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
514. Supple in Seattle
More Salish art and a poem resulting from what the postcard fest instructions suggested since year 1, that is “something of the here and now” should/could get into the poem. That’s what postcards...
George Bowering – My Darling Nellie Grey
George Bowering, (born December 1, 1935) was Canada's first Parliamentary Poet Laureate, is author of more than 90 books, and is the best-known of TISH group of poets based in Vancouver in the early...
513. Summer Desk Avalanche
The latest poem from the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest. (See other poems here.) A Georgia O’Keeffe card and great epigraph from Joanne Kyger, the composition of which affected the content. (Wait...
Notes for Personal Myth and Genius Loci
(Workshop given at Tacoma Poetry Festival, Saturday, October 17, 2015) Personal Myth, Place, Genius Loci – Paul Nelson What is the myth you are living? Your Personal Mythology, relationship to place...
Divorce and Yoga Windows
After 1,909 days of marriage to Meredith A. (Sedlachek) Nelson, our union ended with a whimper in the King County Courthouse on Thursday (Oct 15, 2015) followed by a Cajun Meal at Marcela's Creole...
American Sentences Press Release
For Immediate Release October 10, 2015 For more information, contact: Kevin Atticks, director 410-617-5529 apprenticehouse@loyola.edu Paul Nelson, author (206) 422.5002 splabman...
512. Whale Poker
This poem reminds me of the on and off dialog I have been having with a Canadian poet who is down on post-modernism because much of it is: “gibberish” in his view, but whose own work is clichéd and...
American Sentences is Published!
On the 60th anniversary of the Beat Generation coming out party, the Six Gallery reading, my 14+ year project American Sentences made it into the world as a published book. That copies were shipped...
Eileen Myles in Seattle
She's apparently in the literary "mainstream" now, according to The Guardian in a typo-laden, but important piece dated Oct 1, 2015, but Eileen Myles has been a real writer, with tremendous depth...
Practicing Breath and Outside
Watching the posts and the likes and the ads float by on Facebook is fascinating to me and I check in a few times a day. I can do a Google search for something like DIVORCE or CALIFORNIA TRAFFIC...
60th Birthday Interview of Paul E Nelson by Greg E Bem
Over the last few years there has been no one more active at reviewing my work and bringing exposure to it than Greg Bem. He is the P.R. guy you'd kill for, with video and audio editing skills and a...
100 Thousand Poets for Change
I'm delighted to be part of an event which has been happening for many years, organized and conceived of by Michael Rothenberg. 100 Thousand Poets for Change is the event, one for which I helped...
1st Podcast Robert Lashley
I have been asked many times: "Do you have a podcast?" Now, I can say "yes." Via the non-profit I founded in 1993, now known as the Cascadia Poetics LAB, we have launched Cascadian Prophets....
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.