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
Shuri Kido Interview on Names And Rivers
What a blessing it was December 28, 2022, to interview Shuri Kido, the accomplished Japanese poet and Zen practitioner. As I told he and his translators...
Participating Poets 2023
Andrew Schelling -An ecologist, naturalist, and explorer of wilderness areas, Schelling has travelled in North America, Europe, India, and the Himalayas. His poetry is known for its engagement with...
Brenda Hillman Interview In A Few Minutes Before Later
I had the honor of conducting another interview with Brenda Hillman on December 12, 2022. The subject was her new book In A Few Minutes Before Later. It is wonderful to see a poet evolving in such a...
On Irma Pineda (Isthmus Zapotec) by Wendy Call (Translator)
Our latest Cascadian Prophets podcast guest is Wendy Call. She is translator of Isthmus Zapotec poet Irma Pineda. The new book is In the Belly of Night and Other Poems and Wendy talks about how she...
Mary Norbert Körte Interview Part 2
When I visited Mary Norbert Körte in October of 2019, we recorded interviews on consecutive days. On the second day we talked, among other things, about the chapbook put together by the City...
Mary Norbert Körte Interview October 2019
I am so grateful Bhakti and I trekked to Willits, California in October 2019 to interview the poet and former nun Mary Norbert Körte. She died November 14, 2022 at her home at a former redwood...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Tell us why you LOVE PPF!
Share your love for PPF! 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 Poetry...
WATCH The Cantos of Ezra Pound with Andrew Schelling!
WATCH Andrew Schelling teach The Cantos by Ezra Pound! CPL has teamed up with poet, translator and educator Andrew Schelling to host a workshop exploring The Cantos by Ezra Pound. This Zoom...
Roxi Power Interview
It may have taken 60 years, deaths of her sister and mother and a season of catastrophic forest fires to bring it out, but Roxi Power has a book of poems and it is entitled The Songs That Objects...
Cascadian Zen Anthology
The latest Cascadian Prophets podcast is about Cascadian Zen from the three co-editors of the book, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, Adelia MacWilliam and Paul...
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.