Empowering people to practice poetry & deepen connections to place, self & the present moment.
We believe 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.
Interview with Mary Norbert Körte (pt 3)
This is part 3 of a multi part interview. Listen to part 2 here, and part 1 here.
After an initial interview, former Catholic Nun Mary Norbert Körte requested a follow up discussion because she felt she had been too harsh on her family. With the fire crackling in the background, she elaborated on the topic, including how her mother worried because she was hanging out with “people who commit adultery and don’t eat right.” In this part of the interview, she discussed her connection with the local tribal networks as an English teacher and in other positions, her responses to Michael McClure’s Ghost Tantras, Hunter Thompson, Gertrude Stein’s notion that “we feel the same inside all our lives” and read two of her poems, “Tell the Doc” and “The Cult of Firewood.”
To hear the original audio from this interview, click here.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
Want to write a poem but aren’t sure where to begin? Try our workshop: I want to write a poem (but don’t know how).
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 32:00 — 44.0MB)
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We recognize that our home office is on the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Muckleshoot and other Coastal Salish tribes. Our dedication to bioregionalism is to co-exist on this land in the sacred manner as practiced by the traditional ways of these indigenous people.
Statement on Ahimsa by Board Member Jason Wirth
January 20, 2021
The (Poetry Postcard Fest) and the Cascadia Poetry Festival (are) connected… When you’re writing poetry… part of poetry is the craft… rules (to be understood) in a variety of contexts… (Craft is…) a necessary but not sufficient condition. You’re also… experiencing your mind, at a very deep level. And that mind as you experience it more deeply, is not in a vacuum… It’s now and here… rooted in the socio-economic and ecological conditions that make it possible. And participating in… the spiritual exercise of these postcards, is already entering into… a deep bioregional awakening and conversion. In a way we’re trying for something like a spiritual revolution, and that poetry is not just an interesting thing that you can do, if you like. It’s a fundamental exercise of being here in a less harmful way… it’s a deep ahimsa, a deep practice of non-harming and cultivation. And so, it’s all connected… And… our ambition is… trying to have a mind that would be capable, of being in this place in a better way… We’re going to live or die, by how we come down on these issues going forward.