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.
Meet Mayoral Candidate Katie Wilson
On Wednesday, July 23 at 6:30 Seattle Mayoral candidate Katie Wilson will discuss quality of life and culture in Rainier Beach with an emphasis on efforts to create affordable housing for artists...
Winter in America (Again Monday, July 21 via Zoom
From Bill O'Daly: Dear Friends and Family, A reading based on Winter in America (Again, an anthology developed in response to the 2024 election by poets Katie Sarah Zale, president of the Arizona...
Resistance as Writing
How can one write poetry about current political events without resorting to invective or rhetoric? Why is this important? Poetry is a use of language that is capable of a kind of depth of being...
Eagle Harbor Book Company Canceled
Dear Faithful Blog Reader! The Winter in America (Again reading scheduled for tonight, Friday, July 11, 2025, has been canceled. The tour's last stop is tomorrow, Saturday, July 12, at 2pm at the...
Poetry Postcards and Zen
An amazing testimonial for the Poetry Postcard Fest though it was not intended to serve that purpose. It is from Kosho Itagaki of Temple Eishoji (where I sit three days a week.) He writes: 🚤...
Matt Trease Interview The Outside
Matt Trease moved to Seattle, became a postcard poet, has long helped run the Margin Shift reading in Seattle, has been a board member of the Cascadia Poetics Lab for 8 years and is my good friend....
Kosho, Basho, Sam, Michael
If you did not know, I participated in the Jukai ceremony on December 11, 2023, under the direction of Kosho Itagaki, at Temple Eishoji in Rainier Beach. I took refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and...
Interviewing the Interviewer: Paul E Nelson
My appreciation goes out to Melissa Lemay, who turned the tables and interviewed ME about doing interviews, American Sentences, the Poetry Postcard Fest and Allen Ginsberg, among other topics. That...
Announcing En*trance Journal
(Image: “Inga” (Detail) 65 x 85” acrylic on canvas, c.2012 © Frank Galuszka) I'm delighted to be an Editor-at-Large for a new journal out of Northern California called En*trance. It can be...
Postcards from Mapes Creek June 8 4-7pm
I hope you'll consider coming to Rainier Beach this Sunday from 4-7pm to celebrate the arts of poetry postcards and our little urban stream that we hope someday will be totally daylighted. What...
Rainier Beach Arts Roundtable & Mapes Creek
It's kind of a joke in the bioregional community that bioregionalists are people who fly all over the world to tell you how important it is to be rooted to place. A lot of truth in that joke. Here...
Clyfford Still Museum 2026 Institute Residential Fellowship
Your humble narrator was awarded a Residential Fellowship for July 2026 at the Clyfford Still Museum. Here was my pitch video: As noted in the video (did you watch it?) I first became aware of...
Lorin Medley Interview
Our latest Cascadian Prophets podcast interview is now up. Lorin Medley is a poet from Comox, B.C. Her first chapbook is On The Way to Kluusms, published by Watershed Press. Lorin Medley's poetry is...
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.