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.
Comment from a Postcarder
I am running this comment (from this post) as a post on its own just to take time to appreciate the sentiment. It looks like the fest this year will have less than half the participants, but if the...
2015 Poetry Postcard F.A.Q.’s
A few random questions posed by participants, or would-be participants, in the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest. By the way, this is your last call for registration as that ends July 27 at 12:01...
Marilyn Stablein Interview
Marilyn Stablien is a Portland poet and book artist. She has lived in New York, New Mexico, the Himalayas, Seattle and is included in Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia. We sat down in her dining...
Why a Postcard Fee This Year?
I got an unsigned email this morning about the postcard fest: hello paul wondering - why is there a fee for participating now? what is done with over $4000 you would collect if over 400 sign up...
The Postcard Is…
The Owner of the Red Wheelbarrow
Being a William Carlos Williams fan, this story was a natural for me. A scholar by the name of William Logan, a professor at the University of Florida, (with help from a local historian) did the...
The Joy of Postcards
I'm back in that mode again, a time of year when poetry gets right to the front of my daily consciousness. Some who know me would argue that it is that way anyway, but during the annual August...
After the Japanese 77-79
In this part of the series I started doing alternate takes. Not unlike bebop, writing in serial form is kind of like that stabbing at something you can't quite nail, but hopefully the striving is...
Postcard Update, Independence
First an update on the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest. We have 70 signups in the first 44 hours and the first two groups are complete. Lists have been sent out to groups 1 & 2. Participants in the...
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...
Michael Boughn on Jack Clarke
Michael Boughn is a brilliant poet who edited Robert Duncan's mythical H.D. Book, studied with Robin Blaser and co-edited the dangerous website Dispatches from the Poetry Wars, now archived via...
Hamish Todd “Interviews” Paul E Nelson
I met Hamish Todd the first time I went to Red Sky Poetry Theater. I used some language in a poem that was a little outside the regular open mic fare, but he got it and gave me a kind word. That was...
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.



