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PAUL E NELSON

Cascadia Poetry Festival 8 Paul E Nelson at the microphone

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.

Annual Bradner Gardens Concert

On August 18, 2018, from 6:30 to 8:30pm, I will again participate in what is becoming like a ritual for me, reading poems with Jim O'Halloran's band at perhaps the best community garden in the city,...

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Elegy for Tahlequah’s Calf

A recent poem of mine was published in Cascadia Magazine. It is dedicated to the "Father of Cascadia" who suggested someone write a poem about this tragic incident. Thank you David McCloskey and...

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2018 Postcard Participation

293 people are registered for the 12th August POetry POstcard Fest in 2018. Included are participants from Alberta (1), Alabama (9), Arkansas (1), Arizona (1), British Columbia (1), California (26),...

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Postcard Impersonality

Reading Mark Gonnerman's book A Sense of the Whole: Reading Gary Snyder's Mountains and Rivers Without End I came to Tim Dean's essay on The Other Voice. In the essay he states that in his 40 year...

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Postcards in the Park

Two editors of 56 Days of August and two contributors gathered yesterday at the annual Poets in the Park event in Redmond, Washington. Ina Roy-Faderman, Your Humble Narrator, Joanna Thomas and Matt...

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Epistolary Poetry by Sam Hamill

I have been getting caught up on some of Sam Hamill's work since his death back in April. Last night reading from his 1981 book of "casual essays" or "over-the-shoulder" glances he titled At Home in...

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Brenda-ized City Sonnet

Brenda-ized City Sonnet

For three full seasons (October-June, 2020-2023) I have conducted online workshops designed to allow poets who have participated in the Poetry Postcard Fest to go a little deeper into the process of...

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Postcard Poem as Ofrenda

Postcard Poem as Ofrenda

After I suggested this title as the June 15, 2023, talk to be given at the Altar/Alter project, I realized that what I meant was more like milagro or folk charm, though one could make the case that...

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Postcards on the Altar

Postcards on the Altar

I am delighted to be part of an ambitious event being produced by Greg Bem, Eric Acosta, Amy Hirayama, and Denny Stern. Three of the four are postcard poets and all are energetic members of the...

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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.

David McCloskey

In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"

by Paul E Nelson

Deborah Poe

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.

Deborah Poe on "flagging the apocalypse pageantry"

by Paul E Nelson