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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Russell Means, Dead at 72
Russell Means died on Monday morning, October 22, 2012, on his ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. I had the good fortune to be able to interview him in October 1995 when he...
Nate Mackey Interview Part 5
In part 5 of my August 24, 2012 Skype interview with poet Nate Mackey, he discusses his method of writing poetry, how it is not done from an outline and a notion from the book A Musical View...
Willie Smith on Spider F&^k and other stories from Nothing Doing
Willie Smith got his B.A. at Reed College (graduating Phi Beta Kappa) and is the author of Nothing Doing, a book that he claims is fictional. In an interview recorded at his Beacon Hill home on...
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.