On Saturday afternoon , October 10, 2026, Mateo Quispe read at Cascadia Poetry Festival 10 at the Rainier Beach Community Club. The other readers from this segment of the fest will be posted over the next couple weeks, including Ching-In Chen, Dion O’Reilly, Geneviève Hicks, and Nadine Maestas.

When Mateo Quispe got up on stage at CPF 10, the feeling I got was one of a curtain drawing back. As he stepped in front of the microphone, I felt a little anxiety, the feeling you get when something is about to happen, there is going to be some release of energy, but its direction is unclear. It was his posture and body language that initiated the recitation as much as his voice, and this subtle engagement in Mateo’s physicality that began to stir the room. And then, well, the poetry was good poetry. It stemmed from his personal history and his ancestry (ancestory), the presence of his immediate world in Auburn and the larger context of our times. It came from mythology (check out his Ode to the Coyote, which he read at the fest) and a place deep enough inside that it’s really outside. A place we can all recognize, if we take Mateo’s example a pay a deep attention to ourselves and the world around us. I hope you enjoy the video of his reading!