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
Two Countries (Interview with Tina Schumann)
Two-Countries: US Daughters & Sons of Immigrant Parents is an anthology of flash memoir, personal essays, and poetry edited by Tina Schumann. The daughter of a Salvadoran immigrant has gathered...
Baptist Critique of Alabama “Christians”
I am not a regular browser of the Baptist News website, but thanks to a mild Twitter habit I cam across an article that makes SO MUCH SENSE to me regarding the death of real Christianity in the U.S....
Anne Tardos Readings in Seattle
Anne Tardos, French-born American poet, is the author of ten books of poetry, and editor of three collections of poetry by Jackson Mac Low. Her work has been translated and published in dozens of...
Gary Snyder, Dōgen, Jason Wirth & Our Ecological Crisis
In August of 2017 I had the good fortune to be invited to a reading to celebrate a new book by Jason Wirth. A professor of Philosophy at Seattle University and Zen Priest, Jason's new book...
Insanely Concentrated Wealth is Strangling Our Prosperity
“Insanely Concentrated Wealth Is Strangling Our Prosperity” is the title of a recent article on a website that proposes to offer ways in which we can, as a country, address what one amateur...
Brenda Hillman Interview (Letters on Fire)
I caught up with Brenda Hillman at her Northern California home August 4, 2017, and we had a lively discussion about her last book: Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire. In the first segment she...
Earshot Jazz Ballaké Sissoko & Vincent Segal
Earshot Jazz is in full swing, no pun intended. Seattle's long-running annual festival is an orgy for the ears and soul and I missed most of the Thelonious Monk @ 100 events, which is a shame, but...
Launch of 56 Days
The anthology 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards is out in the world and the three co-editors were among the poets reading from the book and discussing their practice of creating, composing and...
Why Cascadia? Why Poetry?
I am re-publishing this on the day of the 5th Cascadia Poetry Festival in Tacoma, WA, at the Washington State History Museum. SCHEDULE REGISTRATION. Why Cascadia? Why Poetry? “Man...
Death Rattle, Day One
This I posted on Facebook, but thought I should post here: The Death Rattle Writer's Festival Day One happened and Janet Holmes had the highlight, for me, a touching poem about grieving the loss of...
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...
Shuri Kido Interview
What a blessing it was December 28, 2022, to interview Shuri Kido, the accomplished Japanese poet and Zen practitioner. As I told he and his translators (Tomoyuki Endo, Forrest Gander) on that...
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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