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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482. Corset Warrior Armor
This is the first of my poems written in Mexico for the 2014 August Poetry Postcard Fest. For more details on all the postcard poems I wrote in 2014 see this page. This poem, like many in Mexico,...
Postcards From the Wilderness
I got back yesterday from a short (annual) backpacking trip to the Olympic National Wilderness. I have tried each year to recreate a 1995 experience of visiting the Olympic Mountains, specifically...
481. Dispatch From the Fringe
This is the second of two intentional collage poems I wrote during the 2014 August Poetry Postcard Fest. (More on all my 2014 postcard poems here.)
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.