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
Poetics as Cosmology (Talk given to Cal State L.A., March 21, 2022)
We do what we know before we know what we do. Charles Olson,as quoted by Robert Creeley inpoets of the cities of new york and san francisco 1950-1965 (Dutton ’74). p. 62 This subject is near and...
Proprioception
Ever since Fred Wah mentioned proprioception in an interview we did that was posted on YouTube and made into a podcast, I have been plunged back into a study of this capacity. It's how human and...
Reading w/ Jim O’Halloran Trio
It was a remarkable experience reading my poems with the accompaniment of the Jim O'Halloran Trio on February 25, 2022 at Kezira Café. Jim's a wonderful musician, bandleader and arranger. He...
Poems for Peace
Under the auspices of my position as Chair of my spiritual community's National Cultural Wing, SICA-USA, for 15 months (& two years before that as Secretary) I have been involved in creating...
West Seattle Workshop (15-APR-2022)
Thanks to the efforts of my publisher Koon Woon and Goldfish Press, I have been awarded a grant from Poets & Writers to facilitate a poetry workshop Friday, April 15 from 1- 3 pm at the Alaska...
SICA-USA Poems for Peace
Andrew Hall and Adelia MacWilliam are two people helping me curate a series of online readings that were conceived of by SICA, the Subud International Cultural...
Galactic Travel in Rainier Beach
What a delight to see the careful unveiling of community in this neighborhood where Bhakti and I have lived for over 4 years. The neighborhood is Rainier Beach and we live across the street from a...
Haibun de la Serna World Tour
Now that Haibun de la Serna, my latest book of poems, is out, it is time to launch the HdlS WORLD TOUR to promote it. I am blessed to have a sympathetic publisher in Koon Woon of Goldfish Press and...
Haibun de la Serna Published
I am delighted to announce today that a book I finished ten years ago has just been published by Koon Woon's Goldfish Press. Haibun de la Serna is the book. It consists of 99 neo-barroco haibun all...
Haibun de la Serna: 99 Haibun
by Paul E Nelson June 2022 Review by Pablo Baler Paul Nelson’s Haibun moves with the spirit of Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s greguerías, one of the unclassifiable micro-genres Gómez invented in his...
Open Parenthesis (of Winter in America (Again
Greg Bem is the publisher of Carbonation Press and the new anthology Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election. He got an email from someone asking him why the parenthesis before the...
Andrew Schelling Interview on Forests, Temples, Glacial Rivers
It is said of the poetry of Andrew Schelling that he is “locating language in watersheds and continental ridges, in rocks and plants. A poet of ancient texts and teachings, Schelling tracks the...
Winter in America (Again (A response to the November election)
It was an enormous task to create an anthology, with an open call and eight editors, in 6 weeks, but we did it. Winter in America (Again rightly takes its cue from Gil Scott-Heron and responds...
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.