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.
After the Japanese 95-98
Near the very end of this series of 100 poems my Father died. (May 11, 2014) I'd not experienced much death in my life to that point and Dad died in his bed and not in some hospital, which made me...
15 Year Anniversary of Lost in the Woods
This September (2015) marks the 15th anniversary of my Lost in the Woods episode. I went on a solo backpacking trip in the Olympic National Park, tried solo bushwhacking and ended up in need of a...
Some 2015 Postcard Highlights
Autumn came in with a bang yesterday, three weeks early. (Damage is said to be in the tens of millions of dollars.) It's odd, but early Spring and early Summer this year were greeted with great joy....
506. Curved Projections
This is the first "official" poetry postcard of mine for 2015, year 9. I sent out one "practice card" to someone from last year's list, but THIS year I decided to use Joanne Kyger's new book On Time...
After The Japanese 91-94
Getting to the end of this series that I've been posting here 4 at a time for months. The flashbacks are intense and about to become more so.
Model Session
It has been about 15 years since I last sat for painters, one of them Joan Treat, who created this painting which I bought immediately: But the session last week at the studio of Amanda Teicher was...
Two Gigs This Week
I am not a fan of public readings in Seattle summer and ESPECIALLY during August, the month of POSTCARDS but here are two, one Friday night (Aug 28) and one Saturday night (Aug 29) in Seattle: An...
G.P. Lainsbury’s Cascadia Transit
Greg (GP) Lainsbury, Professor in the English department at Northern Lights College, Fort St. John, BC is another of the poets with work published in Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia. On July 29,...
After the Japanese 87-90 (Mountains, Mingus & Madrones)
Taking the ferry in the Salish Sea, being on any kind of boat in the waters of Cascadia gives you quite a different perspective and an April 2014 ferry ride provided a perspective that inspired the...
Jeanne Heuving on Nate Mackey Destination Out
Jeanne Heuving is the editor of a fascinating new book of scholarship on one of the most important poets of our time, Nate Mackey. The book is entitled Nathaniel Mackey, Destination Out: Essays on...
David Stephen Calonne: Diane di Prima Visionary Poetics & The Hidden Religions
Interview with David Stephen Calonne, author of Diane di Prima: Visionary Poetics and the Hidden Traditions, Recorded via Zoom, Sunday, June 6, 2021, 1:30pm Diane di Prima, who died in October 2020:...
Poetry Postcards Black Mountain Style
I was delighted to team up with postcard poet (with a new book!) Margaret Lee for an essay that has been published on the website of the Journal for Black Mountain College Studies. Postcard poets...
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.