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
Cheryl Seidner & the Wiyot Tribe in Eureka, CA
Cheryl Seidner is Cultural Liaison and Councilwoman for the Wiyot Tribe in Humboldt County, California. She agreed to an interview and on September 8, 2015, we sat down in her home to discuss the...
519. Needs of the Market
On this 2015 August Poetry Postcard there is photo of the Chief after whom the city I live in is named. Is there another major American city that so directly honors its indigenous heritage? If yes,...
Hallelujah, the Poetics of Music
(For Columbia City Gallery Literary Series, Dec 13, 2015) “We study the self to lose the self. Only when you forget yourself can you become one with all things.” - Dögen Some brief thoughts about my...
Tronald Dump
I know these posts can be seen as click bait, but there is something weird and particularly USAmerican about all the fuss being made about our favorite Grandson of a Pimp and Bait-racer, Tronald...
518. Stankbeard
More Salish art in this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard and a reference to yet another plant species identified this summer. It really DOES smell like peanut butter, but beards are entirely...
Thomas Walton’s Art Party
The man behind the award-winning Pageboy Magazine, Thomas Walton, is at it again. He sent me THIS today: Greetings, Please join PageBoy Magazine this Sunday (Dec 13) for the inaugural episode of Art...
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...
Michael McClure Archives Simon Fraser University
On Friday, November 12, 2021, Adelia MacWilliam and I visited the W.A.C. Bennett Special Collections Library at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, B.C. to investigate the extensive Michael McClure...
RIP Pat Martino (Observer of environment, including guitar)
Thirteen months ago I started facilitating workshops again and I never knew how much joy and inspiration could come from engaging people at a deep level via Zoom poetry workshops. And before I get...
Beat Breath for EBSN
I am delighted to continue my association with the European Beat Studies Network again this Sunday, as part of their 2021 Zoom conference. I am also delighted to present on the topic of Beat Breath...
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.
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