Poetry Postcard Activations
Free Poetry & Community Events in Rainier Beach!
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem and Poetics as Cosmology 2026 Workshops
A five week online (Zoom) workshop best suited for continuing participants and more experienced poets (open to open form) in workshops facilitated by Cascadia Poetics Lab and Poetry Postcard Fest Co-Founder Paul E Nelson. Participate in reading and discussion of foundational essays, interviews, listening and other assignments, as well as spontaneous poetry composition exercises. In Winter 2026, we’ll explore a short history of Cascadian poetry, touching on:
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- Theodore Roethke
- Fred Wah
- Daphne Marlatt
- George Bowering
- Mary Norbert Kõrte
- John Olson
- Phyllis Webb
- Stephen Collis
- Sharon Thesen
- Barry McKinnon
- Cedar Sigo
- George Stanley
- Robin Blaser
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem (LARFP)
- Sundays 3-5 PM PDT
- March 29, April 5, 12, 19, and 26, 2026
Poetics as Cosmology (PAC)
- Thursdays 3-5 PM PDT
- March 26, April 2, 9, 16, and 23, 2026
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
IPRA – Making Peace in Trinidad
The International Peace Research Association gathered May 17-21, 2023, in Port of Spain, Trinidad for their 2023 conference. I attended and was in...
Zoom Postcard Open House, Sunday, June 4
Sunday, June 4, 2023 marks one month left before the start of the 2023 Poetry Postcard Fest. Earlybird registration closes and we'll answer...
One Month Left for Earlybird Registration
I was shopping for postcards the other day and know you are probably wondering if I am ever NOT shopping for postcards, but that is unimportant. The...
Give BIG 2023 Cascadia Poetics LAB
Thanks to those folks who have supported is via Give Big in the past and at least one generous early donor in 2023. Give Big is today and tomorrow...
Rescue and Revival of a Seattle Legend: Carletta Carrington Wilson Interprets James Washington Jr.
“Rescue and Revival of a Seattle Legend: Carletta Carrington Wilson Interprets James Washington Jr.” is an essay in a book that chronicles a...
Salt Spring Island Reading
The board of the Cascadia Poetics Lab had its spring 2023 board retreat on Salt Spring Island. Our last retreat on the Long Beach Peninsula was a...
Voluntary Hallucinations
I'm delighted to have a postcard poem in the new anthology I Sing the Salmon Home. It's a book of poems by Washington state poets, curated by the...
ARTSFUND Community Accelerator Grant
We are proud to announce that we are a recipient of a Community Accelerator Grant funded by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and awarded by...
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...
Two versions of what will be basically the same workshop to discuss the concept of the daysong, how to accomplish one and what it means to the poet who pulls it off.
Thursday, January 22, 2026 3-5 PM PDT
Monday, January 26, 2026 3-5 PM PDT
Workshop Cost: Free, with optional donation of $20-$100.00 (On Zoom)
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
PPF Address Verification JUNE 22!
PPF Address Verification THIS SUNDAY! We are changing our process for verifying we have the correct mailing address and information for PPF...
Jack Kerouac and Buddhism at Elliott Bay Books
Jack Kerouac and Buddhism at Elliott Bay Book Company Join CPL friends and Beat Generation scholars Jim Jones and Charles Shuttleworth at Elliott...
CPF8 Neukom Vivarium Reading AUDIO
On Sunday November 3, 2024, we opened the last day of the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival with a reading inside Neukom Vivarium at the Olympic...
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.
Roxi Power Interview
Poet Roxi Power sings from her new book The Songs Objects Would Sing
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:02:19 — 85.6MB)
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.
Click this link for more information about the workshop Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies for Reconnecting to Earth.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 15, 22, March 1, 8, and 15, 2026
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.
Click this link for more information about the workshop Thinkingwith: Writing Strategies for Reconnecting to Earth.
Sundays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
February 15, 22, March 1, 8, and 15, 2026
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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.


































