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
6.6.16 American Sentences
Yes, I am still writing daily American Sentences. (One a day since 1.1.01.) Jim O'Halloran and I had a gas Friday night (6.3.16) at Another Read Through in Portland on Mississippi and read June...
Elizabeth Woods Postcard Interview
Elizabeth Woods checks in from Down Under with a Postcard Fest interview. An excerpt: EW-The festival is now in its tenth year, what are some of the notable aspects a changes you have seen along the...
American Sentences in PDX
It will be my first reading in Portland in over ten years. Can't remember the exact time and place of the last reading and it happens Friday, June 3 @7pm at Another Read Through in Portland, Oregon....
2016 August Poetry Postcard Fest is Coming!
The call for the tenth year of the August Poetry Postcard Fest will be released on July 4, 2016, and tickets go on sale at that time. Like last year, as soon as 32 participating poets get signed up,...
ti-TCR 13: For Jamie Reid (1941-2015)
I am delighted to be represented in The Capilano Review's special web folio for Jamie Reid who died last year. Download here. Featuring Carol Reid, bill bissett, George Bowering, Eve Joseph, Daphne...
Throwback Thursday
Lost in the Woods edition: See the whole story here: https://paulenelson.com/about/lost-in-the-woods-sept-2000/five-who-survived-wilderness/
537. A Safe Place
Yet another Georgia O’Keeffe image used on the latest poem from the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest, and another reference to one of the more grisly events in the summer 2015 European refugee...
Judith Roche Interview
On May 11, 2016, your humble narrator caught up with Seattle poet, teacher and literary curator Judith Roche to discuss her new book All Fire All Water published by Black Heron Press. We sat at the...
New Pageboy Magazine Reviews American Sentences
from Thomas Walton: Greetings Dear Readers of Small Magazines, PageBoy Magazine's eighth issue is now out and available in stores and through our blog at https://pageboymagazine.blogspot.com. Art by...
Swedenborgian Rotarian
Only in Seattle would you get a headline like that. & it was a typical Tuesday (except for one small fact celebrated here), so I woke up and looked at my phone to see if there was any urgent...
Haibun de la Serna Official Launch
Thanks to Koon Woon of Goldfish Press and Leopoldo Seguel of Poetry Bridge, the official launch of my new book Haibun de la Serna happens Wednesday, April 13 at C&P Coffee Company and online via...
Runes, Revision, Wyrd
It is such a satisfying feeling when I draw the rune Laguz during my daily morning divination. I draw a rune daily as it gives me feedback on the energies/archetypes I am swirling out on any given...
Making Peace (Journal of the Plague Years)
Journal of the Plague Years saw fit to publish my poem Making Peace, about the Russian invasion of Ukraine: https://www.journaloftheplagueyears.ink/blog/making-peace I love this publication and...
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.