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
Cascadian Prophets 2025 Spotify Wrapped Stats
I was quite happy with the news from Spotify when I watched their 2025 Wrapped summary of the podcast stats for Cascadian Prophets. I was in radio for 26 years and got into podcasting late, but here...
Andrew Schelling via Vidyā (in direct contact with rasa)
I've been granted permission from Andrew Schelling to post a small excerpt from his new book of Vidyā translations for my ongoing online workshops. The new book is Old Time Love Song Magic: Sanskrit...
Free Winter in America (Still Workshop
PAUL E NELSONDear Poet, WHAT: Free online poetry workshop WHEN: Today at 12N PST WHERE: PEN zoom WHY: Winter in America (Still WHO: Roxi Power, allia abdullah-matta, Your Humble Narrator I am one...
CPL Wins Humanities WA Award
On October 30 the Cascadia Poetics Lab was one of 50 individuals/entities honored with the Humanities Washington Award. They said: The Humanities Washington Award recognizes outstanding...
DaySong Workshops
As you may know, for the last few years I have added a day-long ritual poem writing project to my array of practices. I've come to call these events "daysongs" after the Canto Diurno by the late...
Winter in America (Still call for work
Call for Poems/Prose/ArtI hope this finds you well despite this troubling political time. In response, the editors of the Winter in America anthology series are building a literary and artistic...
Linda Russo on the verdant
As the planet heats up, many animal species are either headed north or going extinct. This makes the work of the poet as witness that much more important. Who is here now? And as the culture becomes...
Cultural, then Political
I'm honored when I can be of use, or my writing or interviewing or organizing inspires someone. The latest example of that comes from my friend Andrew Engelson, who created the Cascadia Journal and...
The Dawn of HATE Postcards
Never in my 19 years of being involved with the Poetry Postcard Fest would I have have thought someone would take the time to lash out at a postcard recipient with a hateful message, but here we are...
The Singing Bullets of Soft Secession
For three years now since Sept 2022, I have written a day-long poem in a ritual that I've come to call the DaySong. There is much information about my history with this project here:...
Paul E. Nelson, Clyfford Still Museum Institute Residential Fellowship Program
04.20.26 for immediate release The Clyfford Still Museum Institute Residential Fellowship Program has announced its 2026 selections and named Paul E. Nelson as one of the Residential Fellows for the...
Interview with Aldon Lynn Nielsen on Gil Scott-Heron
I was a sophomore at Wright Junior College in Chicago in 1981, quite determined to be a professional broadcaster, listening to the progressive FM station that shaped my whole cosmology when a song...
Rainier Beach Arts Roundtable & Mapes Creek
It's kind of a joke in the bioregional community that bioregionalists are people who fly all over the world to tell you how important it is to be rooted to place. A lot of truth in that joke. Here...
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.
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