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
Xi Chuan Notes on the Mosquito
After making a presentation in Xining, China in August, 2011, at the 3rd Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival, a Chinese poet came up to me, told he he enjoyed my presentation and asked if I...
Cascadia Poetry Festival Ad Board Meeting
To the Members of the Cascadia Advisory Board, We are scheduling a meeting on Sunday, March 31, 2013, at 4P at Spring Street Center, 1101 15th in Seattle. We'll give folks an update on developments...
The Meat Reason of the Last Beat
The Meat Reason of the Last Beat: McClure’s Latihan (Download as pdf) A man writhing on the floor with his eyes closed, perhaps groaning and twisting in sunlight that pours through a window,...
How to Not Get Lost Backpacking
The vision quests in our culture are usually unintentional. We have, by and large, rejected the ancient needs for rituals to mark rites of passage, but somewhere in the psyche, a human demands it to...
The State of Seattle Poetry (Online Panel)
Greg Bem and Amber Nelson have asked me to convene the first of many online panels on poetry they plan to produce starting March 24, 2013: Confirmed panelists: Daemond Arrindell. Poet, performer,...
1st Crop of 2013 American Sentences
One function of my practice of writing a daily American Sentence is as a journal. I will go back to these not for the literary merit, but to remind myself of life's little trials and twists. Having...
Pirates of Cascadia
There is something about the San Juan Islands that lets a Midwest boy understand he is in Cascadia. When the view out your hostel window is this: you know you're not in corn country. And of course...
Juan Vicente de Güemes Padilla Horcasitas y Aguayo
I got up early today and had some time to think (& write a poem) after doing my morning routine of journaling &c. (Someone in the household had coffee too late the night before and was up...
Soundcloud Interview Clips
How does one communicate the essence of three decades of conducting interviews? I have had to do that, and quick, as a grant deadline is approaching and I save the worst of the grant writing process...
The Next Big Thing (Self-Interview)
I was tagged by C.E. Putnam for this project, the Next Big Thing self-interview. I tagged 6 other writers whose work I admire and will post links to their answers once they send them to me. The...
Interview with Beat Nun Mary Norbert Körte (Oct 25, 2019)
The second and third interviews with former Catholic Nun Mary Norbert Körte were conducted by your humble narrator on Friday, and Saturday, October 25 and 26, 2019. While the woodstove fire crackled...
Reading in Ukiah
I will be heading to extreme Southern Cascadia Thursday, and go out of the bioregion to read in Ukiah, California. I am headed south to meet and interview Mary Norbert Körte, a poet, and former...
Happy 87th Michael McClure
I loved hearing Michael McClure and Allen Ginsberg at Naropa in 1976. See:...
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.