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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Getting to Know Cascadian Poets & Poetics
It was after I finished my M.A. from Lesley University, a course of study I organized with the help of a few select advisors that one of my most close readers, Chuck Pirtle, suggested what I was...
Daphne Marlatt Interview (Liquidities)
I did my first interviews very early in my radio career, but started to gain some skill at preparing and conducting interviews about 1990, when I became News and Community Affairs Director at...
SPLAB @ 20 (A daughter’s view)
We celebrated 20 years of SPLAB last Saturday at the Spring Street Center in Seattle, which is also the Seattle Subud House, my spiritual home. I was pleasantly surprised by the good turnout and...
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.