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.
Hillman City Haibun 9 Anagrams
It was probably in 1995 or '96 that Danika Dinsmore made me aware of a form of poetry called Present Beau, a kind of poem that employs the restraint of using only the letters in someone's name in...
After the Japanese 41-44
This series of poems, posted four at a time and archived here, continues with some written on a short retreat in Marblemount, WA, near North Cascades National Park. They are all written in response...
Robin Blaser’s Last Interview
I was searching for my interview with Robin Blaser online and it appears the link that was the best, from Lou Rowan's Golden Handcuffs Review, is down and I'm going to rectify that here. Actually...
Gig Alert! Seattle Center, Rainier Valley, Tacoma
Gigs Ahoy! I'll be participating in several readings over the next few weeks. I'll have manuscript versions of Pig War & Other Songs of Cascadia and other merch. Saturday, March 7th, 2-6P at the...
Hillman City Haibun 8 (Resistance is Futile)
The photo did not crash the internet, but got my friends talking, or expressing concern from Seattle to Cuba to Moscow to Morocco and beyond I am sure. As reported in an earlier haibun, I am...
Albulhassan, Clark, Greco, Triese Chapbooks
I am so envious of these four chapbooks and delighted they were gifts recently given to me. All from Cascadians and all quite worth while. Wikipedia (by way of the O.E.D.) says: "Chapbook is first...
Cascadian Spirituality
I should not have been so naïve to think a post that referenced religion would have gone by without someone reacting as if I'd just stabbed a pig. But add Facebook and the culture of narcissism and...
Hillman City Haibun 7, Father, Lawns, Bangs, Chickens
Going through Fatherhood a second time, there are many notions that go through my mind on a regular basis. One is what will be my youngest daughter’s earliest memory? I think about dancing in the...
After The Japanese 37-40
I'm going over the manuscript of these poems written last year, a few at a time, and marveling at how prolific was one weekend retreat in Marblemount, Washington. Set and setting, eh? Using each of...
A Sequence of Energies
The organizing topic for the next workshop I will facilitate comes from a notion of Robin Blaser's about serial form being a: "Sequence of Energies." In this workshop we take the methods and the...
For Chick Corea
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/chick-corea-obit-1127283/ “Nobody was more open, more finely tuned to the moment…” quote from John Mayer, Rolling Stone obituary.
Andrew Schelling Interview (The Facts at Dog Tank Spring)
I have known Andrew Schelling since he and Anne Waldman visited the original SPLAB in Auburn in 1997, giving a reading there 6 days after their dear friend Allen Ginsberg died. I have interviewed...
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.