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
WATCH The Cantos of Ezra Pound with Andrew Schelling!
WATCH Andrew Schelling teach The Cantos by Ezra Pound! CPL has teamed up with poet, translator and educator Andrew Schelling to host a workshop exploring The Cantos by Ezra Pound. This Zoom...
Roxi Power Interview
It may have taken 60 years, deaths of her sister and mother and a season of catastrophic forest fires to bring it out, but Roxi Power has a book of poems and it is entitled The Songs That Objects...
Cascadia Poetics Lab 30th Anniversary Celebration!
Celebrate 30 years of Cascadia Poetics Lab with us! Celebrate 30 years of Cascadia Poetics Lab and the launch of Cascadian Prophets, a collection of CPL founder Paul Nelson's interviews with...
THE DOUBLE WALLS OF CASCADIA
by David McCloskey There’s both a Western Wall and an Eastern Wall marking Cascadia’s boundaries…. The Western Wall. Cascadia rises as a great flying arc of landscapes perched on the verge of...
NW Dharma Association on Cascadian Zen
Cascadian Zen has received a wonderful reception from the regional Zen community. The Northwest Dharma Association published a blog post about the book. An excerpt: The original idea for the book...
Cascadian Zen Reading at Arundel Books (with audio!)
On Friday, January 19, 2024 at 7pm, Arundel Books hosted a reading from Cascadian Zen. Two of the books three editors were there, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth and your humble narrator in his first public...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Postcards from Here Highlights!
Postcards from Here and Postcards from Mapes Creek Highlights! On July 14, 2024, we hosted our first IN PERSON Poetry Postcard Fest events: Postcards from Here and Postcards from Mapes Creek!...
Press Release: CASCADIA POETICS LAB TO HOST POSTCARDS FROM MAPES CREEK EVENT
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 9, 2024Contact: Paul E. Nelson, pen@cascadiapoeticslab.org CASCADIA POETICS LAB TO HOST POSTCARDS FROM MAPES CREEK EVENT By Veronica Martinez, Administrative Assistant,...
Postcards From Mapes Creek
Postcards From Mapes Creek Join us next to Mapes Creek at 4:30 Sunday, July 14, 2024, as Tim Mateer, of Austin, TX, Abhaya Thomas of Portland, OR, and Colette Dutton of Yellville, AR, talk about...
Robert Bringhurst The Ridge (Interview) Pt. 1
The Ridge is a poem in 20 parts, a meditation on a geological feature of Quadra Island, a large island in British Columbia, just north of the Strait of Georgia, and thus the Salish Sea. But the poem is also a meditation on what’s happening on the island and on the planet we share in what’s been described as devastating imagery. I would add that it’s a meditation on the human species as well, at this time in the early Anthropocene.
Robert Bringhurst is the author. Trained initially in the sciences at MIT, he makes his life in the humanities from his home on Quadra Island, where he’s worked in poetry, Native American linguistics and typography. An officer of the Order of Canada, former Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence. He’s our guest today to talk about The Ridge. Robert, thanks for your time and hospitality.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download ()
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.