Paul E Nelson presenting at Cascadia Poetry Festival 8, photo by Leszek Chudzinski
Paul Nelson’s ongoing honing of the Day Song poetry event has produced some of the most lively and consequential verse of our time. How else write about the calamities and demands and mental/emotional/political consequences of the materialist apocalypse upon us, than an ongoing poesis of awareness and participation the anti-form the Day Song provides? Truly a praxis of proprioception and of Olson’s demand to “keep it moving…
– Sharon Thesen, Cascadian Poet/Scholar from B.C.
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...
1.1.2021 American Sentence
1.1.2021 - 2020 was taken out to the alley & shot in the head. 12.31.2020 marked the completion of twenty years of daily practice of composing American Sentences. (17 syllable poems, a form...
The New Year (A Poem)
Photo from CrosscutThe New Year January 1 too old to be hungover you unwrap the new year like a new stick of butter hope you get it in the dish at the right angle and not scrape off butter from the...
Letter for Diane di Prima Park
30-December-2020 LaMonte Bishop City of San Francisco Parks & Recreation lamonte.bishop@sfgov.org To the Honorable LaMonte Bishop, I am writing to urge you to rename Page-Laguna Park in SF:...
Diane di Prima Solstice Poem
Thank you Leggy Bruck for this: And di Prima fans should know about this: Rename Page-Laguna Mini Park to Diane DiPrima Park Why is this important? PETITION to Rename Page-Laguna Park as “Diane di...
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...
Andrew Schelling in Seattle and Port Townsend
Fans of the Cascadia Poetics Lab are no doubt familiar with Andrew Schelling, the poet/translator and Naropa professor. We have interviewed him on several occasions:...
Robert Bringhurst at Seattle U, Nov 15
Robert Bringhurst will be talking at Seattle University on Friday, November 15, 2024, in Sinegal 100/110 at 4pm. Robert has been part of at least two Cascadia Poetry Festivals, 2015 in Nanaimo and...
In Honor of David McCloskey “The Father of Cascadia”
David McCloskey passed away on July 3. In honor of his lifetime of work to create and spread a culture that was deeply connected to the Cascadian bioregion, Cascadian Prophets, which owes more than just its name to his work, we want to share this interview from October, 2013. Find it transcribed on our website.
To listen to the original audio of this interview, click here.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"
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.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.








