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.
The Poetry Foundation
Dispatches from the Poetry Wars was a great little, shit-stirring website that reminded us that poetry wars are ongoing and critical, if they lead to dialog. Community happens only when there is...
The Undercommons Remembers Michael McClure
The Undercommons is a literary salon that was founded a few months ago, happened in person once a month a few times and has moved to Zoom for the time-being. We've studied Denise Levertov and The...
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...
Another DaySong (1980)
Another DaySong (1980) By Paul E Nelson Alongside The Day Song of Casa del Colibiri, Another Day Song (1980) is a fantastic meditation throughout the day via insight and poetry. Nelson's works...
Postcards from Here, Postcards from Mapes Creek
I had no idea when Bhakti Watts and I moved to Rainier Beach in 2017 how much we would love this neighborhood, how much it would give back to us and shape our lives. And yes, we've each survived...
A Journal of the Plague Years
I like to think of it as projective journalism. Maybe it's becoming a lost art to write and publish history with deep perception hours after events happen, but Susan Zakin and her crew at Journal of...
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.