Dear Cascadia Poetics Lab supporters,

Today we celebrate Giving Tuesday, the international day of giving! Giving Tuesday promotes radical generosity around the world – a chance for both individuals and groups to support local community non-profits however they can. We ask you to extend your generosity to Cascadia Poetics Lab with a donation. We have no fancy office and we try to keep the prices of our events, publications and broadcasts free, or at least affordable to maintain accessibility for participants. Which means we have to have your financial help. In addition, part of our commitment to the community is that whenever possible, we offer modest payment to the poets and artists featured at our events.

Throughout the year, we organize events designed to foster a community of like-minded people centered around organic, open-form poetry, and an ecological philosophy that emphasizes a connection to our bioregion, its history and the indigenous people that lived here long, long before colonization. We aim to expose our supporters to ideas about art as an art-of-living practice, inspired by the spiritual practice of understanding the bioregion surrounding us: soil, air, water, flora, fauna, and weather. In 2023, we hosted a successful Poetry Postcard Fest and the 7th Cascadia Poetry Festival, along with launching Watershed Press and publishing our anthology Cascadian Zen Vol. I. This is all thanks to donations from people like you!

Your donations also make possible the Cascadian Prophets podcasts featured on our website: in-depth interviews of a huge array of bioregional artists. Listening to these first-person, professional interviews (structured by Paul Nelson) offers personal insights into how featured artists and activists think about their work and go about it from day to day. We hope this provides inspiration to listeners like you.

To maintain and refresh the content on our beautifully designed website requires a time-consuming combination of artistic design and computer software and programming skills. The website is a major tool for promoting CPL’s mission, purpose and activities – and it takes money to make that tool effective.  We have further improvements to make so that’s it’s more accessible – searchable, for instance – as well as attractive, useful and easy to use.

Our newest board committee is working on an exciting long-term project to purchase several acres of property on the Olympic Peninsula that will offer an on-site experience of the natural wonders of the Cascadian bioregion. We call it Kagean Ni – a Cascadia-out-the-back-door place for retreats, readings, and workshops. We want to offer residencies to marginalized poets, providing them the space to write and practice poetry-of-place in Cascadia.

As of November, 2023, the Cascadia Poetics Lab board is composed of 50% women and 50% Latinx individuals. In 2024, we will work with our Latinx board members to create relationships  and plan events with other Latinx communities and organizations in Seattle.

We also ask that you spread the news of Cascadia Poetics Lab to loved ones and ask them to donate so that we can grow our community!  Donating to CPL is quick and simple through our website, and every penny counts in keeping the passion for poetry and place in Cascadia alive and thriving.

We deeply appreciate all your continued support! With your help, we’ve been able to fund our nonprofit and continue to follow our mission of empowering people to practice poetry and deepen connections to place, self and the present moment.