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
Nate Mackey Interview, Part 6
In the final segment from my August 24, 2012 interview with poet Nate Mackey, he responds to questions about the notions of reincarnation, lost continents and how his book Nod House is about...
Laura Simms – Story-Telling as a Healing Modality
Laura Simms - Storytelling as Healing Modality Laura Simms is a storyteller and author of The Robe of Love: Secret Instructions for the Heart. She discusses her youthful penchant for...
Jaap Blonk in Seattle (Interview & Audio)
We caught up with Dutch sound poet and vocal improvisor Jaap Blonk before his Earshot Jazz Festival gig on Friday, October 26, 2012. (Kudos to John Gilbreath...
Russell Means, Dead at 72
Russell Means died on Monday morning, October 22, 2012, on his ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I had the good fortune to be able to interview him in October 1995 when he...
Nate Mackey Interview Part 5
In part 5 of my August 24, 2012 Skype interview with poet Nate Mackey, he discusses his method of writing poetry, how it is not done from an outline and a notion from the book A Musical View...
Willie Smith on Spider F&^k and other stories from Nothing Doing
Willie Smith got his B.A. at Reed College (graduating Phi Beta Kappa) and is the author of Nothing Doing, a book that he claims is fictional. In an interview recorded at his Beacon Hill home on...
Happy 80th Michael McClure
Michael McClure turns 80 today, October 20, 2012. A leading USAmerican poet, playwright, essayist and novelist, he was born in Kansas, but spent some of his formative years in Seattle and is...
Haibun in Hambone
I can't tell you how honored I am to have five (5!) of my Haibun de la Serna poems published in the brand new edition of Hambone 20. Nate Mackey is the editor and this magazine has been publishing...
Nate Mackey Interview, Part 4
In part four of my August 24, 2012 interview with poet Nate Mackey, he talks about his practice of 2nd takes in his books Splay Anthem and Nod House, the allusions to Jazz suggested by such a...
Lit Crawl Thursday, Oct 18, 2012
Yes, yet another Lit Crawl, but this one is HUGE. On Thursday, Oct. 18, Lit Crawl Seattle kicks off City Arts Fest with 17 FREE events throughout Capitol Hill with 60+ readers and performers,...
Sons & Daughters
Huge thanks to SPLAB Board Member and EasySpeak Seattle founder Peter Munro for tipping me off to a new journal named Sons & Daughters that seeks to publish work inspired by Charles Olson's...
Call for August Poetry Postcard Fest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SPLAB ISSUES CALL FOR 13TH AUGUST POETRY POSTCARD FEST Seattle, WA, June 5, 2019—Seattle Poetics LAB (SPLAB), a literary arts-oriented nonprofit organization and organizing...
CPF, BIPF, NYC, APPF13
I have been running since about May 7 and no rest in sight as I write this from Brooklyn, in the city that does not sleep because jackhammers start at 7am and people are never afraid to use their...
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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