Cascadia Poetics LAB

Poetics as Cosmology
2024-10-03 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Online (Zoom)
Poetics as Cosmology Cascadian Zen Basket 3
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. In Fall 2024, we will explore passages from Cascadian Zen Vol 1 – Basket Three, and related texts and assignments. How can one’s poetics be a cosmology and maintain some experience of the Poetry Postcard Fest, to allow one’s life as a creative participant in the world to rise in one’s personal hierarchy of duties/activities? How is the projective poem an antidote to Silicon Valley attention fracking? $250 for each five week session per person, scholarships are available. Thursdays, 3-5pm Pacific Time (October 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31, 2024).
Thursday Nights, 3-5 PM Pacific Time
October 3 – October 31, 2024
(October 3, 10, 17, 24, and 31)
Link to purchase Cascadian Zen Volume 1

Governance Committee Meeting
2024-10-01 08:00 - 09:00 | Online (Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics Lab Governance Committee meetings via Zoom every first Tuesday of the month at 8 a.m. P.T.

Life as Rehearsal for the Poem
2024-09-29 15:00 - 17:00 | Online (Zoom)
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Cascadian Zen Basket 3
A five week online (Zoom) workshop best suited for continuing participants and more experienced poets (open to open form) in 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 the next postcard season. In Fall 2024, we will explore passages from Cascadian Zen Vol 1 – Basket Three, and related texts and assignments. How can one’s poetics be a cosmology and how can one maintain some experience of the Poetry Postcard Fest, & allow one’s life as a creative participant in the world to rise in one’s personal hierarchy of duties/activities? How is the projective poem an antidote to Silicon Valley attention fracking? $250 for each five week session per person, scholarships are available. Sunday nights, 3-5pm PDT (September 29, October 6, 13, 20, and 27) by invitation only. Preference given to participants who wish to commit to both five-week sessions in the 2024 season.
Sunday nights, 3-5 PM Pacific Time
September 29 – October 27, 2024
September 29
October 6, 13, 20, 27
Link to purchase Cascadian Zen Volume 1

CPL Board Retreat
2024-09-21 08:30 - 16:30 | WA
Board retreat for Cascadia Poetics Lab board members to meet the new grant writer and conduct a strategic plan for the organization.
September 22, 2024
8:30 AM-4:30 PM

Day Song 2024
2024-09-01 | Remote
The Day Song is a writing practice that involves dedicating a full day to writing continuously, with as much solitude as possible and little interruption. It is typically used to close out the Poetry Postcard Fest, so that PPF poets can broaden their compositional range. More information and instruction on the Day Song can be found here: Inside the Day Song and Day Song as Vision Quest.

Cascadian Zen launch on Quadra Island
2024-08-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Community Hall, 970 West Road, Quadra Island, British Columbia, Canada
Cascadian Zen Vol. I Quadra Island Launch
With readings by Jan Zwicky, Robert Bringhurst, Paul Nelson, Jason Wirth and Adelia MacWilliam
WHERE: Community Hall
970 West Road
Quadra Island, B.C.
WHEN: August 26, 2024
7 PM – 9 PM

A Weekend of Cascadian Zen: Cumberland
2024-08-24 14:00 - 2024-08-25 16:00 | The Abbey Studio, 2689 Penrith Ave, Cumberland, British Columbia, Canada
August 24 & 25, 2024 A Weekend of Cascadian Zen: Cumberland
Watershed Press celebrates the Cumberland launch of Cascadian Zen Volume I
August 24 & 25, featuring talks by poets, philosphers, and an indigenous elder, along with poetry readings and a poetry workshop. A project of the Cascadia Poetics LAB.
Saturday 8/24

2 PM – 4:30 PM – A poetry workshop by Seattle poet Paul Nelson, “Poetics as Cosmology” (a workshop on spontaneous composition). Cost: $24-$75
7 PM – 9 PM – A talk, “What is Cascadian Zen?” by the editors of Cascadian Zen (Wirth, Nelson, and MacWilliam). Followed by readings by contributors to the Cascadian Zen anthology and drinks afterward at the Waverly Pub. Suggested donation of $15.00

Sunday 8/25

10 AM – 12 PM – A talk by Indigenous elder Wedlidi Speck, Wedlidi is a member of the Namgis First Nation of Alert Bay and hereditary Head chief of the G’ixsam Clan of the Kwakiutl proper. Suggested donation of $15.00
2 PM – 4 PM – A talk by award-winning poet and philosopher Jan Zwicky on nature poetry and lyric. Suggested donation of $15.00.

Location and Date
The Abbey Studio
2689 Penrith Ave
Cumberland, B.C.
August 24, 2024, 2PM – 4:30PM
August 25, 2024, 10AM-12PM; 2PM-4PM

Cascadian Zen: Mountain Rain Zen Community
2024-08-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Mountain Rain Zen Commuity, 2016 Wall St, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
August 22, 2024 Cascadian Zen: Mountain Rain Zen Community
A talk and reading with the three editors of Cascadian Zen Volume One, Paul Nelson, Jason Wirth, and Adelia MacWilliam accompanied by Daphne Marlatt.
Location and Date
Mountain Rain Zen Community
2016 Wall Street
Vancouver, B.C.
August 22, 2024 7PM – 9PM

Mapes Creek Radiance
2024-08-10 08:00 - 2024-08-14 10:00 | Mapes Creek, 8650 55th Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
Artists and writers will gather together for 5 consecutive summer mornings along Mapes Creek in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of S.E. Seattle. Participants will be able to use this time together in whatever way best suits their creative practice while in community with fellow creatives and this urban waterway. No specific outcome or project is expected or required, only a willingness to gather together and be open to what may arise from our shared creek-side experiences.

Governance Committee Meetings
2024-08-06 08:00 - 09:00, 2024-07-02 08:00 - 09:00, 2024-06-04 08:00 - 09:00 | Online (Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics Lab Governance Committee meetings via Zoom every first Tuesday of the month at 8 a.m.

Postcards from Mapes Creek
2024-07-14 16:30 - 18:00 | Mapes Creek, 8650 55th Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
Celebrate the Poetry Postcard Fest with Postcards from Here, CPL’s first in-person, public poetry postcard gathering! Long-time Poetry Postcard Fest participants Tim Mateer, Abhaya Thomas and Colette Dutton will talk about their approaches to the Poetry Postcard Fest along with local poetry Postcard Fest Committee members Zach Charles and Sally Hedges-Blanquez. Local Poetry Postcard Fest participants will read their postcard poetry on the park stage near Mapes Creek.

Postcards from Here
2024-07-14 11:00 - 15:00 | Olympic Sculpture Park, 2901 Western Ave, Seattle, WA, 98121, United States
Celebrate the Poetry Postcard Fest with Postcards from Here, CPL’s first in-person, public poetry postcard gathering! Long-time Poetry Postcard Fest participants Tim Mateer, Abhaya Thomas and Colette Dutton will talk about their approaches to the Poetry Postcard Fest along with local poetry Postcard Fest Committee members Zach Charles and Sally Hedges-Blanquez.

2024 Poetry Postcard Fest
2024-07-04 - 2024-08-31 | Cascadia Poetics Lab
Join us for 56 days of intuitive writing and join a growing and dedicated community of writers from around the world!
On July 4, participants will receive a list of 31 other poets to whom they will write first-draft postcard poems until the end of August. Participants can buy postcards or make their own, and everyone is encouraged to be as creative as they’d like! Founded by Paul Nelson and Lana Ayers in 2007, the Poetry Postcard Fest is an exercise in spontaneous composition, and a way for poets to not only connect to other poets, but to learn to trust their own creative intuition by avoiding revision. The self-guided structure of the fest allows for flexibility with participant schedules, but it is preferred for all postcards to be sent by August 31.
Registration is open now! Further instruction, resources and ideas can be found on the Poetry Postcard Fest page.

CPL Board Meetings
2024-06-11 18:00 - 19:00 | Online (Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics Lab Board Meetings
Every second Tuesday of the month at 6 PM
More info on CPL’s board available HERE.

Cascadian Zen Oregon Launch at Broadway Books April 30 2024
2024-04-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Broadway Books, 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, 97232, United States
The Oregon launch of Cascadian Zen Monday happens at 6pm, April 30 2024 at Broadway Books in Portland, Oregon, with John Brehm, Robert Michael Pyle, Cate Gable, Ann Spiers and co-editors Paul E Nelson and Jason Wirth.
Broadway Books
1714 NE Broadway
Portland, OR 97232
503-284-1726
www.broadwaybooks.net

The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Winter - Spring 2024)
2024-04-28 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-04-21 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-04-14 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-04-07 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-31 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-24 15:00 - 17:00, 2024-03-10 15:00 | Online (Zoom)
“All times are contemporaneous in the mind.” Ezra Pound’s CANTOS is a tough book. “It can’t all be done in one language,” Pound wrote, and the pages bristle with Greek, Latin, French, Russian, Spanish, & Occitain phrases, stanzas, fragments or bits. For North American poetry the book may be a beacon of “clarity” (as Allen Ginsberg put it), “it helps us to see.” But having a guide to help you through, to see the architecture of the whole, to point out landmarks and sources, helps a great deal. I had my own guides, and enjoy leading people through the territory, having taught it at the Jack Kerouac School many times.
The class will immerse ourselves in “the Pound era,” Imagism, Vorticism, Ideogram composition via the Zoom online platform. We’ll touch on contemporaries, those who Pound knew: HD, WC Williams, WB Yeats, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy &c. Then to ancestral presences: Troubadors of Provence, lyricists of classical Greek, poets of Tang Dynasty China, dancers of Japanese Noh. Homer, Ovid, and Dante will be guides, the course will move through time and space, visiting the planet’s politics & economics, arts & wars. “An epic is a poem that includes history”: the CANTOS.
This will be a collaborative reading session. I (Andrew Schelling) am not an academic expert on the Cantos, but offer presence and insight. I’ve been a reader of Ezra Pound and his poetry for years. Coming at it as an active poet, I will point out structural aspects of the book that can baffle first-time readers. I will point to literary and political themes to help grasp why Pound’s Cantos have been such a tough but indispensable poem since he began it from the “smouldering boundary stones” of Troy and the wreckage of WW I until today. No one can read the book alone; we need to read it together. $200 for 8 sessions.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
March 10, 17, 24, 31
April 7, 14, 21, 28
Some scholarships available.
Andrew Schelling, poet & translator, lives in the mountains of Colorado’s Front Range at 8000 feet, on a ridge between Four Mile and Black Diamond creeks (drain east into the Platte River). Eight books of poetry translated—Sanskrit & related tongues—old time poets. Contention over land use at Bears Ears prompted regular excursions into arid canyons that cradle rock art, ruins, & pre-history. Twenty-odd books include The Facts at Dog Tank Spring, Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Spiritual & Erotic Longing, and Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture.
The Cantos of Ezra Pound Fall-Winter 2023 Workshop
LINK TO REGISTRATION PAGE

Cascadian Zen Village Books Reading
2024-04-21 14:00 - 16:00 | Village Books and Paper Dreams, 1200 11th St, Bellingham, WA, United States
Join the Cascadian Zen Editors at Village Books in Bellingham!
Cascadian Zen Vol. I editors Paul Nelson, Adelia MacWilliam and Jason Wirth will be presenting and reading from the anthology at Village Books and Paper Dreams in Bellingham, WA on April 21, 2024 at 2 P.M! More information on the reading and the ability to reserve your seat ahead of time is available HERE.
Purchase Cascadian Zen Vol. I HERE.

Cascadian Zen Canadian Launch April 20, 2024
2024-04-20 19:00 - 21:00 | People’s Co-op, 1391 Commercial Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L3X5, Canada
We are delighted to announce the Canadian launch of Cascadian Zen at People’s Co-op Bookstore, Saturday, April 20, 2024 at 7pm. The anthology’s three co-editors: Paul E Nelson, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth and Adelia MacWilliam will be presenting along with Daphne Marlatt, Jami Macarty and Kate Braid. What an honor to debut this book in Canada at People’s Co-op!

Beer Sheva Park Grand Opening
2024-04-13 12:00 - 16:00 | Be’er Sheva Park, 8650 55th Ave S, Seattle, WA, 98118, United States
The Cascadia Poetics Lab will be tabling the grand re-opening of Be’er Sheva Park in Rainier Beach to pass out poetry postcards and bookmarks and have books available for sale. The park is amazing and you should see it.

CPL Board Meetings
2024-04-09 18:00 - 19:00 | Online (Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics Lab monthly board meetings
Every second Tuesday of the month at 6 PM
More info on CPL’s board available HERE

The Cantos of Ezra Pound (Winter - Spring 2024)
2024-03-17 15:00 - 17:00 | Online (Zoom)
“All times are contemporaneous in the mind.” Ezra Pound’s CANTOS is a tough book. “It can’t all be done in one language,” Pound wrote, and the pages bristle with Greek, Latin, French, Russian, Spanish, & Occitain phrases, stanzas, fragments or bits. For North American poetry the book may be a beacon of “clarity” (as Allen Ginsberg put it), “it helps us to see.” But having a guide to help you through, to see the architecture of the whole, to point out landmarks and sources, helps a great deal. I had my own guides, and enjoy leading people through the territory, having taught it at the Jack Kerouac School many times.
The class will immerse ourselves in “the Pound era,” Imagism, Vorticism, Ideogram composition via the Zoom online platform. We’ll touch on contemporaries, those who Pound knew: HD, WC Williams, WB Yeats, Marianne Moore, Mina Loy &c. Then to ancestral presences: Troubadors of Provence, lyricists of classical Greek, poets of Tang Dynasty China, dancers of Japanese Noh. Homer, Ovid, and Dante will be guides, the course will move through time and space, visiting the planet’s politics & economics, arts & wars. “An epic is a poem that includes history”: the CANTOS.
This will be a collaborative reading session. I (Andrew Schelling) am not an academic expert on the Cantos, but offer presence and insight. I’ve been a reader of Ezra Pound and his poetry for years. Coming at it as an active poet, I will point out structural aspects of the book that can baffle first-time readers. I will point to literary and political themes to help grasp why Pound’s Cantos have been such a tough but indispensable poem since he began it from the “smouldering boundary stones” of Troy and the wreckage of WW I until today. No one can read the book alone; we need to read it together. $200 for 8 sessions.
Thursdays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
March 7, 14, 21, 28
April 4, 11, 18, 25
Some scholarships available.
Andrew Schelling, poet & translator, lives in the mountains of Colorado’s Front Range at 8000 feet, on a ridge between Four Mile and Black Diamond creeks (drain east into the Platte River). Eight books of poetry translated—Sanskrit & related tongues—old time poets. Contention over land use at Bears Ears prompted regular excursions into arid canyons that cradle rock art, ruins, & pre-history. Twenty-odd books include The Facts at Dog Tank Spring, Love and the Turning Seasons: India’s Poetry of Spiritual & Erotic Longing, and Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture.
The Cantos of Ezra Pound Fall-Winter 2023 Workshop
LINK TO REGISTRATION PAGE

CPL Board Meetings
2024-03-12 18:00 - 19:00 | Online (Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics Lab Board Meetings
Every second Tuesday of the month at 6 PM
More info on CPL’s board available HERE
