Cascadia Poetics LAB

Cascadian Zen Reading at Elliott Bay Book Company
2023-12-04 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Elliott Bay Book Compay, 1521 10th Ave, Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Celebrate Cascadian Zen Vol. I with us at Elliott Bay Book Company!
We will be hosting a presentation and reading for Cascadian Zen Vol. I at Elliott Bay Book Company in Capitol Hill, Seattle!
Celebrate the publication of our poetry anthology featuring distinguished writers and artists of the Cascadia bioregion with us on December 4, 2023. The reading will feature CZ editors Paul Nelson, Dr. Jason Wirth and Adelia MacWilliam.

The Cantos of Ezra Pound
2023-12-03 15:00 - 16:30, 2023-11-26 15:00 - 16:30, 2023-11-19 15:00 - 16:30 | 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. 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, 3-4:30 PM Pacific Time
Nov 19 & 26,
December 3, 10 & 17
Jan 7, 14 & 21
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.

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Giving Tuesday
2023-11-28 | Cascadia Poetics Lab
Celebrate radical generosity
Giving Tuesday is a national movement held every year on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving with the intention of spreading generosity. Everyone is encouraged to participate however they can, and the Giving Tuesday website has multiple ideas for individuals and organizations to give today.
Cascadia Poetics Lab is a nonprofit organization with the mission of empowering people to practice poetry and deepen connections to place, self and the present moment. Through our programs, we aim to converge self-knowledge, bioregionalism and creativity. Donations to Cascadia Poetics Lab are always welcome and appreciated! Happy Giving!

Cascadian Zen Launch in Waitsburg
2023-11-24 19:00 - 21:00 | The Royal Block, 222 MAIN STREET, WAITSBURG, WA, 99361, United States
Seattle-based poetry nonprofit Cascadia Poetics Lab anticipates multiple celebrations throughout the Cascadia bioregion to celebrate the release of their poetry anthology Cascadian Zen Vol. I, published by Watershed Press. Among these celebrations will be a launch event at the Royal Block, a hotel and art event space based in Waitsburg, WA. The event will be taking place on November 24, 2023 at 7 P.M. and is open to the public! READ MORE.

Cascadian Zen Event at the Royal Block
2023-11-24 19:00 - 20:00 | The Royal Block, 222 MAIN STREET, WAITSBURG, WA, 99361, United States
We are hosting a launch event for Cascadian Zen Vol. I at the Royal Block!
To celebrate the release of Cascadian Zen Vol. I, we will be hosting a launch event at the Royal Block, a hotel and art space in Waitsburg, WA. Presenting and reading at this event will be Adelia MacWilliam, Dr. Jason Wirth, Paul Nelson and Sharon Thesen. Celebrate our accomplishment in poetry and place with us by joining the presenters at the event!

Poetics As Cosmology Overland to Levertov
2023-11-16 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-11-09 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-11-02 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-26 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-19 16:00 - 18:00 | Online (Zoom)
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for people who have some spontaneous poetry composition experience & want to go deep. Join Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson in a lively course designed to help you tap into deeper levels of knowing that can begin inform your non-writing life & reduce reliance on editing. Some theory to understand the poetics of 20th/21st c approaches to spontaneous composition (see below) some writing exercises, discussion and between class homework. The work of Denise Levertov’s Overland to the Islands will be discussed each week as well as work from poets like, Michael McClure, Wanda Coleman, Brenda Hillman, Nate Mackey, Robert Duncan, Robin Blaser and others. along with concepts such as seriality, & investigative poetics & how to write more by getting the most out of first drafts. There will be reading, writing and other assigned materials/exercises available a week before the course begins and each week after.
Thursdays, 4-6pm Pacific Time
Oct 19 & 26 and Nov 2, 9, & 16. $250.
Some scholarships available.
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Life As Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP) Overland to Levertov
2023-11-12 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-11-05 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-29 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-22 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-10-15 16:00 - 18:00 | Online (Zoom)
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for 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. This season we add a component of Spiritual Ecology, which will consist of weekly field work designed to deepen participants connection to place. We will also study Denise Levertov’s Overland to the Islands. (Levertov would have turned 100 October 24, 2023.) How can one’s poetics be a cosmology and maintain some experience of the Poetry Postcard Fest, to allow one’s life as a poet to rise in one’s personal hierarchy of duties/activities? $250 for each five week session per person, scholarships are available. Sunday nights, 4-6pm (Oct 15, 22, 29 & Nov 5 & 12) by invitation only. Max ten participants. Preference given to participants who wish to commit to all three five week sessions in the 2023/2024 season.
Sunday nights, 4-6 PM Pacific Time
Oct 15, 22, 29 & Nov 5 & 12
by invitation only
COURSE MATERIALS WEEK ONE, Sunday, October 15, 2023, 4-6pm PDT
READ: https://orionmagazine.org/article/the-air-aware/
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TESS GALLAGHER WORKSHOP Stimulating the Satori Moment in Poems
2023-10-07 15:00 - 16:30 | Spring Street Center, 1101 15th Av., Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Satori is a Japanese Zen Buddhist term for awakening comprehension: deep understanding. It is derived from the Japanese verb satoru, “to know”. But rather than intending a philosophical concept of knowledge, satori concentrates instead on “acquiring of a new point of view in our dealings with life and the world.” It is another name for reaching Enlightenment. In poetry it means a moment (often culminatingmoment), when the poem wakes us up, startles us into a new awareness.This class will ask writers to take simple elements such as the moon, water, a bridge—or other sets of catalysts and attempt to stimulate this moment. As example I give my own poem:

Another famous example would be James Wright’s poem “A Blessing” which ends: “Suddenly I realize/That if I stepped out of my body I would break/ Into blossom.”
This word “suddenly” is a clue to the effect the satori moment creates. One suddenly is overtaken by a feeling, a conjunction of forces, a lightning strike of transport that breaks open the moment so freshly one can’t ever think the same way again. Please bring and share your satori moment poems if you have already written some, but the real objective will be ultimately to write some fresh poems in this mind andfrom them to realize in discussion how that moment is taking place.
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Cascadian Zen Vol. I Launch Event
2023-10-06 19:00 - 20:00 | Spring Street Center, 1101 15th Av., Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
Image Background: EcoRegions of Cascadia, Copyright © 2022 David McCloskey, Cascadia Institute; available from Feathered Star Productions.
Join us for the publication celebration of the Vol. I of Cascadian Zen: Bioregional Writings on Cascadia Here & Now. Meet the editors, designer, and some of the contributing artists and writers! This event will occur on the first day of the 7th Cascadia Poetry Festival.
Click here for more information on Cascadian Zen.
Background: EcoRegions of Cascadia, Copyright © 2022 David McCloskey, Cascadia Institute; available from Feathered Star Productions.

7th Cascadia Poetry Festival
2023-10-06 09:00 - 2023-10-08 17:00 | Spring Street Center, 1101 15th Av., Seattle, WA, 98122, United States
October 6 – 8, 2023
Cascadia Poetics LAB Founders Circle Members
will be given the first opportunity to purchase an all-access Gold Pass
Click here for more information about the 7th Cascadia Poetry Festival

This event will be hosted at:
Spring Street Center
1101 15th Ave.
Seattle, WA 98122

Fall Founder's Circle Renewal
2023-09-27 | Cascadia Poetics Lab
Renewal of Founders Circle membership starts NOW, in alignment with the Autumn Equinox and a time in which we experience an equal balance between day and night. Moving with the changing seasons, we shift our mindsets towards the attitudes of fall: harvest, abundance, togetherness. As the angle of light deepens, we celebrate the 7th Cascadia Poetry Festival and the release of our iconic anthology, Cascadian Zen Vol. I and we are filled with gratitude for the abundance of community, poetry and art that Cascadia Poetics Lab seeks to promote and celebrate through our activities.

Founder’s Circle supporters are the backbone of this organization, founded in 1993 and re-branded September 1, 2021 to better reflect current times through “empowering people to practice poetry and deepen connections to place, self and the present moment.” The Founders Circle asks for an annual donation of $100 (or more) for general use in meeting our mission. Anything donated beyond this initial $100 can be assigned to a specific Cascadia Poetics Lab project chosen by the donor. Founders Circle members receive exclusive Cascadia Poetics Lab benefits: the opportunity for early-bird purchase of a Gold Pass for our Cascadia Poetry Festivals (next one in November 2024), and a choice of 1 of 3 books: Samthology, American Prophets, or Cascadian Prophets.

We appreciate your support for our organizations and major offerings, like the Poetry Postcard Fest, the Cascadian Prophets podcast and archives, the Cascadia Poetry Festival and our publishing ventures. In a small organization like ours, a little goes a long way.

Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop - Sundays
2023-05-28 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-05-21 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-05-07 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-04-30 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-04-23 16:00 - 18:00, 2023-03-26 16:00 - 18:00 | Online (Zoom)
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop
Sundays
Life As Rehearsal for the Poem is a workshop by invitation only. Poetry Postcard Fest participants who have completed at least one five-week Poetics as Cosmology workshop are eligible.
Registration information coming soon

I Sing The Salmon Home Launch
2023-04-08 14:00 - 16:00 | Seattle Public Library, 1000 Fourth Ave., Seattle, WA, 98104, United States

Poetics as Cosmology (Middle Brenda Week 5)
2023-04-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Paul’s Zoom, WA, 98118, United States
Via Zoom
March 2, 16, 23, 30 & April 6, 2023
4-6pm PDT
Content, weekly prompts, reading and listening assignments and pages 62-120 in the latest book by Brenda Hillman In A Few Minutes Before Later.
https://paulenelson.com/middle-brenda/

Poetics as Cosmology (Middle Brenda Week 4)
2023-03-30 16:00 - 18:00
