Nathaniel Mackey’s visit to Seattle was a remarkable weekend. He gave a reading and facilitated a workshop at SPLAB on Saturday, March 12 and gave a prose reading and engaged in a conversation at the NW African-American Museum on Friday, March 11.

Earlier on that Friday, Nate sat down with SPLAB Founder Paul Nelson to discuss his poetry, his poetics and the soul-building opportunity for a poet in wartime.

He also discussed his wariness of the notion of “coherence.” Certainly the postmodern era is one in which realities are plural and relative. He noted:

We have to be wary of the will to cohere because, as we’ve seen, the will to cohere – certainly in the west – has led to these qonquistadorial regimes that just regard, for example, the non-European as irrelevant; to be subjugated or eliminated but certainly not to be invited in as a vital participant and a source of information about the expansive possibilities of being human.

Here are links to Nate’s:

Saturday, March 12, 2011 reading
His reading of the Splay Anthem poem On Antiphon Island
The Friday, March 11, 2011 interview with Paul Nelson and
The March 12 workshop (huge file).

Again, SPLAB is grateful to Poets & Writers, 4Culture, The Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, WESTAF, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Island Soul Restaurant, CD Forum, Jeanne Heuving and all the dedicated SPLAB volunteers and Board Members. Thank you!

Our Fall 2011 Visiting Poet will be Brenda Hillman, November 11 and 12, 2011.

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