Life as Rehearsal for the Poem and Poetics as Cosmology 2026 Workshops
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 Winter 2026, we’ll explore a short history of Cascadian poetry, touching on:
-
- Theodore Roethke
- Fred Wah
- Daphne Marlatt
- George Bowering
- Mary Norbert Kõrte
- John Olson
- Phyllis Webb
- Stephen Collis
- Sharon Thesen
- Barry McKinnon
- Cedar Sigo
- George Stanley
- Robin Blaser
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP)
- Sundays 3-5 PM PDT
- March 29, April 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2026
Poetics as Cosmology (PAC)
- Thursdays 3-5 PM PDT
- March 26, April 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2026
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Winter in America (Again Tour
Join us to celebrate Winter in America (Again with a mini-tour around Western Washington! Co-editors Paul Nelson and Katie Sarah Zale will be joined...
Matt Trease Interview (The Outside)
It was Matt Trease who turned my attention to an interview that Eileen Myles gave in 2015 in which she said: There is still a lot of power built up...
Rivers From the Sky: Formation of the Aleutian Low Pressure System & The Origin of Cascadia’s Climate, Waters, and Forests
Photo: Source Nasa Earth Observatory – Low-Pressure System over Northwestern Pacific by David McCloskey Click here to link to nullschool.net...
PPF Address Verification JUNE 22!
PPF Address Verification THIS SUNDAY! We are changing our process for verifying we have the correct mailing address and information for PPF...
Jack Kerouac and Buddhism at Elliott Bay Books
Jack Kerouac and Buddhism at Elliott Bay Book Company Join CPL friends and Beat Generation scholars Jim Jones and Charles Shuttleworth at Elliott...
CPF8 Neukom Vivarium Reading AUDIO
On Sunday November 3, 2024, we opened the last day of the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival with a reading inside Neukom Vivarium at the Olympic...
PPF Donor Workshop Video
This past Wednesday, we hosted a workshop for donors of the 2025 Poetry Postcard Fest, where Paul Nelson provided guidance for having a successful...
Postcards from Mapes Creek Recap!
Yesterday, Sunday June 8, we hosted our 2nd Postcards from Mapes Creek event at Be'er Sheva Park in Rainier Beach. Although the weather was a...
Postcards of the Past and Future
From PPF committee member Margaret Lee: I live in Tulsa on Route 66, where postcards are easy to find. You have seen the kind I mean: that map of...
Two versions of what will be basically the same workshop to discuss the concept of the daysong, how to accomplish one and what it means to the poet who pulls it off.
Thursday, January 22, 2026 3-5 PM PDT
Monday, January 26, 2026 3-5 PM PDT
Workshop Cost: Free, with optional donation of $20-$100.00 (On Zoom)
Daysong Workshops 2026
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
CPF9 Cascadia Mono Poem VIDEO!
Cascadia Mono Poem Reading On October 11, 2025, we closed the second day of the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival with a mono poem. Poets read original...
Tess Gallagher on Surrounded by Weasels and Josie Gray
To preserve a bit of one's art is a true act of love, even if the book of stories that comes out is titled Surrounded by Weasels: Stories from the...
Exercise as a Prerequisite to Creativity – Sue Diewert on PPF
PPF 2025 poet Sue Diewert published a piece on the Poetry Postcard Fest in Sage-ing: The Journal of Creative Aging! You can read Sue's piece and see...
Poetry Postcard Fest 2026
Early Bird Registration
The Poetry Postcard Fest is an annual 56-day experiment in spontaneity and community building. This literarary event is a self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition where people sign up to send 31 original poems on postcards to folks on a participation list before the end of August. The fest was initiated in 2007 by poets Paul E. Nelson and Lana Ayers, and has grown to include poets participating worldwide. Registration opens annually on September 1.
Interview with El Habib Louai at Desolation Peak
On the morning of Wednesday, August 14, 2013, Habib and Paul Nelson awoke before 6A and were hiking with full packs up to “Jack’s Shack.” But after an hour, maybe less, they knew they were not going to make it with those heavy packs.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:40 — 66.8MB)
thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
Click this link for more information about the workshop Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies for Reconnecting to Earth.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 15, 22, March 1, 8, and 15, 2026
thinkingwith: writing strategies for reconnecting to earth
Our current media landscape seems hooked on a doom loop, an apocalyptic dream of human self-annihilation from collapsing nation states and anarchy to climate change to AI terminators, to genocidal warmongering. In order to avoid going down with that ship, we, as humans, are going to need to flip the script, to learn to think differently.
Click this link for more information about the workshop Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies for Reconnecting to Earth.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 15, 22, March 1, 8, and 15, 2026
!
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.