Happy New Year from Cascadia Poetics Lab!

Happy New Year! Thank you for another successful and enriching year for poetry and place in Cascadia! This year, we introduced new in-person and online programming that gathered community and encouraged mindful and intentional relationships with our bioregion and poetry practice. We are looking forward to introducing even more opportunities for creativity and connection in 2026. Here is what we accomplished in 2025.

New Workshop Offerings

In 2025, we introduced new workshop offerings and welcomed guest facilitators to share their poetic knowledge! Along with our continuous workshop offerings of Poetry as Cosmology and Life as Rehearsal for the Poem, both facilitated by CPL founder Paul Nelson, opened the year by introducing Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior, facilitated by Katie Sarah Zale, exploring how ancient poetic traditions still define quality poetry, poetry as political, and the role of reflection and emotion.

In Fall 2025, we welcomed poet and teacher Michael Boughn to facilitate Robert Duncan’s HD Book: The Roots of Modernism, an exploration of Robert Duncan’s encounter with Hilda Doolittle that led him into the depths of history, mind, and soul.

Poet and CPL board member Matt Trease continued his 2024 workshop series Poet as Radio and introduced Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies for Connecting to the Earth, which focuses on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that cuts us off from the earth its living beings. Thinkingwith will return in 2026 and registration is open NOW. 

Winter in America (Again

Following the 2024 USAmerican election, Katie Sarah Zale and Paul E. Nelson conceived an idea to create a poetry anthology in response to the election and publish it in time for the January 2025 inauguration. They invited co-editors allia abdullah-matta, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Robert Lashley, Roxi Power, CChristy White and Theresa Whitehill and collected poetry with “thoughtful reflection and compassion for the loss we feel for ourselves and this country.” Thus, Winter in America (Again was born and published by Carbonation Press!

Featured Winter in America (Again editors and poets presented their work at multiple readings this year, including virtual readings and workshops, a reading at Seattle University, Elliott Bay Book Company and a mini book tour that included readings on Lopez Island, Chimacum, Bainbridge Island and Columbia City Gallery in Seattle.

Submissions for the sequel anthology Winter in America (Still are open now!

Poetry Postcard Fest

We hosted the 19th Poetry Postcard Fest in 2025, with 493 participants spanning 9 countries around the globe sending postcard poems to each other! PPF 2025 participants came from: Canada, France, The United States, Italy, Ireland, Great Britain, Australia, Japan and Austria and 46 U.S. states and Canadian provinces, including the District of Columbia.

Postcard Events

We continued to spread the love postcard poetry with our community through postcard events in 2025! We hosted the second Postcards from Mapes Creek on June 8, featuring live music by Jim O’Halloran and Susan Pascal, along with our second Postcards from Here at the Olympic Sculpture Park on July 13.

We also introduced new postcard events for our community this year! We hosted the first Postcards for Incarcerated Poets online workshop on May 21 with Katie Sarah Zale, Judy Kleinberg, Paul Nelson and Matt Trease, partnering with Free Time, a “volunteer program focused on correspondence with writers who are incarcerated, offering support and mentorship, and building relationships one letter at a time.”

We also invited longtime postcard poet Tim Mateer to facilitate an online workshop for postcards poets on November 22!

Postcard Poet Tim Mateer

Cascadia Bio-Fi

In May, Cascadia Poetics Lab celebrated Cascadia Day by presenting at Cascadia Bio-Fi at the Georgetown Steam Plant, hosted by Regenerate Cascadia. Robert Lashley, Jason M. Wirth, Paul E. Nelson, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs and Matt Trease spoke at the conference about Co-Creating a Bioregional Funding Ecosystem. 

Rainshadow Poetry Festival

In August, Paul Nelson and 3/4 of the Cascadia 2050 youth initiative traveled to Cumberland, British Columbia to present at the Rainshadow Poetry Festival. After enjoying talks and workshops by Robert Bringhurst, Jan Zwicky and more, Zach Charles, Zaylan Jacobsen and myself (Veronica Martinez) presented our work of engaging with the land through poetry. Paul Nelson facilitated a workshop and reading at the end of the festival. It was a beautiful and enriching time visiting our neighbors to the north!

Cascadia painting by Zaylan Jacobsen’s younger sister

Cascadia 2050 

This year, Cascadia Poetics Lab and our youth initiative Cascadia 2050 facilitated workshops in multiple Cascadian schools. In March, Cascadia 2050 members Zach Charles and Veronica Martinez spoke to Seattle University poetry students about bioregionalism and poetics. Also in March, CPL founder Paul E. Nelson taught poetry workshops to students at Jackson High School and Cristo Rey High School. In October, Zach Charles participated at Cascade K-8’s Literacy Night, guiding students through exquisite corpse poetry exercises.

Paul Nelson teaching at Jackson High School

CPF9 

We hosted the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival October 10-12, 2025 in Rainier Beach! On the first day, we hosted workshops facilitated by Brenda Cárdenas, Brenda Hillman, Katie Sarah Zale, Roxi Power, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Sharon Thesen and Robert Lashley. Readings and panels were hosted at the Rainier Beach Community Club, including a Carbonation Press Showcase and a Cascadia Mono Poem featuring poetry students from Seattle University. The last day of the festival, we hosted a reading at Kubota Garden with Robert Michael Pyle, Alicia Hokanson and Roxi Power and finished the festival with a reading at Jude’s Old Town featuring the poets and editors of Winter in America (Again.

Videos of every CPF9 event are available to watch HERE!

Roxi Power, CPF9

Humanities Award

CPL friend Katie Sarah Zale nominated our founder Paul E. Nelson for the Humanities Washington 50th Anniversary Award, and he won! Paul and Cascadia Poetics Lab received a 2025 Central Puget Sound Humanities Washington Award in the small organization category, a very well-deserved award for a person so dedicated to creating connections and sharing wisdom with everyone he encounters.

Cascadian Prophets

We released multiple new episodes of the Cascadian Prophets this year, featuring writers and thinkers Ann Tardos, Andrew Schelling, Linda Russo, Sam O’Hana, Tess Gallagher, Gary Copeland Lilley and more! This year, audio assistant Zach Charles also remastered and published archived podcasts from our 32 year interview history!

Thank you to every participant that supported our mission of empowering people to practice poetry and build community in ways that connect us to place, self and the present moment. Thank you to the staff and volunteers that helped our operations run smoothly and accessibly for our community. Thank every generous donor and to our funders 4Culture, The Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, National Endowment for the Arts, Creative West and Humanities Washington! Here’s to another great year of poetry and place in Cascadia!