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
The Last of the 2012 American Sentences
It is one of the worst feelings I ever get and most poets have experienced it at one time or another. The lost poem. I remember Ed Dorn at the Spokane Library less than a year before his death...
Help Julian Priester
Julian and his wife Nashira Priester need your help. This world class Jazz musician and his poet wife have been it with financial troubles and have lost their house. This was posted on Facebook: ...
PageBoy Magazine Interview
We'd planned to interview Thomas Walton about the publication he edits and publishes, Pageboy Magazine, as well as contributor Sierra Nelson not long before it was deemed BEST LITERARY MAGAZINE IN...
Five Alarms Saturday, Jan 26, Greenwood
The 3rd Five Alarms Lit Crawl happens Saturday, January 26, 2013, in Greenwood, featuring: Aaron Kokorowski, Amy Billharz, Morris Stegosaurus, Aaron Kemply, Arlene Kim, Theo Dzielak, Molly Mac,...
Anne Waldman – Vow to Poetry (2002 Interview)
Anne Waldman took time to chat in April 2002, about her book Vow to Poetry: Essays, Interviews and Manifestos. In the opening segment, she spoke about her obsession with lineage, legacy, the...
American Sentences Handout
This site has been getting a lot of hits from people who heard about American Sentences via Kim Addonizio and her book Ordinary Genius which mentions the form and reference to the website...
78. Wren and Whale Surrender
78 in a series of 99 neo-barroco haibun written after Ramón Gomez de la Serna. This one inspired by E. Richard Atleo's book Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview. The holistic way of thinking seems to...
77. Clean Shirt (It Never Entered My Mind)
Mississippi – Yangtze Sister Rivers (Wang Ping, Kinship of Rivers)
Kinship of Rivers is an international project engaging art, poetry, stories, music, dance and food to connect people and communities along the Mississippi and Yangtze Rivers. Founded in 2011 by Wang...
Happy 84th Pop
My Dad, Paul Everett Nelson Senior, is 84 today, December 27, 2012. A few years ago I wrote a haibun that started as one of my reminiscences of a couple of our early experiences at Comiskey Park,...
Sons & Daughters
Huge thanks to SPLAB Board Member and EasySpeak Seattle founder Peter Munro for tipping me off to a new journal named Sons & Daughters that seeks to publish work inspired by Charles Olson's...
Call for August Poetry Postcard Fest
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE SPLAB ISSUES CALL FOR 13TH AUGUST POETRY POSTCARD FEST Seattle, WA, June 5, 2019—Seattle Poetics LAB (SPLAB), a literary arts-oriented nonprofit organization and organizing...
CPF, BIPF, NYC, APPF13
I have been running since about May 7 and no rest in sight as I write this from Brooklyn, in the city that does not sleep because jackhammers start at 7am and people are never afraid to use their...
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.