Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
Call for CPF9 Volunteers!
We're looking for volunteers for the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival, October 10-12! Volunteers will help run the registration table, make sure our...
A Writing Exercise from Denise Levertov
Looking for inspiration to write poetry post-PPF? Consider Levertov’s Words Left in Your Pocket Exercise Read Denise Levertov’s poem “September...
Stephan Torre in Atlin, B.C.
What a great way to entice someone to read a book: "Like a prize-fighter boxing over his weight, Stephan Torre has long made his home in the...
2024 Annual Report
Cascadia Poetics Lab 2024 Annual Report Our 2024 report outlining Cascadia Poetics Lab's major accomplishments, fundraising and organizational...
Thankful Thursday: Curiosity & Care by Drew Myron
From postcard poet Drew Myron: After a steady stream of arrivals, my mailbox is now empty. I just completed the annual Poetry Postcard Fest, an...
Announcing the 1st Annual Charles Potts Poetry Award
Announcing the 1st Annual Charles Potts Poetry Award! The Charles Potts Poetry Award is a new award that will yearly present a writer with the...
Location Card-Nation Narration by Amy Friedman
From postcard poet Dr. Amy L. Friedman: Some time before I knew I’d be coming to Japan I signed up for the 2025 Cascadia Poetics Lab Poetry Postcard...
CPL Granted Community Accelerator Grant from ArtsFund
Cascadia Poetics Lab is excited to share that we are a recipient of a 2025 Community Accelerator Grant Fund by Allen Family Philanthropies and...
Poetry Postcard Fest ’25 Wrap Up ZoomParty
Join us on Zoom on Saturday, September 6 for the Poetry Postcard Fest '25 Wrap Up ZoomParty. We will meet at 2 pm PST and chat for 2 hours about our...
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)
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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- George Bowering
- Fred Wah
- Daphne Marlatt
- Michael McClure
- 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
Veronica Martinez CPL Letter of Recommendation
Here is our final letter of recommendation in celebration of winning a Humanities Washington Award--the letter written by me, Veronica! We have...
Thank you for supporting CPL on Giving Tuesday!
We have the deepest gratitude for everyone that donated to the CPL Annual Fund and to our Giving Tuesday campaign on December 2! As we've said...
CPF9 Cascadia Mono Poem VIDEO!
Cascadia Mono Poem Reading On October 11, 2025, we closed the second day of the 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival with a mono poem. Poets read original...
The Poetics of Cascadian Land and Water
A 5-week online Cascadian poetry workshop, on zoom.
This is a workshop in poetic fusion. Cascadia began with a language that united cultures: Chinook Wawa. This series of workshops expands its gift of integration between the ancient languages of the Columbia and its new languages, French and English. To do so, it draws in American, Canadian, Wawa and North European poetries, with a concentration on opening doorways.
Click this link for more information about the workshop The Poetics of Cascadian Land and Water
Saturdays 3-5:00 PM Pacific Time
January 10, 17, 24, 31 & February 7
Cost: $125.00
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.
Linda Russo on the verdant
Linda Russo is a poet, scholar, essay writer, willing co-creator, collaborator and student of ecospheric care. Through the lens of ecofeminism, or geopoetics, or inspired by indigenous practices of interspecies kinship, her works explore relationality, with a more than human world alongside the complexities presented by fragmentation of land and human attention to place.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download ()
Daysong Workshops 2026
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
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
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.
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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.



































