Postcards for Incarcerated Poets
We would like to invite you and your friends to join us in the Zoom room on Wednesday, May 21, from 6-7:30pm PST for a panel on spontaneous composition, community building, and how postcarding can bring those two things together! Click here to Learn More.
Thank you
We would like to thank all supporters who celebrated Give Big 2025 by donating to Cascadia Poetics Lab! It is through your generous donations that Cascadia Poetics Lab empowers people to practice poetry & build community in ways that deepen connection to place, self, and the present moment.
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Postcard Reflections by Zach Charles
From PPF committee member Zach Charles: I recently had the privilege and honor to interview Paul E Nelson, Founder of the Cascadia Poetics Lab and co-founder of the Poetry Postcard Fest with Lana...
CPF8 Cascadian Zen Vol. II Reading VIDEO
Cascadian Zen Vol. II at the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival On November 2, 2024, we celebrated the publication of Cascadian Zen Vol. II by Watershed Press at the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival with a...
Give BIG to Cascadia Poetics Lab May 6-7!
Give Big to Cascadia Poetics Lab May 6-7! Celebrate Give Big 2025 by donating to Cascadia Poetics Lab! Cascadia Poetics Lab was established in 1993 by founding director Paul E. Nelson, and has...
Postcards in Rainier Beach
Happy spring! We're gearing up for another exciting summer of postcard poetry, and have some great opportunities for connecting with postcard poets and spreading the love for postcard poetry soon!...
Thank You 4Culture
Cascadia Poetics LAB Expresses Appreciation to 4Culture for Doors Open Sustained Support Funding Grant “It’s a home run for culture in this country….This is going to be completely transformational,...
Spring Thoughts
From PPF Committee member Ina Roy-Faderman: in the northern hemisphere, we’re getting more sunshine. while Tennyson (bless him)* described spring as the season where young men’s interests “lightly...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Denny Stern: Taiwan Etudes
From Postcard Poet Denny Stern: Taiwan Etudes Series Visiting Taipei in March we stumbled upon a post card intensive solo exhibit by Taiwanese artist Apex Lin, Pang-Soong. I estimated there to be...
Cascadia Poetics Lab in Schools
In March of 2025, Cascadia Poetics Lab founding director Paul E. Nelson was a guest speaker and workshop facilitator at Jackson High School in Everett and Cristo Rey High School in Seattle, leading...
Give BIG PPF & Your Postcard Testimonials!
Support Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest May 6-7 Thank you for being a postcard poet! We are gearing up for another summer of postcards and postcard events, more information on the way!...

Interview with Paul Nelson on the Poetry Postcard Fest
Sam Hamill said “Over the past decade or so, no one has done more for poetry in the Pacific Northwest than has Paul Nelson.” With the Poetry Postcard Fest, now in its 19th year, that influence is spreading well beyond the Cascadia bioregion and all over the world.
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.


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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.