The Poetics of Cascadian Land and Water with Harold Rhenisch
Saturdays 3-5 PM PST
ONLINE
January 10, 17, 24, 31 & Feb. 7
$125
REGISTER HERE
This is a workshop in poetic fusion. Cascadia began with a language that united cultures: Chinook Wawa. This series of workshops expands its gift of integration between the ancient languages of the Columbia and its new languages, French and English. To do so, it draws in American, Canadian, Wawa and North European poetries, with a concentration on opening doorways. The first workshop explores Chinook Wawa to place traditions of language and poetry within Cascadian place, opening doors for Wawa to lead us closer to land and water. The second workshop explores the Old Norse language of land and sea that Cascadia’s first Europeans, northmen from the Scottish islands, brought to the Columbia. It is a workshop in English as an Indigenous language, opening doors for one-on-one conversations with other languages of the land. The third workshop explores the contributions of various French dialects and cultures, which arrived simultaneously from Quebec, le-Pays-d’en-Haut and Louisiana. It is a workshop in the breadth of language as civic discourse. It mines American (think: Ezra Pound and Denise Levertov) and British Columbian (think: Charles Lillard and Daphne Marlatt) models for techniques of integration across dictions, allowing history to be written on Cascadian terms. The fourth workshop explores the transcripts of the Walla Walla Treaty Council of 1855. This all-important council was conducted in Wawa and recorded in English. The workshop explores the differences between American and Indigenous uses of Wawa at the council and then applies them to expansions of current poetic models in what has long been a land of translation. Black history at Hanford is part of this story. The fifth workshop references integrative traditions from British Columbia which fuse British and American poetic traditions. It explores line breaks in detail and how they guide bodies moving in space. Our goal overall is to speak as Cascadians, from here and from our rich linguistic tradition, emphasizing voice, person to person, people to land, and the past to an integrative future.