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
Zach Charles Book Launch
Ever since Zach Charles and I became friends over two years ago, I have been stunned by his capacity to take in content from the massive information firehouse and turn it into poetry postcards,...
C&P Coffee Company Dec 11 7pm
I'm one of the featured readers on Wednesday, December 11, 2024, at C&P Coffee Company, 5612 California Ave SW. The monthly open mic, facilitated by Leopoldo Seguel, has invited me yet again and...
Winter in America (Again
Katie Sarah Zale writes: "In 2003, 11,000 poets responded to Sam Hamill’s request for a poem about George W. Bush’s planned attack of Iraq. In the resulting anthology titled Poets Against the War,...
Winter in America (Again (poem)
I have submitted my poems to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Again. The project was conceived of by Katie Sarah Zale and modeled after Sam Hamill's "Poets Against The War." Greg Bem's...
Rainier Beach Arts & Craft Market
I attended this market when Bhakti and I first moved to Rainier Beach in 2007 and I have been delighted to participate in in the last four or five years, excepting the pandemic time. Of course I'll...
Poet of Place (Joanne Kyger)
Today we present the video version of the interview I conducted with Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden on the book Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger. Kyger is one of the most...
Andrew Schelling in Seattle and Port Townsend
Fans of the Cascadia Poetics Lab are no doubt familiar with Andrew Schelling, the poet/translator and Naropa professor. We have interviewed him on several occasions:...
Robert Bringhurst at Seattle U, Nov 15
Robert Bringhurst will be talking at Seattle University on Friday, November 15, 2024, in Sinegal 100/110 at 4pm. Robert has been part of at least two Cascadia Poetry Festivals, 2015 in Nanaimo and...
The Nature of Zen: An Ecology of Being
From Ray Grigg: I thought I'd let you know that my latest book, The Nature of Zen: An Ecology of Being is now available from Xlibris for $20.99 and from Amazon for... $28.95. An eBook edition is...
Happy 92nd Michael McClure
Michael McClure would have turned 92 Sunday, October 20, 2024. His book: Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha may be the best Zen poetry written in English. It has...
Jan 2, 2026 Interview with Cornelius Eady on Proof
On January 1, 2026, a 34-year-old, immigrant, Muslim, democratic socialist mayor was sworn in to run the largest city in the United States. When asked by the Nation magazine if this unlikely event...
New Edition of Entrance
As a contributor to En-trance Journal, I'm delighted to announce that an excerpt from my last interview with Sharon Thesen is part of the offering: https://www.entrancejournal.net/ Sharon has a...
Cascadian Prophets 2025 Spotify Wrapped Stats
I was quite happy with the news from Spotify when I watched their 2025 Wrapped summary of the podcast stats for Cascadian Prophets. I was in radio for 26 years and got into podcasting late, but here...
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.
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