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
Heavy Lifting Art Book (Feilcia Rice, Theresa Whitehill)
It is a collaboration that’s a book, but not a book that you’d bring to bed with you before turning the lights out. It’s also been described as “protest beauty” and is the collaboration of a printer...
Joanna Thomas dear-so-and-so Postcard Exhibit
Longtime postcarder Joanna Thomas is having an exhibition of 40 or so of her "dear-so-and-so" postcards just in time for her 75th birthday! Happy Birthday Joey! Check it out: Earlybird registration...
Toward Cascadian Independence: For the Life of the Place as a Whole
From David McCloskey: What end does politics serve? Surely it must serve ends beyond itself. Why seek greater bioregional autonomy? For self-determination. Yes, but what purpose in turn shall that...
AWP Off-Site Events
The AWP Conference is in Seattle again (March 8-11) and 10,000 writers are expected to be in Seattle for the proceedings. (Come say hello to the Cascadia Poetics Lab at the bookfair. We have at...
E. Richard Atleo in Seattle & a 2005 Interview
With the assistance of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, I had the good fortune to interview E. Richard Atleo in 2005. Umeek is hereditary chief of the Ahousaht, grandson of the Keesta, the...
Richard Atleo at Seattle U
CPL Board Member Jason Wirth has arranged for Dr. E. Richard Atleo to speak at Seattle U. This is a remarkable opportunity to hear about Nuu-Chal-Nuth cosmology. Details below. I had the good...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Share your favorite Postcard Poems!
Show us your favorite postcard poems! The Poetry Postcard Fest team has established a NEW Instagram account for all things PPF, and we need your help to spread the love for PPF! We are asking past...
Register for Spring 2024 Workshops!
Spring 2024 workshop registration is open NOW! Cascadia Poetics Lab founder Paul E. Nelson will be hosting a five week online spring workshop, Life as Rehearsal for the Poem, exploring passages in...
Cascadia Poetics Lab 30th Anniversary Celebration!
30 years of Cascadia Poetics Lab! On Friday, February 2, 2024, Cascadia Poetics Lab hosted a celebration for our 30th anniversary as a nonprofit at the Columbia City Gallery in Seattle, WA! We also...
Mary Norbert Körte Interview October 2019
Interview part 1 from Oct 2019 with Mary Norbert Körte at her home in Irmulco, CA.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:01 — )
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:
!
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.