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.
Poetry Postcards and Zen
An amazing testimonial for the Poetry Postcard Fest though it was not intended to serve that purpose. It is from Kosho Itagaki of Temple Eishoji (where I sit three days a week.) He writes: 🚤...
Matt Trease Interview The Outside
Matt Trease moved to Seattle, became a postcard poet, has long helped run the Margin Shift reading in Seattle, has been a board member of the Cascadia Poetics Lab for 8 years and is my good friend....
Kosho, Basho, Sam, Michael
If you did not know, I participated in the Jukai ceremony on December 11, 2023, under the direction of Kosho Itagaki, at Temple Eishoji in Rainier Beach. I took refuge in the Buddha, the dharma and...
Interviewing the Interviewer: Paul E Nelson
My appreciation goes out to Melissa Lemay, who turned the tables and interviewed ME about doing interviews, American Sentences, the Poetry Postcard Fest and Allen Ginsberg, among other topics. That...
Announcing En*trance Journal
(Image: “Inga” (Detail) 65 x 85” acrylic on canvas, c.2012 © Frank Galuszka) I'm delighted to be an Editor-at-Large for a new journal out of Northern California called En*trance. It can be...
Postcards from Mapes Creek June 8 4-7pm
I hope you'll consider coming to Rainier Beach this Sunday from 4-7pm to celebrate the arts of poetry postcards and our little urban stream that we hope someday will be totally daylighted. What...
Sam O’Hana on Opening Poetry to the Working Class
The interview I conducted with Sam O'Hana, a Ph.D. student at CUNY, is immensely critical and immensely validating for the work we do at the Cascadia Poetics Lab. At its core, the discussion is...
Poetry at Cascadia BioFi
Cascadia BioFi is happening Saturday May 17, and the Cascadia Poetics Lab will be presenting poetry with no admission charge at 7pm. The conference: "will bring together leaders at the edges of...
Four Winter in America (Again readings
There are some benefits to having 8 editors of an anthology. It is 8 times the networking capacity. This is the case this week for the ongoing creative resistance to the current USAmerican...
Interview with Deborah Poe on her Submission to Winter in America (Still
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...
Theodore Roethke and the Birth of Cascadian Poetry
I'm honored to be giving a talk/reading on the subject of: Theodore Roethke and the Birth of Cascadian Poetry on May 12, 2026. I have been invited by The Friends of Roethke organization....
Paul E. Nelson, Clyfford Still Museum Institute Residential Fellowship Program
04.20.26 for immediate release The Clyfford Still Museum Institute Residential Fellowship Program has announced its 2026 selections and named Paul E. Nelson as one of the Residential Fellows for the...
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.