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
452. Richelle Selig, Olympia, WA – Berber in Cascadia
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451. Ruby Kane, Oakland, CA – Too Seedy
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450. Karen Lee Lewis, East Amherst, NY – Masterful Silence
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449. Denise Calvetti Michaels, Kirkland, WA – P.E.D. Scandal (2)
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448. Dean Pfaender, Forest Grove, OR – P.E.D. Scandal
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Graham Isaac Interview, Part 2
Graham Isaac is a writer living and working in Seattle, Washington. He holds an MA in Creative and Media Writing from the University of Wales, Swansea, where he co-founded The Crunch, South Wales’...
447. Jacqueline Murray, Pittsburg, KS – Certain Snorts (Nasturtium)
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Poems for Peace, Seattle
I have been asked to help create a Seattle edition of the Poems for Peace event that celebrates International Peace Day on September 21. Anne Padilla and I are facilitating, preparing to make this...
446. Lisa J. Cihlar, Brodhead, WI – Certain Unshakability (Blackberries)
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42 Days of August
2013 Postcard Afterword 2013 was the 7th year of the August POetry POstcard Fest overall and the 2nd year that Brendan McBreen would be in charge of organizing and distributing the list. A call went...
Zoom McClure Tribute
One of my poetry heroes died May 4. I met and interviewed Michael McClure in 1995 when he was visiting Seattle to promote the book Three Poems with the new long poem Dolphin Skull as the first of...
Zoomuse, Reading for Subud
SICA-International, the cultural wing of my spiritual community, Subud, has created a weekly cyber poetry series featuring Subud members from round the world who write poetry. I will be featured...
Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty
I'm delighted to have work in a new anthology entitled: Strange Fruit: Poems on the Death Penalty. It was edited by Sarah Zale and Terry Persun and seeing that our shelter-in-place restrictions...
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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