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
Some End/West Broadway Bowering/Stanley Book Launch
I got this in the mail last week from New Star Books of Vancouver, BC: Actually, it was addressed from Point Roberts, WA, a little strip of land, a peninsula actually, south of the 49th parallel,...
Bay Area Postcard Readings!
The launch of 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards, an anthology that was ten years in the making is finally happening in the Bay Area THIS WEEKEND! Ina Roy-Faderman has worked tirelessly to help...
Ellensburg Poetry Prowl
I am delighted to be part of the Ellensburg Poetry Prowl, April 7, 2018, in downtown Goatburg. (Does anyone call it that anymore?) A tribute to Langston Hughes, there are three days of events, but...
Lewis MacAdams Interview
In the effort to catalog all the programs done during the days in which I syndicated a weekly public affairs radio program, the latest gem I have re-discovered is a 2001 interview with poet Lewis...
C&P March 14 w/ John Olson
A participant in an open mic recently mentioned how important such spaces are now in our culture, with such political unrest and division. She could have also mentioned the ecological crisis we're...
Ellensburg Poetry Prowl, Postcards in Bay Area
Upcoming gig alert! 11am, March 24, 2018: Book Passage, Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA. Join us for a celebration of the publication of 56 Days of August (Five Oaks Press) – readers will include...
Andrew Schelling in Cascadia
In the process of organizing the audio archives of SPLAB, (thank you 4Culture) and those that pre-date the December 13, 1993 founding of the non-profit organization, I came across the audio of Anne...
Choral Poetry – Jack and Adelle Foley
Jack and Adelle Foley are poets from Oakland, California, who performed at the 3rd annual Super Bowl of Poetry at the Northwest SPokenword LAB in Auburn, Washington, in February 2000. It was one of...
Charles Potts Interview
A 2017 interview conducted with Charles Potts by your humble narrator has been published online by Rain Taxi: https://www.raintaxi.com/a-path-through-the-wilderness-an-interview-with-charles-potts/ ...
Claudia Castro Luna Interview, Part 2
Last week we featured the first half of our interview your humble narrator conducted with the incoming Washington State Poet Laureate, Claudia Castro Luna. In the second half (audio parts 3 & 4)...
Interview with Beat Nun Mary Norbert Körte
This post, originally from November 5, 2019, has been republished in the wake of the death of Mary Norbert Körte at her home in Willits, California, Monday, November 14, 2022 at 1:30pm. She was 88....
The Day Song of Casa del Colibrí: Como Sacramentos
Available from Paul. $10. Add $3 for shipping and handling. 9030 Seward Park Av S #213Seattle, WA 98118 A new chapbook based on a writing exercise developed in the spirit of Bernadette Mayer and...
Open Mic/Workshop
Please join me for a free Poetics as Cosmology workshop/open mic where current and former participants will talk about something they gleaned from Poetics as Cosmology and maybe even read something...
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.