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PAUL E NELSON

Cascadia Poetry Festival 8 Paul E Nelson at the microphone

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.
Winter in America (Again (poem)

Winter in America (Again (poem)

I have submitted my poems to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Again. The project was conceived of by Katie Sarah Zale and modeled after Sam Hamill's "Poets Against The War." Greg Bem's...

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Rainier Beach Arts & Craft Market

Rainier Beach Arts & Craft Market

I attended this market when Bhakti and I first moved to Rainier Beach in 2007 and I have been delighted to participate in in the last four or five years, excepting the pandemic time. Of course I'll...

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Poet of Place (Joanne Kyger)

Poet of Place (Joanne Kyger)

Today we present the video version of the interview I conducted with Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden on the book Poet in Place and Time: Critical Essays on Joanne Kyger. Kyger is one of the most...

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Happy 92nd Michael McClure

Happy 92nd Michael McClure

Michael McClure would have turned 92 Sunday, October 20, 2024. His book: Touching the Edge: Dharma Devotions from the Hummingbird Sangha may be the best Zen poetry written in English. It has...

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Ralph Towner 1940-2026

Ralph Towner 1940-2026

One of my greatest disappointments in life is that I never saw Ralph Towner in concert. He died today in Rome. There are many places online where you can get the details of his life and career and I...

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Celebration of Koon Woon

Celebration of Koon Woon

On Wednesday night at C&P Coffee Company in West Seattle, longtime Seattle poet and publisher Koon Woon was honored by his friends, by poets who he mentored and those who love him. Here is the...

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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.

Deborah Poe

In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"

by Paul E Nelson

Deborah Poe

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.

Deborah Poe on "flagging the apocalypse pageantry"

by Paul E Nelson