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.
George Bowering @ 80
The first Parliamentary Poet Laureate of Canada turns 80 today. I first met George Bowering at the (sadly now defunct) Victoria School of Writing Summer School in 2005. I had started my graduate...
516. Breakfast Special
More Salish art (one of my favorite card images) and a little piece of Wanda Coleman’s fire, in which you don’t eliminate clichés, per se, but “twist” them. Also, a nod to two different Benny...
Barthes on Trump
Give Judd Legum credit for using French Philosopher Roland Barthes (dead since 1980) to better understand the ascendancy of Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump. An article in...
Very Serious & Full of Vegetables
I FINALLY finished Crowded by Beauty, the wonderful biography of Philip Whalen. David Schneider brings a Zen perspective to chronicle the life of a poet who, along with Gary Snyder and Lew Welch,...
Gemini GEL, Rouen Cathedral, Seriality
In D.C. to visit my oldest daughter, or "My Kid the Journalist" as I tend to refer to her when I am sharing her articles on Facebook, I was delighted to find...
27. Hanging Leaves
Am working on a new series of poems, a couple of which I've read out at local open mics. Not ready yet to talk about them lest their shape be bent by what someone might say, but am up tonight in...
515. Other Demons
In this latest 2015 August Poetry Postcard poem, again a great Kyger quote which makes me think of field poetics, a subject her friend Robert Duncan had a thing or two to say about. Also a reference...
EBSN4 Report – Brussels
I'm back from an epic trip to Brussels, Belgium, where I attended the 4th European Beat Studies Network Conference. I had a chance to interview Polina McKay, one of the co-founders of the Network....
American Sentences at Andaluz! Nov 8
Hey, I am re-posting this with a sincere request to you to consider attending this event and hang out after somewhere in Columbia City. This book has been 14 years in the making & the form,...
A Time Before Slaughter: Pig War & Other Songs of Cascadia
By Paul E. Nelson In this epic poem, Paul Nelson re-enacts the history of Auburn, Washington, originally known as the town of Slaughter. Written in the spirit of William Carlos Williams, Charles...
American Prophets: Interviews With Thinkers, Activists, Poets and Visionaries
by Paul E. Nelson (Author), Allen Ginsberg, Wanda Coleman A book of sixteen interviews taken from the best of over 600 conducted by Seattle poet Paul E Nelson. The book includes an A-List of...
56 Days of August
by Ina Roy-Faderman (Author), Paul E. Nelson (Editor), J.I. Kleinberg (Editor) Postcards are electric. I get excited just turning a rack of postcards around at the drugstore. There was a time before...
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.