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.
Ina Roy-Faderman’s Postcard Testimonial
From Ina Roy-Faderman: “All I ever wanted was to reach out and touch another human being not just with my hands but with my heart.” ― Tahereh Mafi, Shatter Me Like a lot of writers, I’m a bit of a...
August Poetry Postcard Fest Official Call Year Ten
The August Poetry Postcard Fest was initiated in 2007 by poets Paul Nelson and Lana Ayers. 2016 marks the tenth year of the fest and this is your official call. Directions to participate in the fest...
Angeline Roof Summer Solstice
Greg Bem organized one of his very lively events this past Monday night, June 20, 2016, as an open reading and Summer Solstice celebration. That the occasion also featured a Full Moon, the...
Sarah de Leeuw Skeena (Interview)
On May 30, 2016, I had a chance to chat with Sarah de Leeuw, a poet with work published in Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia. Her new book is Skeena, a book-length poem about one of the largest...
Hugo House Out, Whole Foods In
Seattle had the second or third highest rent increase of cities in the U.S. in 2015 depending on how you figure it. Regardless, the housing market here is insane. Is anything sacred? No. Across the...
56 Days of August (The August Postcard Fest Anthology)
From Ina Roy: The yearly August Postcard Poetry Festival has become an international event. To celebrate the 10th year of the Fest and the community that has developed around it, we will be creating...
Are You Stockpiling Postcards?
The 10th August Poetry Postcard Fest begins on July 4. Registration begins that day here: Buy tickets for August POetry POstcard Fest And poems from this year's fest can be submitted for the 1st...
Billy Crystal Eulogy for Muhammad Ali
I think it was the second fight between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali where, at Dever School on the Northwest Side of Chicago, one of my black schoolmates, bussed in from a black neighborhood, asked...
6.9.16 – American Sentence (Chicory)
I remember a former neighbor, the son of Okies who grew up in rural California, when he saw my old Black Lab Kuma eating grass, he said: "We got a grazer!" Indeed, as am I. Whether it's hawthorne...
Poetry for Ukraine
I recently participated in a couple of readings dedicated to addressing the Russian war in Ukraine. One event I had a hand in organizing. I was honored to be asked to read for the other. March 15...
Poetics as Cosmology (Talk given to Cal State L.A., March 21, 2022)
We do what we know before we know what we do. Charles Olson,as quoted by Robert Creeley inpoets of the cities of new york and san francisco 1950-1965 (Dutton ’74). p. 62 This subject is near and...
Proprioception
Ever since Fred Wah mentioned proprioception in an interview we did that was posted on YouTube and made into a podcast, I have been plunged back into a study of this capacity. It's how human and...
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.