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.
CPF-Cumberland
Cascadia Poetry Festival in Cumberland
In August 2014, I attended the Subud World Congress in Puebla, Mexico. It was my first World Congress and it was life-changing. While there I was urged to get involved in the Subud International...
August 2017 Poetry Postcard Fest Afterword
Nothing signifies the end of summer in Cascadia like rain and it is raining as I write this. This year especially. 60+ days of no measurable precipitation makes me feel a little guilty about all the...
Important Dates
Summer is supposed to be a lazy time with a lot of loafing, picnics, softball, kayak rides and other ways in which -- as George Gershwin put it - "the livin' is easy." Throw in year 11 of a poetry...
Postcards for Charlottesville
From Lucia Sanford: Dear Paul, This is my third year participating in the Postcard Poetry Fest. I live in Charlottesville, Virginia. I am still too raw and stunned to write a personal note or poem...
Oct 9 Postcard Panel
It's in YEAR ELEVEN which is hard to believe, but the August Poetry Postcard Fest started in 2007 by Lana Ayers and me is going as well as it ever has. With the launch of the poetry postcard...
Nurse Log Poem at Bradner Gardens
I think it might be seven times now that I have been invited to read poems by Jim O'Halloran at his annual concert at Bradner Gardens. One of the jewels of Seattle's P-Patch system of community...
Two Countries Anthology
Was having after-party drinks and tacos with Nadine Maestas and we were commiserating about the intensity of people of Latino descent. When you have a name like Nadine Antoinette Maestas, and you...
POetry POstcard Update (APPF11 2017)
There is less than a week to sign up for the 11th August POetry POstcard Fest. We have 5 and a half complete groups so far. Last year we had seven complete groups and there are many who love to...
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...
January Workshop Registration Open
A five week workshop which now has most of the same participants going into year three is over. I received a wonderful testimonial from Ann Graham Walker: I think you can take a lot of credit for...
Nina Menkes Producer of Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power
Thanks to a member of my Subud spiritual community, I was alerted to a new documentary about gender relations in Hollywood and a thesis by a director that says the "visual rhetoric" of camera angles...
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.