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.
Last of the 2014 American Sentences
Tomorrow marks 14 years of a daily writing practice of American Sentences. I started January 1, 2001, and when I get mine done tomorrow I will have written AT LEAST 5,110. You can read more about...
Top Ten Posts of 2014
I did this last year, a post of the top ten posts/pages of the year. I excluded American Sentences and all individual pages associated with that daily practice and also Organic Poetry and individual...
After The Japanese 9-12
When one writes poetry from the practice of outside, you can go back and look at poems 10 months old and marvel at the consciousness there because in a way, it's not you. As drummer Hamid Drake told...
R.I.P. Ralph Maud (1928-2014)
On December 11, 2014, Cascadia lost one of its most important scholars when Ralph Maud died a couple of weeks short of his 86th birthday. He was three days older than my Dad who also died this year,...
Cuba Libre
I had just dropped off my daughter Ella Roque at her Spanish immersion pre-school and parked in front of my favorite juice bar when the top of the hour radio headlines broadcast that President Obama...
After the Japanese 5-8
My hiking partner and I had made it to the end of the Hoh River Trail, 17.5 miles, and had done a silence ritual, where each of us spent the day away from the other in the Olympic National Park. I'd...
Sam Hamill & Christopher Yohmei Blasdel N.1.14
On November 1, 2014, the home of my spiritual community was the site of an event that truly illustrates the mission of the cultural wing of said organization, working at the confluence of creativity...
Bioregionalism or Endless Garbage
There needs to be a new idea or a more fleshed out idea of what a human being is in reference to sharing the biosphere with other life. - Peter Berg This is part of what essentially is Peter Berg's...
Uncascadian
It was a long day, but one filled with vision and inspiration last Saturday (Dec 6, 2014) as I was part of a Board Retreat for CascadiaNow! I agreed to be Board President when asked by founder...
Notes on Being Human Is an Occult Practice
I was excited to see a chapbook with such a provocative title. Magdalena Zurawski is the author and is currently Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Georgia,...
Sharon Doubiago on Diane di Prima
Diane di Prima, August 6, 1929-October 25, 2020 I first learned of Diane di Prima as an actress. She played the part of Lula in the play The Dutchman by Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka). It remains the...
Testimonials
Such sweet testimonials are coming in from participants in the recent Poetics as Cosmology course I facilitated, Oct-Nov 2020: Paul E. Nelson's "Poetics As Cosmology" course begins in a completely...
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.