subDuctiOn

1) a geological process in which the oceanic lithosphere and some continental lithosphere is recycled into the Earth’s mantle at the convergent boundaries between tectonic plates.

2) A reading series that reflects an emerging biodemocracy displacing a culture addled by materialism and its myriad effects.

I’m delighted to be involved in the Subduction reading series, a collaboration between Cascadia Democratic Action and the Cascadia Poetics Lab. It will be staged at Vermillion on the first Wednesday of each month until and including May. (Summers off. Three other local poets will read on Wednesday, September 2 at Vermillion on Capitol Hill: Rhea Melina, Ankober Yewendwossen and Nadine Maestas. Vermillion is at: 1508 11th Ave. Seattle, WA 98122.

The Cascadia Day Poetry Explosion was a huge success and Andy Engelson and I agreed we wanted to have that post-poetry glow again and so Subduction was born. Vermillion, as you may remember, was the home to the successful Breadline series and now Subduction, with four featured artists, a break and an open mic. Be sure to buy a couple of drinks to support the venue, which has been generous to artists.

If you would like to be a featured artist at future iterations of Subduction, come to the reading and say hello, or rad at the open mic.

Andy will begin each evening with some of the latest news from a left-of-center POV, as covered in Cascadia Journal.

Hosted by Vermillion art gallery and bar in the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood on the first Wednesday of each month, Subduction will offer energetic performances by a rotating roster of talented poets and writers whose work is rooted in the Cascadia bioregion. We’ll also offer musical interludes and an open-mic for aspiring wordsmiths. Admission is free, but we encourage donations to a featured mutual aid organization each month.

Subduction is a geological process in which our planet’s crust sinks deep below the edge of the continent and, in heat and seismic uplift, gives birth to Cascadia’s mountains and vivid landscapes. Poetry allows us to dive deep into real concerns of life, and we hope Subduction will create an active, engaging space to explore what’s important to those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest.

For our first event, we’ll have readings by Rhea Melina, Paul Nelson, Ankober Yewondwossen, and Nadine Maestas. Sign up at the door to participate in the open mic. In September we’ll be raising funds for Second Harvest, a food bank providing critical assistance to people affected by destructive wildfires in Spokane this summer.

Event details:

Subduction: A Cascadia spoken word and performance series

7 pm – 8:30 pm, Wednesday, September 2

Vermillion

1508 11th Ave, Seattle

(206) 709-9797

Free admission, ages 21+.

Cascadia Democratic Action is a grassroots coalition dedicated to pursuing non-violent strategies to achieve autonomy and/or independence for the people of Oregon and Washington, and to promote cross-border cooperation throughout the entire Cascadia bioregion. We do this to protect human rights, and to increase access to health care, affordable housing, childcare and education – as well as creating a resilient and environmentally sustainable economy in Cascadia. Our organization is anti-racist, anti-fascist, supports the human rights of all people — including LGBTQIA+ people and immigrants of any status — and supports the foregrounding of Indigenous rights and sovereignty.

Cascadia Poetics Lab believes that poetry is the nexus at which self-knowledge, bioregionalism, and expansive creativity converge. Cascadia Poetics Lab is a vibrant community whose workshops, festivals, and opportunities for connection can open the door to transformative experiences. We seek to empower articulation of the heart-mind world of place via a democratic approach to poetry, the arts, restorative justice and other practices of intimate ecological awakening.

Poet biographies:

Rhea Melina (she/her) is a queer multi-ethnic poet, birth-worker, parent, herbalist, educator, and hopeful romantic. Her chapbooks include a place to put things (Bottlecap Press, 2023), Not My Wasteland (Bone Machine, 2024), and Ballard Coyote (Scumbag Press, 2025). Her poems have been published by Elizabeth Ellen’s Hobart, Gnashing Teeth, Literary Underground, Hare’s Paw Journal, Fiilthy Glo, Blood+Honey, Text Power Telling, and Black Lily Zine, among others, and her poem “Faith,” calling for a free Palestine, was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She believes that all illegal occupations and wars should cease and refuses to settle for less. found confetti is her first full-length collection and is available now from Carbonation Press and www.antiquatedfuture.com.

Nadine Antoinette Maestas is a poet’s poet and believes that the empire of the sentence is an extremely oppressive totalitarian regime. She prefers the company of poems so much that she would rather read a bad poem than a good novel, but when she is not doing poetry, Nadine loves mountain biking and trail running in dangerous and remote places in the Northwest. Her hybrid poem play “Hellen on Wheels: A Play of Rhyme and Reason” was performed at California College of the Arts.

She is the author of Imperialism As Sweet As Insult (Really Serious Literature Press), the co-author with Karen Weiser of “Beneath the Bright Discus” (Potes & Poets Press, 2000) and is a co-editor for the poetry anthology Make It True: Poetry from Cascadia. You can find more of her poems published in Snail Trail Press, Pageboy Magazine, Lyric &, The Germ, the bilingual anthology Make It True Meets Medusario, and Ofrenda Magazine. She has poems forthcoming in The Glittering Field: A Gathering of New Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Poetry. She currently teaches at Cornish College of the Arts at Seattle University and in the MFA program at UW Bothell.

Poet and interviewer Paul E. Nelson is the son of a labor activist father and Cuban immigrant mother. Born on Chicago’s west side in 1961, he’s lived in King County since 1988. He founded the Cascadia Poetics Lab, the Cascadia Poetry Festival and co-founded the Poetry Postcard Fest. His books include: The Singing Bullets of Soft Secession: & Other DaySongs (2026, Carbonation Press), DaySong Miracle (Past 62) (2024); Cascadian Prophets (Interviews 1999-2023) (2024);  Haibun de la Serna (2022) A Time Before Slaughter/Pig War: & Other Songs of Cascadia (2020); American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012)(2018); and American Sentences (2015, 2021) He’s co-editor of of Winter in America (Again: Poets Respond to 2024 Election (2025, Carbonation Press); Cascadian Zen Volume I: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here and Now (2023, Watershed Press), and other anthologies.

Paul is literary executor for the late poet Sam Hamill, and conducted an Institute Residency at the Clyfford Still Museum (https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/institute/2026-institute-residential-fellowship-program/) in Denver, CO, in July 2026 for his project Still in Cascadia. He lives in Rainier Beach, Seattle, alongside dxʷwuqʷeb Creek.

Ankober Yewondwossen is a poet and essayist. She is the daughter of high school sweethearts who survived the Ethiopian Red Terror. Her writings have been displayed in exhibitions at Wing Luke Museum, Poetry on Buses, Ambrosia Zine and Speak the Sojourner Magazine. A recent resident of Mineral School, she completed a bachelor’s degree in Womanist Spiritual Quest at Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina. She works as a teaching-artist in Seattle Arts & Lectures’ Writers-in-the-Schools Program and is the founder and facilitator of the Dry Bones Poetry Society, a coffee ceremony & writing circle that fosters kinship and spiritual inquiry. Much of her work is informed by a previous role as a Monastic Apprentice in the Garifuna populated region of Honduras where, while living in a Quaker nunnery, she surveyed and studied the intersections of scripture & contemplativeness. Ankober believes writing, in its highest form, is prayer and is presently at work on her first memoir.

Yours in Cascadia.