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
Seattle, Cascadia “Last Stronghold for Spiritual Medicine”
The man known by many as Beaver Chief came from a long line of Indian Doctors. In this interview I did with Beaver Chief, recorded in August 1998, he discussed his incarceration, his belief that the...
Into the Open: A Way Forward for Cascadia Poetry
I’m still thinking about the notion of how Seattle, with its strong commitment to reading and literacy, has never birthed an innovative movement in writing. In my last post I wrote:Seattle has been...
Seattle Nice and Cascadia Culture
With the AWP Conference just concluded in Seattle, I had many opportunities to see my home through the eyes of others, be a guide to the best of what's here, the cultural mores and to even feel...
An Army of Lovers (Spahr, Buuck)
I was chatting with Vancouver poet George Stanley about what he considered innovative in contemporary poetry. Without hesitation he said the book An Army of Lovers by Juliana Spahr and David...
Cascadia and Feminism
The subject of Feminism has been coming up in recent weeks. My interview with Daphne Marlatt touched on it, as she has organized Feminist conferences thirty years ago and identifies as a Feminist....
Early 2014 American Sentences
The first harvest of the new year, my fourteenth with a daily practice of writing one 17 syllable poem. More on American Sentences elsewhere on this site, but for now, a few from 2014: 1.3.14 - A...
Limits of the Heroic
An interesting confluence of events in my life the last couple of weeks which involve a bit of poetics, a bit from one of my recent interviews, Facebook discussions and Feminism. And involves...
Getting to Know Cascadian Poets & Poetics
It was after I finished my M.A. from Lesley University, a course of study I organized with the help of a few select advisors that one of my most close readers, Chuck Pirtle, suggested what I was...
Daphne Marlatt Interview (Liquidities)
I did my first interviews very early in my radio career, but started to gain some skill at preparing and conducting interviews about 1990, when I became News and Community Affairs Director at...
SPLAB @ 20 (A daughter’s view)
We celebrated 20 years of SPLAB last Saturday at the Spring Street Center in Seattle, which is also the Seattle Subud House, my spiritual home. I was pleasantly surprised by the good turnout and...
9.11.2020 American Sentence
9.11.2020 - He's at the boat launch pier, w/ rod & reel, fishing for smoked salmon....
PEN POPO2020 Afterword (Postcards from the Pandemic)
In years past I have taken time on the 1st of September to write my POPO afterword. If felt like a ritual to end each extended August with a meditation on what I had done, followed by a photo or...
Iris Cushing on David Henderson and Mary Norbert Körte
Interview with Iris Cushing on The First Books of David Henderson & Mary Korte: A Research. Recorded via Zoom, Sunday, September 6, 2020, at 1pm PDT. In 1967, the first books of two poets were...
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.