The Cascadia Poetics Lab is delighted to participate in ScribFest, June 20 & 21, 2026, at Town Hall. From the ScribLab website: “ScribFest brings PNW performance writers together for a weekend of professional development, artistic sharing, community building, and networking. Started in 2024 as a playwriting conference, this annual event has quickly become THE landmark event of the year for our community. In 2026, we’re expanding to two days, adding a festival element, and proudly serving all performance writers!”

One question the conference asks is “What is a performance writer?” It’s a fair question for poets who read their work aloud in public to an audience. CPL is presenting a panel “Poetry as Performance Art” with three poets and a playwright.  (Poster below.)

Your humble narrator will be one of the panelists and, as you know by now, my work definitely follows the notion Charles Olson articulated in 1950: “A use of speech at its least careless and least logical.” Not the eye but the ear as measurer. Philip Whalen said his poetry was a graph or map of his mind moving. The lineation in my poems is to serve as a score for the poem. These are some concepts I am likely to articulate again.

The two other poets, Dion O’Reilly and Zach Charles will have some different notions and there will be a reading by we three followed by a panel discussion led by legendary playwright Buffy Sedlachek, who adds a poet’s ear to her own playwriting.

I’m grateful to Miriam Tobin for inviting us to submit a proposal and for its acceptance. ScribFest should be a lively and creative weekend.

Registration is open here: https://www.scriblab.org/scribfest