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
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 E Nelson (your humble correspondent.) We recorded...
Art & Poetry Talk: Adelia MacWilliam on Salt Spring Island
Cascadia Poetics Lab board member Adelia MacWilliam is a poet whose family settled on Salt Spring Island in the 1850s. Adelia has struggled with the settler amnesia and is part of what promises to...
Interview with Brainwashed Director Nina Menkes
Why are only 8% of Hollywood movies produced by women, down from 9% 20 years ago? One Hollywood film-maker says the “male gaze” reinforced by a camera angle formula and a subject-object dynamic...
Poetics As Cosmology Open Mic + Exercise
2023 marks the third year the Cascadia Poetics Lab has offered online workshops. Started as a pandemic necessity, it has become an alternative community-building project, with one group registering...
Sharon Thesen gives Olson Lecture
Self-described Cascadian poet Sharon Thesen will give the annual Charles Olson lecture Saturday, October 29 at 1pm EDT, 10am PDT at the Cape Ann Museum in Gloucester, Massachusetts, and it will be...
The Cards I Got 2022
It does not feel like fall in Seattle where it has rained .5 inches in the last 120 days. Needless to say the air quality is horrid and I am still thinking it is summer. I guess I am not too late...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Cascadia Poetics Lab 30th Anniversary Celebration!
Celebrate 30 years of Cascadia Poetics Lab with us! Celebrate 30 years of Cascadia Poetics Lab and the launch of Cascadian Prophets, a collection of CPL founder Paul Nelson's interviews with...
THE DOUBLE WALLS OF CASCADIA
by David McCloskey There’s both a Western Wall and an Eastern Wall marking Cascadia’s boundaries…. The Western Wall. Cascadia rises as a great flying arc of landscapes perched on the verge of...
NW Dharma Association on Cascadian Zen
Cascadian Zen has received a wonderful reception from the regional Zen community. The Northwest Dharma Association published a blog post about the book. An excerpt: The original idea for the book...
Interview with Brainwashed Director Nina Menkes
Cascadian Prophets interview. Why are only 8% of Hollywood movies produced by women, down from 9% 20 years ago? One Hollywood film-maker says the “male gaze” reinforced by a camera angle formula and a subject-object dynamic creates an industry rife with employment discrimination and sexual abuse and assault. That film-maker is Nina Menkes, the Producer and Director of Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power. The movie is showing now in select theaters and it is both disturbing and compelling, as well as uplifting.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 34:12 — )
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.