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
An Update to Writing or Rewriting
The update of an essay, (Writing or Re-Writing: A Primer on Prevision) really a series of notes, on some of the history of what Robin Blaser called "The Practice of Outside" centers around Brenda...
American Sentences August – November 2013
I have finally gotten a chance to harvest American Sentences from the last few months. As you may know, this is my 13th year of writing one every day and I've about 37 left for 2013. Found poems,...
David McCloskey on Cascadia, Part 2
David McCloskey is a retired Professor of Sociology at Seattle University, and founder of the Cascadia Institute. I got the chance to interview him on October 30, 2013, at his home in Eugene,...
Wanda Coleman, Dead at 67
I was the emcee one year at the Bumbershoot Literary Arts stage, 1999, back when that stage and the small press fair was the unofficial kickoff of the Seattle literary arts season. After a short...
David McCloskey on Cascadia
After hearing about the concept in bioregionalism (in about 1991 or so) and getting interested in an organizing effort that went deeper than politics, I created the Cascadia Poetry Festival in March...
Morris Graves Residency Report
I am just back from the best and most intensive writing retreat/ residency of my life and a quick trip to L.A. to visit José Kozer (& his wife Guada), see Amalio Madueño, meet Pablo Baler (&...
Community Self Reliance (Michael Shuman)
The seeds for a bioregionalist perspective in me were planted by the late Peter Berg of the Planet Drum Foundation during an interview I conducted around 1993, but the interview I am posting today...
Habib Audio, Interview and Postcards
My posts on the August 2013 Seattle visit of Morrocan poet and Beat scholar El Habib Louai were quite long, (archived here) so I am creating this post in the hopes that viewers of this blog will...
All 2013 Postcards
I have posted all my 2013 POstcard POems in one spot. See: https://wp.me/P1Xnkd-1h7. For more on the fest, see: https://poetrypostcards.blogspot.com/ For the postcard fest Facebook...
A Little History: The Deeply Personal as Political
(This essay was recently published in Zen Monster.) (download pdf for best formatting) A Little History: The Deeply Personal as Political (Some notes on a book by Ammiel Alcalay) There were two...
The Poetry Foundation
Dispatches from the Poetry Wars was a great little, shit-stirring website that reminded us that poetry wars are ongoing and critical, if they lead to dialog. Community happens only when there is...
The Undercommons Remembers Michael McClure
The Undercommons is a literary salon that was founded a few months ago, happened in person once a month a few times and has moved to Zoom for the time-being. We've studied Denise Levertov and The...
Rattle Magazine Interview
I'm delighted to have a poem and an interview in the latest Rattle Magazine. This interview is not one I conducted but one that was done with ME! And it was the best one anyone has ever done with...
The interview I conducted with Sam O’Hana, a Ph.D. student at CUNY, is immensely critical and immensely validating for the work we do at the Cascadia Poetics Lab. At its core, the discussion is about whether writing is for people of means, or if it can be people who have skill and something to say. It means the literary gatekeepers have failed us and have a role in perpetuating neoliberalism in North America which has paved the way for authoritarianism. The interview is available as a podcast here and as a YouTube video here. Below, I have pasted in the transcript and here is my introduction to Sam O’Hana and his topic.