Cascadia Poetry Festival 10
The 10th Cascadia Poetry Festival is set for October 9-11, 2026, at the Rainier Beach Community Club and other local venues. CPF is a gathering of poets and bioregionalists, exploring poetry and its connection to environmental, political, historical, and sociological pursuits within the Cascadia bioregion as defined by David McCloskey. The festival aims to consider how prioritizing natural and cultural boundaries, rather than arbitrary political ones, can address climate change and other issues. Cascadia Poetics LAB Founders Circle Members will be given the first opportunity to purchase an all-access Gold Pass.
This will be the second workshop aiming to demystify the process of writing poetry, and, as the CPL and Cascadia 2050 missions say, “empower people to practice poetry…”
Click this link for more information about the workshop I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How)
Saturday September 26, 2026, 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
Cost: free, suggested donation $25.
I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How): A Cascadia 2050 workshop
I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How): A Cascadia 2050 workshop
This will be the second workshop aiming to demystify the process of writing poetry, and, as the CPL and Cascadia 2050 missions say, “empower people to practice poetry…”
Click this link for more information about the workshop I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How)
Saturday September 26, 2026, 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
Cost: free, suggested donation $25.
Poet as Radio: Writing from Intuition
A 5-week online poetry workshop designed for folks with any/no level of experience with poetry and with an interest in non-religious spirituality and the occult.
Click this link for more information about the workshop: Poet As Radio: Writing From Intuition
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
October 15 – November 15, 2026
Cost: suggested donation $125.
Poet as Radio: Writing from Intuition
A 5-week online poetry workshop designed for folks with any/no level of experience with poetry and with an interest in non-religious spirituality and the occult.
Click this link for more information about the workshop: Poet As Radio: Writing From Intuition
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
October 15 – November 15, 2026
Cost: suggested donation $125.
Poetry as Neuro-Resilience
Explore practices that help keep consciousness attuned to the realities of the world – and discover how poetry can emerge from that depth. In this five-week workshop, Paul E. Nelson guides participants through readings, interviews, journaling, and writing exercise rooted in the Cascadia bioregion. All levels are welcome; openness and a commitment to the practice are all that’s required.
Learn more about Poetry as Neuro-Resilience →
Suggested donation: $130–$275
Saturday Cohort
Saturdays 3-5 PM Pacific Time
November 21, 2026 – December 19, 2026
Sunday Cohort
Sundays 3-5 PM Pacific Time
November 22, 2026 – December 20, 2026
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Postcard Lists and Open House July 4!
Happy postcard season! Postcard lists go out this Friday, July 4! If you have already confirmed your mailing address with us, you are good to go! If...
Postcards at the Olympic Sculpture Park
Join us for another summer Poetry Postcard Fest event! On July 13, 2025 from 11 AM-3 PM PST, Cascadia Poetics Lab will be tabling at the Olympic...
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...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Ian Boyden and Sam Hamill on Habitations
On November 10, 2012, Sam Hamill and Ian Boyden joined together to do an interview on Hamill's chapbook Border Songs, as well as Habitations, a...
CPL Featured Poet – Martha Clarkson
CPL Featured Poets To continue to extend our gratitude to the generosity of our community, Cascadia Poetics Lab is featuring the work of our...
Cascadia 2050 in Vancouver!
On Friday, January 31 and Friday, February 6, Cascadia 2050 members Zach Charles, Ankober Yewondwossen and myself (Veronica Martinez) drove to...
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Poetry Postcard Fest 2026
Registration is closed
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.
Jan 2, 2026 Interview with Cornelius Eady on Proof
You’d expect poetry to be part of an event inaugurating such a figure and that the poem offered for the occasion would be bland, written by a committee, or full of platitudes, but the poem delivered yesterday matched perfectly the tone of a campaign that appears to be built on mutual respect, vision, human rights and empathy.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:22 — 50.0MB)
In Honor of David McCloskey “The Father of Cascadia”
David McCloskey passed away on July 3. In honor of his lifetime of work to create and spread a culture that was deeply connected to the Cascadian bioregion, Cascadian Prophets, which owes more than just its name to his work, we want to share this interview from October, 2013. Find it transcribed on our website.
Listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
In Honor of David McCloskey "The Father of Cascadia"
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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.