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.
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,...
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...
The New U.S. Civil War
No doubt by now you've heard about the vote of the U.S. Senate that would drastically revamp the U.S. tax code in a way that has not been attempted for over 30 years. The minority party (Democrats)...
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...
FLEXIBLE MIND poem 28-JAN-2023 If you arouse the thought of bringing
I was gifted another poem in the series FLEXIBLE MIND yesterday. That I am studying Zen now is a huge asset to this series of poems based on a Michael McClure poem from his series Touching The Edge:...
Negative Capability in Painting
I am delighted to have been accorded the pleasure of moderating a panel of painters on the subject of Negative Capability. Details:Gallery 110 will be hosting a panel discussion featuring Carol...
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.
In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"
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.

