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.
Zhang Er on First Mountain
Sam Hamill wrote in his final book blurb: “Zhang Er brings us startling ‘burial ground poems’ from Chinese that are striking in their perspective and elegant in style and presentation. They represent a poetic sensibility that is unique and often profound, and I read them with great surprise and gratitude.”
Zhang Er, a poet and opera librettist from Beijing, is the author of many books of poetry in Chinese, 2017’s Closest to You, also Verses on Bird and So Translating Rivers and Cities. She has co-edited Another Kind of Nation: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese Poetry and her opera libretti in English include Moon in the Mirror and Fiery Jade: Cai Yan. In this April 2019 interview she discussed her book First Mountain (Zephyr Press), co-translated from her original Chinese with Joseph Donahue.
To hear the original audio of 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.
To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 59:13 — 81.3MB)
Thank You to Our Partners and Alliances:
!
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.