Happy holidays and happy upcoming winter solstice! We hope everyone has been able to stay safe during the cold and wet weather and enjoy a peaceful time during these dark days. Are you looking for last minute gifts for the poets, Cascadians and bioregionalists in your life? Here’s our gift guide for books that would serve as great gifts for sharing the love of place and poetry this holiday season. If you’re in Seattle, we recommend buying your book-related gifts at local bookstores like Arundel Books, Third Place Books or Elliott Bay Book Company. Turn a season that is often surrounded by mindless consumerism into a time to give back to your local economy and share meaningful work with the people you love!

Poetry Collections

In A Few Minutes Before Later by Brenda Hillman

Ecopoet and CPL friend Brenda Hillman tracks human and non-human experiences through innovative poetic forms. Fusing dialogues and meditations with narrative and scientific material, Hillman outlines experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, climate crisis and political turmoil. CLICK HERE to order.

Jumping into the American River by Mary Norbert Korte

New and selected poems by Mary Norbert Korte, a Catholic nun that found herself inspired by the great minds of the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference, so much so that she left the church to live the life of a poet. CLICK HERE to order.

Mesopotapia by Anne Waldman

Mesopotopia explores the vast sweep of our accelerating, precipitous world. From the cradle to the grave, from the mysterious poetic origins of Mesopotamia to our own dystopias of the twenty-first century, Anne Waldman crafts a singular, radical investigation into the syncretic layers of quantum space and dreamtime. She invokes “studying” as the most compelling ritual and tool for evolution and travels to various fellaheen worlds, treading metabolic pathways and ancient “antitheses realities,” and gleans sacred texts that speak urgently through the transports and telepathies of poetry.

Carbonation Press’ Catalogue

Carbonation Press, founded by Spokane poet and CPL friend Greg Bem, has a catalogue of 18 poetry collections and anthologies from authors of various backgrounds, including CPL board members Zach Charles, Matt Trease, Paul Nelson and more! CLICK HERE to view all of Carbonation Press’ catalogue!

Resist Much/Obey Little co-edited by Brenda Cárdenas

A collection of inauguration poems co-edited by 18 poets, including Brenda Cárdenas, Michael Boughn and Anne Waldman, with the aim of being “a collective, insurgent call that is part and parcel of a sovereign people’s challenge to a narcissistic oligarch and his lackeys, who smirk now from their temporary perches of power. Its pages are bound in direct, literal ways, to the historic worldwide marches of January 22nd—and they stand as evidence that the vast majority of American poets (and artists and writers of all kind) revile the new reactionary dispensation.”

​CLICK HERE to order. 

Nonfiction and Bioregionalism

Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane

Robert Macfarlane combines travel writing, reporting and natural history to explore the titular question: is a river alive? CLICK HERE to order.

Blockade: Diaries of a Forest Defender by Christine Lowther

From the book’s description:

In the early 1990s, ancient temperate rainforests on Vancouver Island became the stage for mass blockades against clearcut logging in Nuučaańuł territory. Until the more recent struggles at Fairy Creek, Clayoquot Sound hosted the largest act of civil disobedience in Canada. National news coverage at the time showed mothers with their babies, grandparents, business people, and many other unlikely activists standing on the logging road or locked to makeshift structures, risking arrest to defend these rare, evolved ecosystems. Christine Lowther was arrested in 1992 for lying across the Clayoquot Arm bridge while MacMillan Bloedel fallers tried to drive to work with their chainsaws. Blockade is her gripping, first-hand account of the joys, struggles, and victories of this historic movement.

CLICK HERE to order.

Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito

From the book’s description:

Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and climate change, subsequent calls for “sustainable growth” and a “Green New Deal” are a dangerous compromise. Capitalism creates artificial scarcity by pursuing profit based on the value of products rather than their usefulness and by putting perpetual growth above all else. It is therefore impossible to reverse climate change in a capitalist society—more: the system that caused the problem in the first place cannot be an integral part of the solution.Instead, Saito advocates for degrowth and deceleration, which he conceives as the slowing of economic activity through the democratic reform of labor and production.

CLICK HERE to order.

Cascadian Zen Vol. I and II by Watershed Press

What is the nature of the bioregion known as Cascadia? How is this insight expressed by the people who live, work, practice, and play here? Is there a connection between Zen practice, broadly construed, and the Cascadia bioregion? Who have been the teachers in the relatively short time that Zen has been known in this bioregion? What role does water play here, more so than in other bioregions and what implications does that have for the people who live here, for their practice? Both volumes, edited by Paul E. Nelson, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth and Adelia Macwilliam, explore these questions and more through collections of nonfiction, poetry, interviews, translations, and artwork.

CLICK HERE to order.

2026 Winter Workshops

Another great gift option for the poet or bioregionalist in your life would be a registration to one of our upcoming winter workshops! Take a workshop together to bond through poetry and place, or give the gift of education to someone you love. CLICK HERE to learn about our winter 2026 workshop offerings and include the name of the recipient in your registration.