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
On Our 30th Anniversary
Help Celebrate our 30th Anniversary! Cascadia Poetics LAB is getting ready to celebrate our 30th Anniversary on February 2, 2024! This event will feature the official launch of Cascadian Prophets...
Giving Tuesday 2023
Dear Postcard Fest Poet, Today we celebrate Giving Tuesday, the international day of giving! Giving Tuesday promotes radical generosity around the world - a chance for both individuals and groups to...
Giving Tuesday 2023
Dear Cascadia Poetics Lab supporters, Today we celebrate Giving Tuesday, the international day of giving! Giving Tuesday promotes radical generosity around the world - a chance for both individuals...
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs Sociology Interview
Cascadia Poetics Lab board member Dr. Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs interview with sociology blog Sociology Group In the interview, Gutiérrez y Muhs discusses her journey from child farmworker to a...
Cascadian Zen to be Featured @ Winekraft & Time Enough Books
To celebrate the release of their omnibus anthology Cascadian Zen: Writings from Cascadia in the Here and Now, Vol. I, Watershed Press, the Seattle-based nonprofit Cascadia Poetics Lab is holding...
Success of 2023 Cascadia Poetry Festival 7
Cascadia Poetry Festival 7 This year's Cascadia Poetry Festival was a great success, thanks to participants, volunteers, sponsors. The festival featured the long anticipated launch of Cascadian Zen...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Postcards From Here
Postcards From Here Cascadia Poetics Lab will be celebrating the Poetry Postcard Fest with its first in-person postcard event on July 14, 2024 at 11 A.M. PDT at the Olympic Sculpture Park in...
Wish You Were Here (Drew Myron)
It’s postcard season, and I’m ready! Once, a young friend went to Europe. “Send me a postcard,” I said as she departed. She arrived in the foreign country, purchased a postcard, and had no idea what...
Eyeballin’ It with Kat: One Poet’s Approach to Writing Postcard Poems
Eyeballin’ It with Kat: One Poet’s Approach to Writing Postcard Poems by Kat Bodrie I call my method for hanging framed pictures “Eyeballin’ It with Kat.” (I told my husband it’ll be the name of my...
Stephen Thomas Interview Part 2
The second half of our July 4, 2023 interview with Steven Thomas, former Seattle poet, co-founder of the Seattle Poetry Festival and former teacher at University Prep. He discussed his life, struggles with addictions, move to Germany and his latest book of poetry What is Between Us.
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:
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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.