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
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Cascadia Poetry Festival in Cumberland
In August 2014, I attended the Subud World Congress in Puebla, Mexico. It was my first World Congress and it was life-changing. While there I was urged to get involved in the Subud International...
August 2017 Poetry Postcard Fest Afterword
Nothing signifies the end of summer in Cascadia like rain and it is raining as I write this. This year especially. 60+ days of no measurable precipitation makes me feel a little guilty about all the...
Important Dates
Summer is supposed to be a lazy time with a lot of loafing, picnics, softball, kayak rides and other ways in which -- as George Gershwin put it - "the livin' is easy." Throw in year 11 of a poetry...
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.