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
Holly J. Hughes Interview
Holly Hughes is the author of Hold Fast, Sailing by Ravens, coauthor of The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World, and editor of the award-winning anthology, Beyond Forgetting: Poetry...
Mammal Grafting
I am going to post this today though I am going to release it as a "page" or doc in Week Two of my current workshops series A Sequence of Energies. There is still room in this workshop, Sunday...
Zoomuse Reading (The Recording)
My huge appreciation goes out to Andrew Hall, SICA-International, my Subud Sisters and Brothers and a few fans who came to my March 5, 2021 Zoomuse reading. I have found that I feel more at ease...
McClure Tribute
I am delighted to be part of a Michael McClure Memorial Tribute being produced by City Lights Books on the occasion of Michael's last book of poems Mule Kick Blues. Details: On the one-year...
Zoomuse Reading, Friday, March 5, 2021
Check out this interview about my work, conducted by Andrew Hall, as a poet from the perspective of my spiritual community, Subud: From Andrew Hall: At the March 5 Zoomuse event, Paul will be...
A Sequence of Energies
The organizing topic for the next workshop I will facilitate comes from a notion of Robin Blaser's about serial form being a: "Sequence of Energies." In this workshop we take the methods and the...
For Chick Corea
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chick-corea-obit-1127283/ “Nobody was more open, more finely tuned to the moment…” quote from John Mayer, Rolling Stone obituary.
Andrew Schelling Interview (The Facts at Dog Tank Spring)
I have known Andrew Schelling since he and Anne Waldman visited the original SPLAB in Auburn in 1997, giving a reading there 6 days after their dear friend Allen Ginsberg died. I have interviewed...
Ian Boyden’s Name as Fundamental Pattern (Reads from A Forest of Names)
This post has been updated to include video from the January 22, 2021 talk: I met Ian Boyden about ten or so years ago through our mutual friend Sam Hamill and we'll always be marked by that...
A Reading of Projective Verse
This post has been edited to include video of the reading of the seminal Charles Olson essay Projective Verse: It was October 1995 and I had just finished lunch with Michael McClure, the day I met...
Winter in America (Again (poem)
I have submitted my poems to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Again. The project was conceived of by Katie Sarah Zale and modeled after Sam Hamill's "Poets Against The War." Greg Bem's...
Rainier Beach Arts & Craft Market
I attended this market when Bhakti and I first moved to Rainier Beach in 2007 and I have been delighted to participate in in the last four or five years, excepting the pandemic time. Of course I'll...
Poet of Place (Joanne Kyger)
Today we present the video version of the interview I conducted with Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden on the book Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger. Kyger is one of the most...
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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