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.
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Deborah Poe on “flagging the apocalypse pageantry”
How does one make literary art about this time in history that avoids rhetoric and facile political positioning in this era of the spectacle? How...
Carletta Carrington Wilson: Object Lessons
On view at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art this summer is Carletta Carrington Wilson is Object Lessons. Poet/Fabric Artist/Bookmaker Carletta...
An Essay on CPL by Diana Elser
I came across this in my journal today. (See below.) Now that Diana Elser has left the board to focus on her writing, I thought it was an excellent...
CPL @ ScribFest
The Cascadia Poetics Lab is delighted to participate in ScribFest, June 20 & 21, 2026, at Town Hall. From the ScribLab website: "ScribFest...
Postcarding & Daysinging (A Workshop)
Today, May 4, 2026, marks the last month of Earlybird Registration for the 20th Poetry Postcard Fest. The suggested donation will go up to $25 after...
Zhang Er on First Mountain
Sam Hamill wrote in his final book blurb: “Zhang Er brings us startling 'burial ground poems' from Chinese that are striking in their perspective...
Interview with Postcard Poet Laura Gamache
Part of the Cascadia 2050 mission is: to inspire artists and poets of the next generation to consider bioregionalism and intuitive poetic approach...
Writing Activism from Within a Texas Prison (By Katie Sarah Zale)
Kwaneta Harris is an incarcerated journalist in a Texas prison for women in Gatesville, where women on death row are also housed. Recently named a...
Somos Ajolotes Launch at Seattle U May 18
CPL Board member Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is the editor of a new bilingual poetry anthology, Somos Ajolotes or We're All Axolotles. That all...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Postcarding & DaySinging Workshop Video
We had a full house at the Flag Day 2026 online workshop for poets interested in making the most out of the summer Poetry Postcard Fest and the end...
Interview with Finn Menzies
This interview with Finn Menzies is an archival interview from November, 2017. Finn Menzies is an out transgender teacher in Seattle, WA. His work...
Postcards from Chaos
There are three weeks before the 20th Poetry Postcard Fest begins. Cumberland, BC and Cortes Island postcarder Scott Lawrance sends an article from...
Help bring conversations with poets, authors, Indigenous leaders, and other culture workers to listeners around the world.
major sponsorship – $5,000 annually
Receive sponsor recognition at the beginning and end of each podcast episode produced during your sponsorship year. Those acknowledgements remain part of the recordings permanently.
SUPPORT THE
Cascadian Prophets Podcast
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.
Michael Holloman on Clyfford Still in Cascadia
Michael Holloman (AKA M. Yellowbear) is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Indian Reservation, located in Northeastern Washington State. A tenured Professor in the Department of Art at Washington State University in Pullman, he discussed Abstract Expressionist legend Clyfford Still’s transformative experience as co-founder of the Nespelem Art Colony.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:04 — 85.2MB)
!
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.