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
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)...
Claudia Castro Luna Interview, Part 1
Claudia Castro Luna is the incoming Poet Laureate of the state of Washington. For two years she had been the Civic Poet of Seattle, the city’s version of the ceremonial position. In this first part...
Cascadia Talk in Nanaimo, Retreat
It's been over five years since I published Why Cascadia, Why Poetry? In it I make the case for bioregionalism and poetry as part of a response to the decline of democracy in the United States,...
Audio Interview Archive Taking Shape
Thanks to a grant from 4Culture, the archive of interviews I have done over the years is being organized. Summaries of past interviews, going back to December 1990, are going up weekly...
Deep in Cascadia: What Does It Mean to Be Here/Write Here?
I am honored to be invited to talk in Nanaimo on January 21, 2018, to discuss Deep In Cascadia: What Does it Mean to be Here/Write Here? I am grateful to Carla Stein, Ann Graham Walker and the BC...
I Sing the Salmon Home
I'm delighted to have work in the new anthology curated by the outgoing Washington Poet Laureate Rena Priest. A postcard poem from 2022 was selected and I got this note from the publisher, Empty...
AWP Off-Site Readings
AWP is again having their annual convention in Seattle in 2023 and an expected 10,000 writers are headed here. (Don't say we didn't warn you!) The Cascadia Poetics Lab will have a booth at the book...
Acrostic for Halstein Stralberg
One of my greatest mentors in the Subud community, Halstein Stralberg, died on November 6, 2022 and was memorialized in Seattle at the Subud House/Spring Street Center on Sunday, January 22, 2023. I...
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.