Cascadia Poetry Festival 10
The 10th Cascadia Poetry Festival is set for October 9-11, 2026, at the Rainier Beach Community Club and other local venues. CPF is a gathering of poets and bioregionalists, exploring poetry and its connection to environmental, political, historical, and sociological pursuits within the Cascadia bioregion as defined by David McCloskey. The festival aims to consider how prioritizing natural and cultural boundaries, rather than arbitrary political ones, can address climate change and other issues. Cascadia Poetics LAB Founders Circle Members will be given the first opportunity to purchase an all-access Gold Pass.
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Bill Barillas on Theodore Roethke
In this edition of Cascadian Prophets, we hear Bill Barillas on Theodore Roethke. Bill Barillas is the editor of A Field Guide to the Poetry of...
Support the Families of Tyjon Stewart and Traveiah Houfmuse
Support the Families of Tyjon Stewart and Traveiah Houfmuse In late January, 2026, Rainier Beach teens Tyjon Stewart and Traveiah Houfmuse were...
Jerry Martien Reading at Seattle University
Jerry Martien Reading and Conversation and Seattle University On March 10, 2026 at 6 P.M. PST at the Stuart T. Rolfe Community Room (824 12th Ave,...
Cascadia 2050 Mission
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CPL Featured Poet – Logan Garner
CPL Featured Poets To continue to extend our gratitude to the generosity of our community, Cascadia Poetics Lab has decided to feature the work of...
Thom Hartmann on the theft of Human Rights via corporate personhood
In this interview with Thom Hartmann on the theft of human rights via corporate personhood and its history, he discussed the East India Company, the...
Daysong Workshop Jan. 22 & 25 VIDEO
Daysong Workshop Video On January 22, 2026, we hosted the first of two workshops focused on the Daysong, an exercise in dedicating an entire day to...
What Am I Of? by Sue Diewert
Sue Diewert, a poet and CPL supporter, followed the What Am I Of? poetry exercise to write the poem below. Thank you so much for sharing, Sue! Want...
Daysong Workshops THIS WEEK!
Daysong Workshops This Week! Join us for online workshops focusing on the Daysong practice of writing a poem for an entire day this Thursday,...
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Cascadia 2050 interview with Julie Masters
This year the Poetry Postcard Fest celebrates its 20th anniversary. From the fest many a creative project has spawned, and one recent example of...
Cascadia Day Photos
We celebrated Cascadia Day 2026 at Vermillion with Andy Engelson at the Cascadia Journal/Cascadia Democratic Action and Wade Atkinson took some...
Cascadian Poetry at Vermillion
The Cascadia Day Poetry Explosion, organized by Andy Engelson of Cascadia Journal and Cascadia Democratic Action was a brilliant evening of creative...
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Poetry Postcard Fest 2026
Registration is closed
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.
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 of 2013, the world’s third longest river, the Yangtze, will get 2,000 wishes in a program called the Kinship of Rivers. The 2,000 will be done through prayer flags, in the spirit of the 1,200 flags that have been placed alongside the Mississippi River and its tributaries over the last three years. These river flags, modeled after Tibetan prayer flags, were accompanied by poetry and art as part of an outreach project designed to promote peace and link people from the Mississippi river communities with that of their Chinese brethren on the Yangtze. the intention is to make a network of rivers with the whole world. The activist, novelist, poet and professor Wang Ping started the project. She was born in Shanghai, grew up on a small island in the East China sea, and attended Beijing university. In 1985 she left China to study in the United States, earning her PhD from NYU, New York University. Her books include 2 collections of poetry, a cultural study, a novel, and 2 collections of fictional stories.
To hear the original audio of this interview, click here.
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To get original poetry right in your mailbox this summer and build peaceful connections across the globe check out the Poetry Postcard Fest.
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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.