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
American Sentences/Angeline Housewarming
I have updated this post with a video Greg Bem captured of the event promoted below. Thanks Greg: Saturday, December 5 from 7:00pm - 9:00pm, come celebrate the release of the book American...
Columbia City Gallery Series
The artist's cooperative gallery in Seattle's vibrant Columbia City neighborhood (where I live) has added a really engaging Literary Arts series and I'll be reading on Sunday, December 13. (See the...
517. Blue Demons
Another one of my 2014 photographs turned into postcard, this one begins the summer-long fascination with chicory. Once identified (thank you Carol Blackbird Edson), I began to eat as many of the...
Judy Kleinberg’s 2015 Poetry Postcard Wrapup
Even though the clock is ticking down until next year's August Poetry Postcard Fest (Year Ten!), some folks have not fully completed their 2015 tasks, including the intrepid Judy Kleinberg. She just...
George Bowering @ 80
The first Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada turns 80 today. I first met George Bowering at the (sadly now defunct) Victoria School of Writing Summer School in 2005. I had started my graduate...
516. Breakfast Special
More Salish art (one of my favorite card images) and a little piece of Wanda Coleman’s fire, in which you don’t eliminate clichés, per se, but “twist” them. Also, a nod to two different Benny...
Barthes on Trump
Give Judd Legum credit for using French Philosopher Roland Barthes (dead since 1980) to better understand the ascendancy of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. An article in...
Very Serious & Full of Vegetables
I FINALLY finished Crowded by Beauty, the wonderful biography of Philip Whalen. David Schneider brings a Zen perspective to chronicle the life of a poet who, along with Gary Snyder and Lew Welch,...
Gemini GEL, Rouen Cathedral, Seriality
In D.C. to visit my oldest daughter, or "My Kid the Journalist" as I tend to refer to her when I am sharing her articles on Facebook, I was delighted to find...
27. Hanging Leaves
Am working on a new series of poems, a couple of which I've read out at local open mics. Not ready yet to talk about them lest their shape be bent by what someone might say, but am up tonight in...
A Time Before Slaughter: Pig War & Other Songs of Cascadia
By Paul E. Nelson In this epic poem, Paul Nelson re-enacts the history of Auburn, Washington, originally known as the town of Slaughter. Written in the spirit of William Carlos Williams, Charles...
American Prophets: Interviews With Thinkers, Activists, Poets and Visionaries
by Paul E. Nelson (Author), Allen Ginsberg, Wanda Coleman A book of sixteen interviews taken from the best of over 600 conducted by Seattle poet Paul E Nelson. The book includes an A-List of...
56 Days of August
by Ina Roy-Faderman (Author), Paul E. Nelson (Editor), J.I. Kleinberg (Editor) Postcards are electric. I get excited just turning a rack of postcards around at the drugstore. There was a time before...
The interview I conducted with Sam O’Hana, a Ph.D. student at CUNY, is immensely critical and immensely validating for the work we do at the Cascadia Poetics Lab. At its core, the discussion is about whether writing is for people of means, or if it can be people who have skill and something to say. It means the literary gatekeepers have failed us and have a role in perpetuating neoliberalism in North America which has paved the way for authoritarianism. The interview is available as a podcast here and as a YouTube video here. Below, I have pasted in the transcript and here is my introduction to Sam O’Hana and his topic.