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
Haibun de la Serna
Finishing the 83rd poem in a series of 99 haibun on Monday morning, Meredith had overheard me recording the poem and informed me I was "almost finished" with the series I have been working on for...
Craft Talk Organic Poetry, 4.11.13 6P Ballard Library
I remember asking Michael McClure on the phone what it was like to start writing in Projective Verse. I think I had realized by that time I was writing in that manner, in which extreme concentration...
82. Automedicador (For Amalio Madueño)
Nikky Finney 1999 Interview
When I saw that Nikky Finney was coming to town for a reading/chat for Seattle Arts & Lectures (April 25, 2013), I thought it would be a good idea to find and digitize the interview we did in...
Planet Earth Poetry Anthology
"I LOVE the Canadian side of Cascadia as it deals with poetry. In Victoria, Vancouver, Nelson and elsewhere there are retired poets constructing Mesostics, discussing Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser...
Trevor Carolan – Reading BC and PNW Literature
Trev Carolan is the editor of Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature. Paul Nelson interviewed him July 15, 2011, at the Prophouse Cafe in Vancouver to talk about the book. Here is...
The Line Has Shattered (1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference)
Mer, Ella and I left Seattle Thursday morning for Vancouver for the premiere screening of a documentary on the 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, The Line Has Shattered. It was being screened at...
The History of the Decline of Wild Salmon
David Montgomery - The History of the Decline of Wild Salmon David Montgomery is a Professor of Geomorphology at the University of Washington and author of: King of Fish: The Thousand Year Run of...
Denis Mair on Huang Nubo (Luo Ying)
I have known Denis Mair from my earliest days attending Red Sky Poetry Theater at the Globe Cafe at 14th & Pine. This would have been as early as 1995. A tall, soft-spoken man, he would read his...
May 13 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...
No Map, No Jud (For Judith Roche)
My elegy for Judith Roche has been published by the South Seattle Emerald: https://southseattleemerald.com/2019/11/24/sunday-stew-no-map-no-jud-for-judith-roche/ See also:...
Bill Mawhinney Bids Adieu to Northwind
I had the good fortune to read AT LEAST three times during Bill Mawhinney's tenure as producer of the monthly Northwind Poetry series in Port Townsend over the last 13 years. That he came out of the...
Judith Roche, Rest in Power
I was saddened to hear the news via Facebook that Judith Roche died at her home in Seattle's Leschi neighborhood tonight. (Thursday, November 14, 2019). I had a chance to visit her last week and she...
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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