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 29-32
Today, the next segment of the 100 poems written using each poem in the classic Japanese poetry anthology (Ogura Hyakunin Isshu (小倉百人一首)) as a prompt. These were also written at a short retreat at...
José Kozer Interview
This past January 18 and 19 (2015) I had the great pleasure of going to Hallendale Beach, Florida, and having access to the great Cuban-American poet José Kozer in the home he shares with his wife...
Hillman City Haibun 4 (Sleep, Crackers)
It's a toss-up for the best American Sentence this week. Yesterday's pertains to a new health condition, or at least a new diagnosis. Today's comes from a source who said she did not write it, but...
After The Japanese 25-28
In this stretch of the project of writing inspired by the classic Japanese poetry anthology, I start in memory and move to the time about a year ago when I was the guest of Gerry Cook and Hannah...
Four Hoarse Men Ride Again
A couple of years ago I became part of a group of poets that sought to explore poetry from the angle of pure sound in the tradition of Dada, Kurt Schwitters, the Four Horsemen (of Canada, from whom...
Hillman City Haibun 3 (Seattle Smells)
Just back from Miami where I had the good fortune to have access to the great Cuban poet José Kozer and do an interview, which I am working on getting posted here in a modified version as we await...
After the Japanese 21-24
It's a very special time in Cascadia, mid-winter (almost typed "mind) with the signs of spring beginning to push up out of the dirt or waft by invisibly like the scent of Sweetbox. (Sarcococca.) And...
Slaughter Birds
I am a big city guy. Keep in mind there are almost as many people in my home town (metro area) of Chicago 9.52M as there are in the STATES of Washington and Oregon. So one gets used to culture,...
Hillman City Haibun 2 (Pink Floyd)
Pink Floyd, Soldier Field, June 19, 1977, Chicago, IL. One estimate suggests the crowd was 95,000 people. This is likely the largest concert attendance at a show I've ever attended, although there...
Ian Boyden’s Name as Fundamental Pattern (Reads from A Forest of Names)
This post has been updated to include video from the January 22, 2021 talk: I met Ian Boyden about ten or so years ago through our mutual friend Sam Hamill and we'll always be marked by that...
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...
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.