Cascadia Poetics LAB
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.
Poet, translator, editor, Zen Buddhist, co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and activist for Poets Against (the)War, Sam Hamill devoted his whole life to the practice of writing poetry. The following topics are foundational for this generative workshop: how ancient poetic traditions still define quality poetry, the Beat poets, the long poetic sequence, poetry as political, and the role of reflection and emotion. Facilitator Katie Sarah Zale is writing a biography on Hamill’s life and legacy.
Saturdays 2-4:00 PM Pacific Time
February 8 – March 8, 2025
Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior
Sam Hamill’s Narrow Road to the Interior
Poet, translator, editor, Zen Buddhist, co-founder of Copper Canyon Press, and activist for Poets Against (the)War, Sam Hamill devoted his whole life to the practice of writing poetry. The following topics are foundational for this generative workshop: how ancient poetic traditions still define quality poetry, the Beat poets, the long poetic sequence, poetry as political, and the role of reflection and emotion. Facilitator Katie Sarah Zale is writing a biography on Hamill’s life and legacy.
Saturdays 2-4:00 PM Pacific Time
February 8 – March 8, 2025
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.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
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.
This lab will focus on writing strategies, applicable for poetry or prose, for breaking the spell that objectifies and cuts us off from the earth and from place and all the living beings that we (often) obliviously live in relationship with. We’ll do that by intentionally widening the socially-imposed conventions of “normal” perception via some minor alterations to our daily writing practices.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 23 – March 23, 2025
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
CPL at Mapes Creek (dxʷwuqʷəb)
The Cascadia Poetics Lab is thrilled to be working with a community group here in Rainier Beach that seeks to create greater awareness of e creek that comes out of the ground south of legendary...
Obituary for Postcard Poet Marit Saltrønes
Obituary for Postcard Poet Marit Saltrønes: Marit Saltrønes (Chris Ness)April 25, 1954 - January 2, 2024 Late in the evening of January 2, Marit died in her apartment at Pike Place Market. Marit’s...
This Damned Time Change (By Ina)
From PPF Board Member Ina Roy-Faderman: Oh, I hate this time change, harbinger of longer days. For me, summer is rough. I thrive in the cool and the rain, which we get plenty of in the winters of...
Leggy Brucker- Poems for my mother
Poems for my mother by postcard poet Allegra Brucker Poetry Postcard Festival veteran Allegra Brucker shared this beautiful video Poems for my mother, a piece made by transforming an old board book...
Tessa Hulls Interview Feeding Ghosts
Tessa Hulls and I met when she donated a poster for the 2013 edition of the Allen Ginsberg Open Mic Poetry marathon. On February 20, 2024 I caught up with her on Zoom to discuss her first book, a...
Support the Cascadian Prophets Podcast!
The Cascadian Prophets Podcast Needs Support! Since 1993, Paul Nelson and Cascadia Poetics Lab have produced over 700 hours of interview programming with legendary poets, artists, authors, activists...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
This Fest is For the Birds
This Fest is For the Birds From PPF committee member Margaret Lee: I arose this morning before the full moon had set. Driving west and then south en route to Deep Fork, my shifting vantage showed me...
Cascadian Zen: Mountain Zen Rain Community Event
August 22, 2024 Cascadian Zen: Mountain Zen Rain Community Event A talk and reading with the three editors of Cascadian Zen Volume One, Paul Nelson, Jason Wirth, and Adelia MacWilliam accompanied...
18th Poetry Postcard Fest Stats
Updates and Stats for the 18th Poetry Postcard Fest We hope you are all enjoying the 18th Poetry Postcard Fest! This year, we celebrate a RECORD BREAKING amount of participants! We are so grateful...
Robert Bringhurst Interview Part 3
In the third and final part of an October 22, 2023 interview Robert Bringhurst, he talks about blister rust, how bioregionalism is an antidote to bad politics and other subjects connected to his 55 page poem The Ridge,
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:15 — 36.1MB)
Poetry Postcard Fest
An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.
Poetry Postcard Fest
An annual 56 day self-guided workshop in spontaneous composition and community-building.
Thank you
for an enormously sucessful 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival! Make plans for Cascadia Poetry Festival 9 at the Hugo House and other venues October 3, 4, and 5, 2025.
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.