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
445. Alley Greymond, Seattle, WA – Snake Chief on the Stairs
(Click here for audio)
443. Ericka Melby, Bartlesville, OK – Alone Under Helicopters
(Click here for audio)
442. Drew Myron PO Box 914 Yachats, Oregon – Map of the P-Patch
(click here for audio)
441. Savannah Featherstone, Victoria, BC – Not The Practice of Inside
(Click here for audio)
Tit Nun, Jilly Rizzo and American Sentences
Old pal Dick Rosetti, with whom I worked at KNDD (The End), asked me to sit in with his band Jilly Rizzo on September 14th at the Skylark Club, 3803 Delridge Way S.W. in West Seattle. They are...
Graham Isaac Interview Part 1
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’...
440. to Rhonda Ganz, Victoria, BC-The True Story of the Poets Chair
(Click here for audio)
439. Michael Hanner, Eugene, OR – Mr. Breeze
(Click here for Audio)
438. Carol Dorf, Berkeley, CA – Kiss the Morning Glory
(Click here for audio)
437. Mark Allen Jenkins, Dallas, TX – Edge of Decomposition
(Click here for audio)
R.I.P. Michael McClure, 20-Oct-1932 – 4-May-2020
I will never forget meeting Michael McClure, interviewing him in 1995 at the old KZOK-FM studios on Queen Anne Hill, him taking me out for Vietnamese food saying lunch was "on Penguin" (his...
PEN America Emergency Writers Fund
Artists have to train themselves to not link their own self-esteem to outside validation. In THIS culture, the job is much harder because of what the composer Charles Wuorinen said to the New York...
Sam Green’s ATBS Binding
Huge gratitude goes out to Washington's first Poet Laureate, Sam Green, who has bound my new book A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia. He did it a week or so ago and sent...
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.