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
Brenda Hillman Interview
Brenda Hillman finished off the SPLAB 2011 Visiting Poets Series in fine fashion November 11 and 12 with a brilliant talk on Innovation and Activism in Poetry Friday the 11th (Veterans Day), a...
American Prophets
Paul Nelson first started conducting interviews in his early radio days, Chicago 1980. In 1990 he was promoted to News & Community Affairs Director of KKNW (106.9 in Seattle) and over the next...
Jargon 20: Passage (by Michael McClure)
I checked mail yesterday and Michael McClure’s package came. It was an original copy of Jargon 20: Passage, published in 1956 by Jonathan Williams. I immediately sat down and read the whole book...
SPLAB Visiting Poet Brenda Hillman Details & Audio
Talk, Friday, November 11, 7:30P at SPLAB Workshop, Saturday, November 12, 1-4P @ SPLAB Reading Saturday, Nov 12 at 7:30P @ SPLAB Brenda Hillman I...
Black Holes and Virgos on Flute: New Jim O’Halloran CD
Review of Jim O’Halloran Quintet CD Jazz music has gone through four major changes in its century-plus time of existence. Ragtime and Dixieland gave way to Swing, to Bebop and then to Free Jazz....
Swell (the novel) (Reading 11.4.117P)
Paul Nelson reads with Jim O'Halloran on flute and with novelist Corwin Ericson, who is touring Swell in the Northwest! November 4, 2011, 7P. Mark your calendars for the Seattle book release party...
Paul E Nelson
To what do you train your attention? For over 30 years, Paul E Nelson has interviewed poetic luminaries such as Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman, Robin Blaser, Sam Hamill, Wanda...
Notes on A Sense of the Whole (Reading Mark Gonnerman Reading Gary Snyder)
Mark Gonnerman was a participant in SPLAB's Becoming Cascadian retreat last spring. In 1997 he organized a yearlong research workshop on Gary Snyder's long poem Mountains and Rivers Without End....
2018 Postcard Participation
293 people are registered for the 12th August POetry POstcard Fest in 2018. Included are participants from Alberta (1), Alabama (9), Arkansas (1), Arizona (1), British Columbia (1), California (26),...
Postcard Impersonality
Reading Mark Gonnerman's book A Sense of the Whole: Reading Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End I came to Tim Dean's essay on The Other Voice. In the essay he states that in his 40 year...
The interview I conducted with Sam O’Hana, a Ph.D. student at CUNY, is immensely critical and immensely validating for the work we do at the Cascadia Poetics Lab. At its core, the discussion is about whether writing is for people of means, or if it can be people who have skill and something to say. It means the literary gatekeepers have failed us and have a role in perpetuating neoliberalism in North America which has paved the way for authoritarianism. The interview is available as a podcast here and as a YouTube video here. Below, I have pasted in the transcript and here is my introduction to Sam O’Hana and his topic.