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
Rattle Magazine Interview
I'm delighted to have a poem and an interview in the latest Rattle Magazine. This interview is not one I conducted but one that was done with ME! And it was the best one anyone has ever done with...
BIPF Virtual Poetry Fest/Zoomuse
One of the big joys of poetry is to go to festivals, maybe have a chance to read, but certainly have a chance to be in the company of other living poets and talking shop, craft and opportunities....
Zoom McClure Tribute
One of my poetry heroes died May 4. I met and interviewed Michael McClure in 1995 when he was visiting Seattle to promote the book Three Poems with the new long poem Dolphin Skull as the first of...
Zoomuse, Reading for Subud
SICA-International, the cultural wing of my spiritual community, Subud, has created a weekly cyber poetry series featuring Subud members from round the world who write poetry. I will be featured...
Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty
I'm delighted to have work in a new anthology entitled: Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty. It was edited by Sarah Zale and Terry Persun and seeing that our shelter-in-place restrictions...
R.I.P. Michael McClure, 20-Oct-1932 – 4-May-2020
I will never forget meeting Michael McClure, interviewing him in 1995 at the old KZOK-FM studios on Queen Anne Hill, him taking me out for Vietnamese food saying lunch was "on Penguin" (his...
PEN America Emergency Writers Fund
Artists have to train themselves to not link their own self-esteem to outside validation. In THIS culture, the job is much harder because of what the composer Charles Wuorinen said to the New York...
Sam Green’s ATBS Binding
Huge gratitude goes out to Washington's first Poet Laureate, Sam Green, who has bound my new book A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia. He did it a week or so ago and sent...
Lewis MacAdams Dead
This was in the L.A. Times tonight: Lewis MacAdams, a poet and crusader for restoring the concrete Los Angeles River to a more natural state and co-founder of one of the most influential...
Documenting Pandemic
Thanks to POPO participant Linda Clifton, I learned about an essay by George Saunders in The New Yorker: A key paragraph for me: Are you keeping records of the e-mails and texts you’re getting, the...
Article on Cascadia by a Writer in London
The notion of bioregionalism and Cascadia has spread at least to London. I was interviewed on the subject of Cascadia by Gus Mitchell, a London-based free lance writer and was delighted to see my...
Pie & Poetry @ C&P on Valentine’s Day
Poetry Bridge is celebrating 14 years of community mic readings at C&P Coffee Company in West Seattle on Wednesday, February 14, 2024. 6:30 it's time for pie and signups. 7pm a reading that will...
Colleen McElroy Interview
In the wake of the death of Colleen McElroy on Tuesday, December 12, 2023, we are re-posting this interview conducted in 2016. This interview will be part of the next book of transcribed interviews...
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.