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 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...
The Sacramental Aspect of Habitation
“And that is what a poet Is, children, one who creates Sacramental relationships That last always.” - Kenneth Rexroth Aside from the signature, this is how Rexroth ended his epistle “Letter to...
Happy Birthday Danika Dinsmore
A happy birthday today to SPLAB Co-Founder Danika Dale Dinsmore, who co-founded the SPLAB project with me in 1997 (not to be confused with the organization that now uses SPLAB as its name.) In her...
Hillman City Haibun (Walkin’, Lichen)
As I noted in my last haibun post, walks = poetry. If you do not get a poem when walking, you have not walked long enough. Ask Charles Reznikoff, who was well-known for taking walks of 15 to 20...
After The Japanese 33-36
It was interesting when first meeting San Francisco poet Kevin Killian, whose name I would occasionally see on the SUNY-Buffalo poetics listserv years before social media would allow us to keep...
A Reading of Projective Verse
This post has been edited to include video of the reading of the seminal Charles Olson essay Projective Verse: It was October 1995 and I had just finished lunch with Michael McClure, the day I met...
1.1.2021 American Sentence
1.1.2021 - 2020 was taken out to the alley & shot in the head. 12.31.2020 marked the completion of twenty years of daily practice of composing American Sentences. (17 syllable poems, a form...
The New Year (A Poem)
Photo from CrosscutThe New Year January 1 too old to be hungover you unwrap the new year like a new stick of butter hope you get it in the dish at the right angle and not scrape off butter from 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.