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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.

Cumberland, Desolation Sound, BC

What a way to end 2016 and bring in 2017, but in a heated outdoor bathtub on the water! Bhakti and I are guests of Gary Hamilton and Adelia (Nicola) MacWilliam, as we're working with Adelia to...

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Bury 2016

2016 is a good year to bury things. How many years get their own self-deprecating meme? And the notables who died this year is impressive, if you're impressed by death: Muhammad Ali, David Bowie,...

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Ed Varney Interview

Ed Varney is a Canadian poet, visual artist and curator who lives on Vancouver Island. I had the good fortune to interview him in August 2016 at his home near Cumberland, BC. I've waited until today...

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John Olson’s Broken Justy

The essential core of any project is to open. Open, open, open. Create a state of total nakedness, an anima mundi, a connection with the world-soul that is non-judgmental and quick to excite. It's...

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American Sentences Reviewed

Michael Dylan Welch, who has been tracking my commitment to American Sentences for many years, made good on his promise to write a review of the book and wrote a very astute and fair one. I liked...

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Latin American Neo-Baroque

Senses of Distortion (Pablo Baler Interview)Conducted at Cal State University's Golden Eagle radio station on November 14, 2016. Our thanks to Jasmine Salgado and Golden Eagle radio.) The objective...

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Visiting Corita

I had a vague memory of the work of Sister Corita Kent when I saw the Portland Art Museum's exhibition of her work in August. The "Love Stamp" (back when stamps were .22c) did remind me that I'd...

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Inside the Day Song (Workshop)

Inside the Day Song (Workshop)

Get your five page handout loaded with links, prompts and inspirations if you register for this one day workshop before June 10. Take a look inside the course materials from our current workshop...

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Full Earth Day Agenda

Full Earth Day Agenda

Cascadia Poetics Lab Board Member Jason Wirth and I are leading a clean-up of Chinook Beach Park on Friday, April 22 from 1-3pm. We will have some garbage bags and a couple of pickers, but feel free...

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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.

Deborah Poe

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