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
Ghost Tantras (Ceremonies to Change The Nature of Reality)
It was early in 2012 that I finally acted on my interest in sound poetry. I had heard Dada sound poems, Jerome Rothenberg's recitation of the sound poetry of Hugo Ball, the Canadian group the Four...
Celebrating Ian Boyden (80. Bear Dream Bird Dream)
When Sam Hamill read at Spring Street Center back in November 2012 to celebrate and display his collaborations with the painter, book maker and artist Ian Boyden (see this link) Ian gave me a copy...
More Walking the Arboretum with Jim Demetre
A second and, hopefully, shorter post about my walk with Jim Demetre at Washington Park Arboretum. What a place this is and late winter is one of the most inspiring times to go, giving those who...
Walking the Arboretum in Winter with Jim
Each morning I look over last year's journal entry for the same day and it had been a year since I walked through Washington Park Arboretum with Jim Demetre. Jim's an amateur botanist whom I met...
Shave and a Slight Cut, $10K
So I have to tell the story of finding out about my surgery date for the two, count ‘em, TWO hernias I have being diagnosed with. (A bilateral inguinal hernia and an abdominal hernia.) I got a call...
Featured Reading Wedgwood Ale House
Peter Munro has been kind enough to invite me to be the featured poet at his fine open mic in Wedgwood on Monday, February 11, 2013. I will be reading some classics, some American Sentences, some...
Residency at the Morris Graves Foundation
It was the most intensive residency application I have ever seen. Two letters of reference to be sent directly to the foundation. An essay outlining my thoughts on the significance of at least two...
John Olson 1999 Interview
John Olson is the author of Eggs & Mirrors, from Wood Works Press; Swarm of Edges, from BCC Press; and Logo Lagoon, from Paper Brain Press in San Diego. His poetry has been published in numerous...
Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks
Loretta Napoleoni is an economist, political analyst, journalist and author of Modern Jihad: Tracing the Dollars Behind the Terror Networks. We caught up with her in late 2003 to discuss her book....
Emily Kendal Frey Aug 2010 interview
I am posting interviews from a feature I did on innovative Northwest poets for Rattapallax Magazine in Fall 2010. One of my favorite Cascadia poets is Emily Kendal Frey, the author of AIRPORT (Blue...
Red Pine (Bill Porter) Interview
I had the good fortune to visit Bill Porter, the translator of ancient Chinese poetry and sacred texts, and interview him at his Port Townsend home on August 28, 2019. His latest books at the time...
Notes on The Undercommons
Nate Mackey tipped me off a few years ago to the work of Fred Moten and few months ago I came across a New Yorker article about a book Moten co-wrote with Stefano Harney entitled: The Undercommons:...
Write On Door County Sept 2019 Residency
I'm near the end of my week-long writing residency at Write On Door County. Postcard poet Sharon Auberle tipped me off to this writing center in the part of Wisconsin that sticks into Lake Michigan....
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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