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
Article on American Sentences
Huge thanks (again) to Tim Green of Rattle Magazine who wrote about my practice of American Sentences for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California. The article is called: I love how Tim changes...
9.11.2020 American Sentence
9.11.2020 - He's at the boat launch pier, w/ rod & reel, fishing for smoked salmon....
PEN POPO2020 Afterword (Postcards from the Pandemic)
In years past I have taken time on the 1st of September to write my POPO afterword. If felt like a ritual to end each extended August with a meditation on what I had done, followed by a photo or...
Iris Cushing on David Henderson and Mary Norbert Körte
Interview with Iris Cushing on The First Books of David Henderson & Mary Korte: A Research. Recorded via Zoom, Sunday, September 6, 2020, at 1pm PDT. In 1967, the first books of two poets were...
Prostate Cancer Update
I was asked by my local spiritual community, Subud Greater Seattle, for an update on my treatment for prostate cancer. An excerpt: I was diagnosed with prostate cancer on February 17, 2020 and had...
Poetics as Cosmology
Poetics as Cosmology (Intro to Spontaneous Composition) A six week online (Zoom) workshop for people who have had a little experience in spontaneous poetry composition and want more. Join SPLAB and...
Rattlecast #54 (Watch the Interview)
Back in March before we had a sense of how COVID-19 the novel Coronavirus would change our lives forever, Rattle Magazine's Tim Green invited me to sit down (via Skype) for an interview about my...
Buckminster Fuller
As a fan of the Black Mountain School of poetry, which was inspired by the revolutionary poetics of Charles Olson, the last rector of the famed outside educational institution in North Carolina in...
Because of Poetry I Have a Really Big House (Review)
A very astute review of a new book by a poet that MANY poets love to hate has been published. It's a book by Kent Johnson called Because of Poetry, I Have a Really Big House. The reviewer is Norman...
A Forest of Names (Ian Boyden)
My good friend Ian Boyden is a brilliant artist who has a new book of poems to be released next month by Wesleyan University Press. FYI: A Forest of Names: 108 Meditations by Ian Boyden...
Zoom Interview with Nicholas Gulig on Lorine Niedecker
Imagine growing up a poet in a state like Wisconsin and having to travel to Colorado to learn about the work of Lorine Niedecker, and furthermore to have one’s own consciousness changed by...
Typewriter Poems on Request at SAM’s Remix (Crush)
With my friend, the poet Samar Abulhassan, I'll be typing spontaneous poems on demand for people attending the Seattle Art Museum's popular Remix, Friday, March 29, 2024 from 7-10pm. Really, this...
Lesley University COS 24 Talk
Lesley University COS 24 happens March 29, 2024 and I will give a talk on my graduate education and what has developed since then. COS stands for Community of Scholars and I am proud to be one,...
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.