Cascadia Poetics LAB
Empowering people to practice poetry & deepen connections to place, self & the present moment.
We believe that poetry is the nexus at which self-knowledge, bioregionalism and expansive creativity converge. Cascadia Poetics Lab is a vibrant community whose workshops, festivals, and opportunities for connection can open the door to transformative experiences.
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Poetics As Cosmology Spring 2025
Poetics As Cosmology Spring 2025
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 2025.
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 2025.
Thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
Thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Winter in America (Again AWP Event
On March 27, 2025, Winter in America (Again was featured at an off-site AWP reading at Cal State Los Angeles! Co-editors Paul Nelson, Roxi Power and Katie Sarah Zale were joined by readers Dane...
CPF8 Wilson’s Bowl Panel Video
On the second day of the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival on Saturday, November 2, 2024 we continued with a panel exploring Wilson's Bowl and the work of Phyllis Webb. The panel featured poets and...
What Happened to August?
From PPF Committee member Judy Kleinberg: If you’ve ever changed your name, you will appreciate how difficult it is to get rid of your previous name. The Poetry Postcard Fest has been around since...
Disposable Parts part 2: Launch Party
On Wednesday, February 26, I had a great time at Baba Yaga in Pioneer Square, Seattle celebrating the launch of Disposable Parts second edition. It was incredibly cool to participate as a vendor...
Winter in America at AWP
On March 27, 2025 join us in Los Angeles for an off-site AWP conference event for Winter in America (Again! Join poets Rodrigo Toscano, Elizabeth Robinson, Susanne Dyckman, Mark Scroggins, Dana Teen...
Postcards from Where I Have Never Been by Margaret Lee
From PPF Committee Member Margaret Lee: Last year, my theme for the Fest was Postcards from Where I Have Never Been. I was tired of reality and ready for fiction. My 31 cards named unfamiliar or...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Winter in America (Again AWP Event
On March 27, 2025, Winter in America (Again was featured at an off-site AWP reading at Cal State Los Angeles! Co-editors Paul Nelson, Roxi Power and Katie Sarah Zale were joined by readers Dane...
CPF8 Wilson’s Bowl Panel Video
On the second day of the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival on Saturday, November 2, 2024 we continued with a panel exploring Wilson's Bowl and the work of Phyllis Webb. The panel featured poets and...
What Happened to August?
From PPF Committee member Judy Kleinberg: If you’ve ever changed your name, you will appreciate how difficult it is to get rid of your previous name. The Poetry Postcard Fest has been around since...
Interview with Paul Nelson on the Poetry Postcard Fest
Sam Hamill said “Over the past decade or so, no one has done more for poetry in the Pacific Northwest than has Paul Nelson.” With the Poetry Postcard Fest, now in its 19th year, that influence is spreading well beyond the Cascadia bioregion and all over the world.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download ()
Poetry Postcard Fest
An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.
Poetry Postcard Fest
An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.
Thank you
for an enormously sucessful 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival! Make plans for Cascadia Poetry Festival 9 at the Hugo House and other venues October 3, 4, and 5, 2025.
Thank You to Our Partners and Alliances:
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We recognize that our home office is on the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Muckleshoot and other Coastal Salish tribes. Our dedication to bioregionalism is to co-exist on this land in the sacred manner as practiced by the traditional ways of these indigenous people.
Statement on Ahimsa by Board Member Jason Wirth
January 20, 2021
The (Poetry Postcard Fest) and the Cascadia Poetry Festival (are) connected… When you’re writing poetry… part of poetry is the craft… rules (to be understood) in a variety of contexts… (Craft is…) a necessary but not sufficient condition. You’re also… experiencing your mind, at a very deep level. And that mind as you experience it more deeply, is not in a vacuum… It’s now and here… rooted in the socio-economic and ecological conditions that make it possible. And participating in… the spiritual exercise of these postcards, is already entering into… a deep bioregional awakening and conversion. In a way we’re trying for something like a spiritual revolution, and that poetry is not just an interesting thing that you can do, if you like. It’s a fundamental exercise of being here in a less harmful way… it’s a deep ahimsa, a deep practice of non-harming and cultivation. And so, it’s all connected… And… our ambition is… trying to have a mind that would be capable, of being in this place in a better way… We’re going to live or die, by how we come down on these issues going forward.