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.
Chronicling Left Egalitarianism
The tab for a certain online newspaper article has been open on my browser since about April 15, when it was published. I moved it over from #3 to #36 today (yep, 36 tabs open right now) and have...
535. Green For Red
Another Georgia O’Keeffe image, this latest August Poetry Postcard Fest poem was sent as prayer for a postcarder in the middle of summer wildfire hell.
No Sonics & the Rising Feminine
Forgive me Sonics fans, but I view the Seattle City Council vote yesterday (5.2.16) as emblematic of everything good about Seattle. The Council voted against a sale of a city street to would-be...
533. Wait for Latté
One of the cards I brought back from my 2014’s trip to Wisconsin that was part of my work in the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest. This one with allusions to soul-building with a nod to an old poem...
55. Prince (R.I.P.)
55. Prince I always thought it was “cuss, fight & bleed” as the reasons one Prince Rogers Nelson cited as warnings for parents hoping to raise healthy children but “breed.” How a Nelson could do...
Postcards for Garcia
A follow up to the post about my recent trip to Taos, New Mexico. Amalio Madueño is community development specialist and brilliant poet of Yaqui and Tarahumara heritage. I am indebted to Amalio for...
532. Old as the Devil
ANOTHER devil reference in this latest of the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest and an image of one to boot. I love how the neighbors across the street use a pole with netting at the end to harvest...
Taos April 2016
I have just returned from Taos, New Mexico, where I was invited to read at the Jazz & Poetry event produced by the Taos Bebop Jazz Society and Analog Eric and Judy Katzman. I had first gone to...
Global Warming Sentences
In my two most recent readings of American Sentences, I used as an ordering device the month of April. I went through my manuscript and copied off all of the poems written in April that were...
Haibun de la Serna: 99 Haibun
by Paul E Nelson June 2022 Review by Pablo Baler Paul Nelson’s Haibun moves with the spirit of Ramón Gómez de la Serna’s greguerías, one of the unclassifiable micro-genres Gómez invented in his...
Fred Wah on The Simple, Serial Form and MHT
It has been over a decade since I first began to try to get Fred Wah to sit down and have an interview about his (now) 60 years of work in poetry. When we did sit in front of our respective Zoom...
Wildlife of the Underworld (Plants & Poetry Journal)
I'm delighted to have a couple of FLEXIBLE MIND poems in the new book from Plants & Poetry Journal, Wildlife of the Underworld. Susan Landgraf! Cole Swenson! Jeffrey Beam! & others. I can't...
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.