Cascadia Poetics LAB
Poetry Postcard Fest
Watershed Press
Cascadian Prophets Podcast
Cascadia Poetry Festival 8

Postcards for Incarcerated Poets

We would like to invite you and your friends to join us in the Zoom room on Wednesday, May 21, from 6-7:30pm PST for a panel on spontaneous composition, community building, and how postcarding can bring those two things together! Click here to Learn More.

Thank you

We would like to thank all supporters who celebrated Give Big 2025 by donating to Cascadia Poetics Lab! It is through your generous donations that Cascadia Poetics Lab empowers people to practice poetry & build community in ways that deepen connection to place, self, and the present moment.

Give Big 2025

Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog

Postcards for Prisoners

Postcards for Prisoners

From Judy Kleinberg: We had an excellent discussion of writing to incarcerated people last night in the Zoom Room. Hosted by Zach Charles and featuring Betty King of Bisbee, Arizona, Matt Trease of...

read more

Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog

Postcards for Prisoners

Postcards for Prisoners

From Judy Kleinberg: We had an excellent discussion of writing to incarcerated people last night in the Zoom Room. Hosted by Zach Charles and featuring Betty King of Bisbee, Arizona, Matt Trease of...

read more
Sam O’Hana on How to Support Working Class Poets

Sam O’Hana on How to Support Working Class Poets

When I said that what’s good for general society is also good for poets, I’m talking about a series of cultural opportunities where a much wider stretch of people are allowed to take the opportunity to become writers. I came back from a conference last week where I presented some research on the demographic aspects of the New American poets. The poets that were born and came to maturity in the early to mid-20th century were beneficiaries of broad national scale longevity gains. This [includes] things like pushbacks against tuberculosis, against polio, against poor nutrition and infant mortality. These are gains that were made by the medical and scientific institutions, but also by general prosperity, by making more food available to more people and making that food shelf stable for longer. So, when you talk about what might make it possible for poor people to do more creative work, you could start by saying well we should just give people more money, but the fact of the matter is that plenty of people already have the wealth they need, they just don’t actually have any time.

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Poetry Postcard Fest

An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.

PPF 2025 Graphic by Roberta Hoffman

Poetry Postcard Fest

An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.

PPF 2025 Graphic by Roberta Hoffman

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.

Cascadia Poetry Festival 8 Thank You

Thank You to Our Partners and Alliances:

Prolific Writers Life logo
National Endowment for the Arts logo
Office of Arts and Culture Seattle logo
2024 Grantee Community Accelerator Grant Arts Fund
Creative West logo
Poets & Writers logo
ARTS WA Washington Sate Arts Commission
Spring Street Center logo
humanities WASHINGTON logo
Subud Greater Seattle Logo
4 Culture Logo
White River Valley Museum
LA SALA, A Latinx Artist's Community logo
Mt St Helens illustration by Roberta Hoffman

!

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.