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.
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...
Cascadian Zen
What is the nature of the bioregion known as Cascadia? How is this insight expressed by the people who live, work, practice, and play here? Is there a connection between Zen practice, broadly...
Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill
by Paul E Nelson (Editor), Cate Gable (Editor), Lyn Coffin (Editor) A tribute to Sam Hamill in verse, essays and an exclusive interview, edited by Paul E Nelson, Ian Boyden and Cate Gable. Poems in...
Make it True Meets Medusario
Edited by Jose Kozer, Paul E Nelson, and Thomas Walton Make It True meets Medusario, a bilingual poetry anthology, brings together poets from divergent languages, cultures, and aesthetics to create...
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.



