Cascadia Poetics LAB
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Cascadian Prophets Podcast
Cascadia Poetry Festival 8

Podcasts

Cascadian Prophets Interviews (1999-2023) by Paul E Nelson

Cascadian Prophets: Interviews 1999-2023

is the second collection of transcribed interviews taken from the 30 year history of the Cascadia Poetics Lab and conducted by Paul E Nelson, CPL Founder. Interviewees include 7 USAmericans and 7 Canadians, 7 women and 7 men and 7 people who have died and 7 that at the time of publication (February 2, 2024) are still alive. Interviewees:

  • Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs
  • Mary Norbert Körte
  • Robert Bringhurst
  • Barry McKinnon
  • Colleen J. McElroy
  • Brenda Hillman
  • Daphne Marlatt
  • Diane di Prima
  • Miriam Nichols
  • Stephen Collis
  • Charles Potts
  • Robin Blaser
  • Peter Culley
  • Sam Hamill

The book is $30 plus shipping and is available online, or here: (link coming soon)

Cascadian Prophets Podcast

The Cascadian Prophets Podcast

Produces in depth interviews with poets, authors, indigenous leaders & culture workers.

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Harry and Cleo Davenport Elser, wedding picture

Harry and Cleo Davenport Elser, wedding photo

Diana Elser

Donation in memory of Harry Elser and Cleo Davenport Elser, two Montana ranch kids. Harry was a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. We learned to enjoy each place we lived – the Missouri River in Great Falls, Montana, the Rio Grande in El Paso, Texas – the Great Salt Lake Basin, and always – Montana.

Glen and Jessie Dodge

Glen and Jessie Dodge

Glen Dodge

Glen Dodge

Sally Hedges-Blanquez

For the memory of Glenn and Jessie Dodge, a World War One Vet and his wife, world-class grandparents and farmers in the town of Gate, Washington.

George Draffan on the Global Assault on Forests

George Draffan on the Global Assault on Forests

George Draffan is a researcher, the head of the Public Information Network and the co-author of Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests. He discussed the tax subsidies to corporations who deforest the world, the history of how industrial logging has exacerbated forest fires, and how deforestation is proof Western culture values the rights of corporations over humans, as well as global corporate deforestation, the disproportionate percentage of the world’s tree products the U.S.A. uses, how most of those products are for unwanted packaging and tissues. And some solutions, such as restoration ecology.

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Jerome Rothenberg Interview from 2001

Jerome Rothenberg Interview from 2001

Jerome Rothenberg was a legendary poet, translator and anthologist. His work on various poetry anthologies, including Poems for the Millennium were an inspiration for our Cascadian Zen series. He died on April 21, 2024 and we’re presenting this archive audio of the interview conducted in November 2001 as our latest Cascadian Prophets podcast. R.I.P. Jerome! Our introduction from 2001.

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Cecil Giscombe Interview

Cecil Giscombe Interview

Cecil Giscombe talks about his friendship with BC poet, the late Barry McKinnon, about how people in the US consider Canadian poets and about his own work in an interview conducted by Paul E Nelson June 23, 2024 in Prince George, BC.

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Nicholas Gulig Interview

Nicholas Gulig Interview

The Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Nicholas Gulig discussing the influence legendary poet Lorine Niedecker had on his work, recreating her trip around Lake Superior and discussing the poem’s similarity with an altar.

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Robert Bringhurst Interview Part 3

Robert Bringhurst Interview Part 3

In the third and final part of an October 22, 2023 interview Robert Bringhurst, he talks about blister rust, how bioregionalism is an antidote to bad politics and other subjects connected to his 55 page poem The Ridge,

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Robert Bringhurst The Ridge Interview Part 2

Robert Bringhurst The Ridge Interview Part 2

Through his books, I took lessons from Ezra Pound, who was a schoolmaster at heart and had a lot of things to say about what young poets should read and how they should read it. His politics were bonkers, but his ear was a good ear. I learned a lot from him and from others. But it dawned on me one day that my literary schooling had a gaping hole in the center. Except as a colonial construction, the land I was born in – the whole continent and hemisphere I was born in – was missing from this otherwise detailed map of the literary world. It was as if there were no Native American culture, no Native American literature – and I knew this to be false,

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Robert Bringhurst The Ridge (Interview) Pt. 1

Robert Bringhurst The Ridge (Interview) Pt. 1

The Ridge is a poem in 20 parts, a meditation on a geological feature of Quadra Island, a large island in British Columbia, just north of the Strait of Georgia, and thus the Salish Sea. But the poem is also a meditation on what’s happening on the island and on the planet we share in what’s been described as devastating imagery. I would add that it’s a meditation on the human species as well, at this time in the early Anthropocene.
Robert Bringhurst is the author. Trained initially in the sciences at MIT, he makes his life in the humanities from his home on Quadra Island, where he’s worked in poetry, Native American linguistics and typography. An officer of the Order of Canada, former Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. He’s our guest today to talk about The Ridge. Robert, thanks for your time and hospitality.

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