Cascadia Poetics LAB Snake New Year Fund Drive
Help support Cascadia Poetics LAB: give people the power to practice poetry
Cascadia Poetics LAB needs your help. There are many ways you can support Cascadia Poetics LAB with its mission to give people the power to practice poetry:
- Sign up for the 2025 Workshops:
- Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior, with Katie Sarah Zale
- Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies For Reconnecting to Earth, with Matt Trease
- Life as Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP), Spring 2025, with Paul E. Nelson
- Poetics as Cosmology (PAC), Spring 2025, with Paul E. Nelson
- Purchase the Cascadian Zen Deluxe limited edition
- Sponsor the Cascadian Prophets Podcast
- Make a contribution
Ways You Can Help:
Make a Contribution
Thanks for being a part of our community of poets. Support from people like you makes all this happen. Through your donations, we empower people to practice poetry and deepen connections to place, self and the present moment. In this, our 31st year of existence, Founder’s Circle members get the first opportunity to register for the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival October 3-5, in Seattle! Please support the Cascadian Prophets podcast, the Cascadia Poetry Festival, the Poetry Postcard Festival (in year 19 in 2025) and online workshops such as Poetics as Cosmology and Life as Rehearsal for the Poem.
Sign up for Workshops:
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 2025.
Life as Rehearsal For The Poem Spring 2025
Life as Rehearsal For The Poem Spring 2025
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 2025.
Poetics as cosmology Spring 2025
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Poetics as cosmology Spring 2025
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises, in the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Poet, translator, editor, Zen Buddhist, co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and activist for Poets Against (the)War, Sam Hamill devoted his whole life to the practice of writing poetry. The following topics are foundational for this generative workshop: how ancient poetic traditions still define quality poetry, the Beat poets, the long poetic sequence, poetry as political, and the role of reflection and emotion. Facilitator Katie Sarah Zale is writing a biography on Hamill’s life and legacy.
Saturdays 2-4:00 PM Pacific Time
February 8 – March 8, 2025
Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior
Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior
Poet, translator, editor, Zen Buddhist, co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and activist for Poets Against (the)War, Sam Hamill devoted his whole life to the practice of writing poetry. The following topics are foundational for this generative workshop: how ancient poetic traditions still define quality poetry, the Beat poets, the long poetic sequence, poetry as political, and the role of reflection and emotion. Facilitator Katie Sarah Zale is writing a biography on Hamill’s life and legacy.
Saturdays 2-4:00 PM Pacific Time
February 8 – March 8, 2025
Thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
Thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
Purchase the Deluxe Limited Edition of Cascadian Zen Vol 1
Make a Contribution
Thanks for being a part of our community of poets. Support from people like you makes all this happen. Through your donations, we empower people to practice poetry and deepen connections to place, self and the present moment. In this, our 31st year of existence, Founder’s Circle members get the first opportunity to register for the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival October 3-5, in Seattle! Please support the Cascadian Prophets podcast, the Cascadia Poetry Festival, the Poetry Postcard Festival (in year 19 in 2025) and online workshops such as Poetics as Cosmology and Life as Rehearsal for the Poem.
$100 Founders Circle
Cascadian Prophets Podcast Sponsor
$250 Reinhabitarian
You understand humans have to stop living like invaders & deeply connect to place & how the Cascadia Poetics LAB leads that effort via poetry, interviews, & other projects enabling deep connection to the Now & Here.
$1200 Cascadian Prophets Podcast Sponsor
Support the Poetry Postcard Fest, The Cascadia Poetry Festival, Online Workshops, Interviews, Interview Archive preservation & other activities. With a donation at this level we will include short announcements for your business or project.
Sponsor the Cascadian Prophets Podcast
Sponsor the Cascadian Prophets Podcast and Receive:
Cascadian Prophets: Interviews 1999-2023 Autographed Edition
For a limited time, sponsors donating $300 or more to the Cascadian Prophets Podcast will receive a specially autographed edition of Cascadian Prophets Interview 1999-2023. This special autograph will include a stamp with Paul E. Nelsons’ Dharma name, bestowed December 11, 2023.
CASCADIA POETICS LAB PROGRAMS AND EVENTS
Learn more about some of our key projects
Cascadia Poetry Festival
The Cascadia Poetry Festival started in in 2012 and is a regular gathering of poets and creatives with workshops and talks, hosted in the Pacific Northwest of the Cascadia Bioregion. We are excited to announce Cascadia Poetry Festival #8 November 1-3, 2024!
Books
Explore books created under our own imprint, Watershed Press. Featuring Cascadian Zen Volume I, an exquisite collection of poetry, essays, interviews, and art that embody Zen here and now in the Cascadia Bioregion.
Poetry Postcard Fest
Founded in 2007, The Poetry Postcard Fest is an annual 56 day experiment in spontaneity and community-building where poets send 31 first-draft poems on postcards to other participants around the world.
Registration opens annually on September 1!
Workshops
Cascadia Poetics Lab hosts poetry workshops, available to the general community, with reading, writing and discussion exercises that intend on helping participants learn new techniques of expression and literary creativity while focusing on place and presence.
Cascadian Prophets Podcast
The Cascadian Prophets Podcast was built upon the original work of Cascadia Poetics Lab’s founder Paul Nelson as the foundation of Cascadia Poetics Lab. The Cascadian Prophets podcast produces in depth interviews with poets, authors, educators, indigenous leaders and other cultural workers, with a focus on promoting cultural activities toward sustaining the Cascadia bioregion, place and presence.
Events
Cascadia Poetics Lab hosts poetry reading events in partnership with other cultural organizations.