Access NW, which has determined that I am eligible...

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Dementia Blog – Susan Schultz

Susan Schultz is a poet, critic, publisher and Professor of English at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Her focus is modern and contemporary poetry, American literature, and creative writing. She...

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59. Sisuitl (Si’sEyul)

I read this poem Tuesday at the Wedgewood Ale House to good response and so am posting it here. Yes, it's another in the Haibun de la Serna series, of which I envision 99. It's also part of the...

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Help Julian Priester

Julian and his wife Nashira Priester need your help. This world class Jazz musician and his poet wife have been it with financial troubles and have lost their house. This was posted on Facebook: ...

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PageBoy Magazine Interview

We'd planned to interview Thomas Walton about the publication he edits and publishes, Pageboy Magazine, as well as contributor Sierra Nelson not long before it was deemed BEST LITERARY MAGAZINE IN...

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Happiness & Spirituality

my friend Jason Wirth is producing a couple of worthwhile events: Happiness & Spirituality How the concept of Gross National Happiness intertwines with Vajrayana Buddhism Lopen Gem Dorji (Gembo)...

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The Cards I Got (APPF13 2019)

I have been holding off on taking and posting my annual picture of poetry postcards received during this year's August Poetry Postcard Fest. If I counted right, I got 62 cards: This is a shot taken...

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SPLAB @ &Now Cascadia by Anthology

I am delighted to be part of the &Now Conference, which is being staged at UW-Bothell, September 19-22, 2019, with a rather remarkable collection of "experimental" poets.Not sure what word is...

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Deborah Poe

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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Deborah Poe on "flagging the apocalypse pageantry"

by Paul E Nelson