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
Talk at North Cascades Institute
El Habib Louai concludes his tour of Cascadia on Thursday, August 15, 2013, at 7p as he talks to participants in this year's Beats on the Peaks event, produced by the North Cascades Institute. Habib...
Ghost Tantra Video
The Four Hoarse Men were down a hoarse at the last Ginsberg Marathon, June 1, 2013, at the Spring Street Center, but we did have Jaci Conger taping and here's some of the wreckage of our versions of...
Young Moroccan Poet & Beat Scholar Visits Seattle
El Habib Louai reads in Seattle Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Details here: https://splab.org/2013/08/moroccan-poet-el-habib-louai-visits-seattle/ We invite you to attend and spread the word....
August Poetry Postcard Fest
The final list is out and 302 poets have joined us for the August Poetry Postcard fest this year. There are poets from Alabama, Alaska, Alberta, Arizona, Australia, British Columbia, California,...
American Sentences-June, July
I told this story on Facebook last week: After a ride on the 358, I get where John Burgess is coming from with his Aurora bus updates. I sat down in the back row next to this guy who started talking...
Tin Umbrella Suggests Hillman City’s Coming Up
Mer and I moved from Columbia City to Hillman City in October 2011. The neighborhood just south of Columbia City, it's still more diverse than Columbia City and (as of this writing) has none of the...
Notes on The Practice of Outside: Robin Blaser’s Divine Real
Notes on The Practice of Outside: Robin Blaser’s Divine Real (pdf) Before I knew Robin Blaser’s work, I knew of Robin Blaser, having found out about him through my early poetry investigations of...
Penultimate Postcard Update
I got the latest postcard update from Brendan McBreen (see below) with the new list of 243 people, easily a new postcard record! Am a little stunned and very excited about the fest and (as noted...
Brian Love Memorial
I attended the Memorial for Brian Love at the Auburn Adventist Academy Church yesterday (7.17.13) and recorded the service. (Hear the audio of the first half by clicking here. The 2nd half starting...
Postcard Update
The man coordinating the list for the 2013 August POetry POstcard Fest, Brendan McBreen, informs us that 179 poets have signed up so far and the cut off date is less than two weeks away. (His update...
Plugging Into the Current: The Immediacies of Daphne Marlatt’s Writing
I had a flurry of activity about a month ago. I prepared a talk for a poet's society with which I was engaged for a couple of months to serve as a sort of "dress rehearsal" for a talk at a...
A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia
The tenth anniversary edition of A Time Before Slaughter is coming out on April 11 with a launch at Open Books. My publisher, Apprentice House, is adding a whole separate book to the new edition,...
Interview with Shin Yu Pai (Ensō)
Shin Yu Pai's new book, Ensō is categorized as a künstlerroman, an artist's novel, a class of bildungsroman or apprentice novel, that deals with the maturation of a young artist. Yet this is not...
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.