Paul E Nelson presenting at Cascadia Poetry Festival 8, photo by Leszek Chudzinski
“Paul formally received the Mahayana precepts of Zen Buddhism in 2023, becoming a lay practitioner within the tradition, but I believe he had long lived in accord with them. His poetry, in its sensitivity, its humility, and its deep listening, embodies practice-realization — the understanding that practice and awakening are not separate. His writing was his zazen. This collection, FLEXIBLE MIND, is more than a book. It is a continuation of that practice. A testament to a man who lives by attention, who bows to language but does not cling to it, who seeks what lays beyond words by walking straight into them.”– Kosho Itagaki, Soto Zen Priest
Covington Library 6P Apr 23
On Wednesday, April 23rd at 7PM, at the Covington Library, 27100 164th Ave SE, Covington, WA 98042, I'll be bringing three Seattle poets for a Poetry Coffeehouse. Judith Roche, Peter Munro and Amber...
Cascadian EcoPoetics
The term Ecopoetics has been in vogue since about the turn of the century. Beyond the well-known "nature poem" I take this term to be used with the insinuation of a little more responsibility on the...
Joe Chiveney and Cathy Visser
The SPLAB Board President, Joe Chiveney, has been an incredible asset since joining SPLAB a few years ago. I joke that non-profits should have counselors on their boards, because they are used to...
Marion Kimes Dead at 84
I started investigating the Seattle Open Mic scene in 1994 and soon found a home at Red Sky Poetry Theater. I attended one of the last, if not the last Red Sky reading at the Ditto Tavern and then...
American Sentence (Zappa Elegy) Compilation
As you may have read, my beloved cat Zappa died last Sunday (3.30.14) and Peter Munro said the next night we'd hoist one in his memory at our 5th Monday EasySpeak gathering, which we did. I did a...
What Drives Cascadia Culture?
Part of the reason we chose the headliners we did for the 2nd Cascadia Poetry Festival is because my short investigation of innovative Cascadia Poetry has led me to a couple of early conclusions: 1)...
IndieGoGo for Cascadia Poetry Fest
We're starting a crowd-sourcing campaign! https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cascadia-poetry-festival The 2nd Cascadia Poetry Festival at Seattle U and Spring Street Center May 1-4, 2014, is the...
Zappa, Dead at 17
Zappa came into my life in the middle of 1997 and we estimated his birthday at April 1, 1997. He was a remarkable cat. He had to have been to live with me for almost 17 years. My oldest daughter...
Warning: CA Conrad Trigger Warnings
I read with some amusement poet CA Conrad's Facebook status complaining about a request that he offer "Trigger Warnings" before he gives a poetry reading. The update: Of course smart ass that I am,...
Notes On Gone South
I was given a charge by Michael McClure when I started my graduate work as an independent study student in 2004. He said to not limit my search to the U.S. Taking his advice turned me on to poets...
POPO Birthday Bounty
I'm a little stunned by the amount of birthday wishes I am getting for my 59th and it seems a perfect day to share THE CARDS I GOT. Each year I create a photo or video of postcards I have received...
COVID-19 Sonnet
Since the beginning of 2019 I have been writing "prose sonnets" Matt Trease calls them. 14 line prose poems often with an epigraph and sometimes three. I saw the form first in the work of Jack...
Article on American Sentences
Huge thanks (again) to Tim Green of Rattle Magazine who wrote about my practice of American Sentences for The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California. The article is called: I love how Tim changes...
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.
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