Paul E Nelson presenting at Cascadia Poetry Festival 8, photo by Leszek Chudzinski
Paul Nelson’s ongoing honing of the Day Song poetry event has produced some of the most lively and consequential verse of our time. How else write about the calamities and demands and mental/emotional/political consequences of the materialist apocalypse upon us, than an ongoing poesis of awareness and participation the anti-form the Day Song provides? Truly a praxis of proprioception and of Olson’s demand to “keep it moving…
– Sharon Thesen, Cascadian Poet/Scholar from B.C.
Seattle Cultural Survey
Save Charles Olson’s Neighborhood
Forwarding this from Peter Anastas, author of the Olson memoir, From Gloucester Out. He's asking us to: "Sign this petition and forward it to friends, poets, Olson and Gloucester lovers, who live...
Writing Haibun
Writing Haibun I first became aware of the haibun literary form through Anne Waldman's Marriage: A Sentence and through Sam Hamill's translation of Basho's Narrow Road to the Interior,perhaps the...
Poetry Postcard Exercise
Poetry Postcard Exercise Ted Berrigan, Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer are among the more notable poets to engage in such a project. Berrigan’s book of them (A Certain Slant on Sunlight) was completed...
Washington State Poetry Questionnaire
The new state Poet Laureate, Kathleen Flenniken asked me to help get the word out about her focus as the 2nd Poet Laureate of the state of Washington, the state poetry questionnaire. I agreed and...
2012 American Sentences (so far)
So, I found my pocket journal that went from October 13, 2011 to January 17, 2012. It was a scary moment when I couldn't find it for various reasons. I do not want to think about how a lost journal...
Personal Mythology in Poetry
By the time you read this, I will have likely performed as part of the 2nd piece of the Four Hoarse Men SOundPO project. (See video of the first project here.) Although due to scheduling we're three...
Poems published, Slaughter video
Things are getting close to critical here on the Nelson home front, with Ella Roque due on March 10 and the Cascadia Poetry Festival coming up March 23-25.We could use more registrations for that...
57. Frog Song
After Susan Point’s Nowhere Left. 2000 https://www.mister-toad.com/PacificTreeFrog.html Ghetto - 1605–15; < Italian, orig. the name of an island near Venice where Jews were forced to reside in...
Paul Hunter 2004 Interview
Poet/Publisher Paul Hunter was the guest on a Global Voices Radio program which was recorded in September 2004. The subject was his book Breaking Ground and his own letter press, Wood Works. Paul...
Andrew Schelling and Left Coast Culture
When I was in California in summer of 2017, among my stops were with two poets who were reading a book about the life of Jaime de Angulo (pronounced dan GOO low) who was "a cowboy, cattle rancher,...
Sam Hamill’s Last Reading + Elegy
Dean of NW poets, Sam Hamill died on Saturday, April 14, 2018, at 6:04pm at his home in Anacortes, Washington. I last saw Sam on Thursday and Friday, April 5 & 6. We shared saké one last time...
In Honor of David McCloskey “The Father of Cascadia”
David McCloskey passed away on July 3. In honor of his lifetime of work to create and spread a culture that was deeply connected to the Cascadian bioregion, Cascadian Prophets, which owes more than just its name to his work, we want to share this interview from October, 2013. Find it transcribed on our website.
To listen to the original audio of this interview, click here.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"
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.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.