I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How): A Cascadia 2050 workshop
On Saturday, June 27, from 3 – 5pm, Cascadia 2050 will be hosting a workshop titled: I Want to Write a Poem (But Don’t Know How). Cost: free, suggested donation $25. Sign up here.
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
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...
Aldon Nielsen on Choruses for Gil Scott-Heron
Aldon Lynn Nielsen says the time is right to say it straight, Gil Scott-Heron should be recognized as an important writer. As the George and Barbara...
20th annual Poetry Postcard Fest Special Project
Hello Postcarders, Bioregionalists, Poets, et.al, I am writing you today on behalf of Cascadia 2050 to invite you to participate in a special...
CJ Prince Has Passed
Longtime Bellingham, WA postcard poet CJ Prince has lost her battle with cancer. The news went out on her Facebook page via her Grandchild and Denny...
Postcards at Kubota Garden
The Cascadia 2050 crew will continue the series of springtime Poetry Postcard Activations Saturday, April 18, from 11a - 1p at Kubota Garden, a...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
The Last Poetry Postcard Fest Activation of 2026
11a-1p, Saturday, June 6 is your last time to hang out with other postcard poets, learn about the area's local history and create some collages for...
Wang Ping on the Kinship of Rivers
If you were to give the third or fourth longest river in the world a wish, it might simply to run free or to be clean and pure again. In the summer...
Last 2026 Poetry Postcard Activation June 6 11a-1pm
Our last Poetry Postcard Activation of the year is set for Saturday, June 6, 2026, at Pritchard Beach. We'll have postcard collage supplies, a...
Poetry Postcard Fest 2026
Early Bird Registration
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.
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 does one avoid being consumed by the simultaneous collapse of so many systems — some being eviscerated by people in positions designed to protect such systems? Deborah Poe has some idea based on her submission to the upcoming anthology Winter in America (Still.
Deborah is the author of several books of poetry including keep, Elements, and Our Parenthetical Ontology, as well as a novella in verse, Hélène. Her visual works–video poems and handmade book objects–have been exhibited throughout the US. She lives on stolen Coast Salish land, specifically the ancestral homeland of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot People.
Check out more of what the Lab does here, and listen to more current and archival podcasts on Spotify or on our website.
To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer, check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:33 — 36.5MB)
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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.