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
Allen Ginsberg Interviewed
It's easy to remember the date I met and interviewed Allen Ginsberg. I was the Public Affairs Coordinator for KMTT-FM in Seattle, The Mountain. I had started doing public affairs interviews in 1990...
Fail Large
Fail Large Go to the extreme of your imagination and go on from there: fail large, never succeed small...-Charles Olson Every poem is an experiment and every one is a failure. Some fail to a lesser...
Moroccan Poet El Habib Louai Visits Seattle
SICA, the Subud International Cultural Association is delighted to welcome El Habib Louai to the Northwest for a series of readings and talks at various venues in August, 2013. We invite you...
June 11 Nanaimo Workshop
I have been fortunate to be able to travel to much of Cascadia. Sometimes I get to share the fruit of my research on Organic Poetry. David Fraser of Wordstorm has invited me back to Diana Krall's...
Interrupture’s Trope Opera
This email came from Doug Nufer and Interrupture. (See below). Interrupture was part of the first Puget Sound Poetry, the kick-off event of the Cascadia Poetry Festival in March 2012. They have been...
Joe Friday’s Harbor
Here's the latest Pig War poem.
Lightning Round (Short Poem Fiesta)
I am not sure when we started it, or how it started, but a tradition from the old SPLAB during the first few iterations of the Ginsberg Marathon featured a Lightning Round. We'd gather in a circle...
Notes on Anuncio’s Last Love Song (Nate Mackey)
Notes on Anuncio’s Last Love Song by Nate Mackey When we last left Nate Mackey’s poetry with the book Nod House, our protagonist and his band were seeing brute sun outside the/ nod / house door....
86. Paulownia Tomentosa
I have heard much over the years about Jack Remick's writing group. That he's the feature of our 13th Ginsberg Marathon made me want to see how he works. A very informal gathering at 2P Tuesdays and...
Kwame Dawes, Youth Speaks Seattle
Last night (Friday, May 3, 2013) I attended the Kwame Dawes reading at the Seattle Asian Art Museum. I was invited twice to the event, the second invite coming a few days before and though I was not...
The MUD Proposal proposal
After writing about being accepted by The Mud Proposal (see: https://paulenelson.com/2020/01/01/the-mud-proposal/) I came across my cover letter for the Mud Proposal: Dear Editors, I am in year...
MLA Seattle Off-Site Reading
I am delighted to be part of a giant mosaic of poets reading on Friday, January 10, 2020, in the MLA Off-Site Reading. The venue is the Town Hall Forum, 1119 8th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 7:30 to 11pm,...
The Mud Proposal
Thanks to Aryanil Mukherjee and Pat Clifford, I am delighted to have work in the latest Mud Proposal. Aryanil is responsible for the Bengali poetry journal Kaurab and curates the Mud Proposal, named...
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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