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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After The Japanese 17-20
This latest installment of After The Japanese, poems written after the classic Japanese poetry anthology, is below. These poems were written in Winter/Spring 2014 and I am beginning to think lichen...
Call for Beat Papers
The next EBSN (European Beat Studies Network) Conference is in Brussels in October. I attended a conference at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in 2011 and Franca Bellarsi is a warm and capable...
Hillman City Haibun_1-(Dead_Cat_Magnet)
2014 was not an easy year over on Lucile Street. My cat Zappa died March 30. Meredith's beloved Tupelo died on October 17 and Mer was entrusted to care for a neighbor's elderly cat over the...
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.