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.
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online 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 the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Poetics As Cosmology Spring 2025
Poetics As Cosmology Spring 2025
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online 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 the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Thursdays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 3 – May 1, 2025
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online 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 the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 2025.
Life as Rehearsal for the Poem Workshop
A five week online (Zoom) workshop for first-time and continuing participants in the online 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 the first of three, five week courses to happen before next postcard season. Click to learn more.
Sundays 2-5:00 PM Pacific Time
April 6 – May 4, 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
Share your PPF poems!
Share your PPF postcard poems! Thank you so much for another incredible, record-breaking Poetry Postcard Fest! We'd like to give you the opportunity to share your 2024 postcard poetry with the...
Sherri Olson’s Postcard Books
How Sherri Olson organizes her postcards From PPF participant Sherri Olson: Nan’s cute binder made me think I should share my solution. Years ago at a library conference, an artist, who worked as a...
Register for Fall 2024 Workshops!
Register for Fall 2024 Workshops! Registration for Cascadia Poetics Lab Fall 2024 workshops is OPEN NOW! This fall, we welcome Matt Trease, poet and CPL board member, as a workshop instructor! The...
CPF8 to be hosted at the Richard Hugo House
CPF8 at the Richard Hugo House! This year, we are excited to be working with fellow Seattle literary arts organization The Richard Hugo House to host the main day of the 8th Cascadia Poetry...
Register NOW for the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival!
Register now for Cascadia Poetry Festival 8! The 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival will be held November 1-3, 2024 at the Richard Hugo House, Spring Street Center and Newkam Vivarium at the Olympic...
Barry McKinnon Interview (from July 2015)
Barry McKinnon died in Prince George, BC, on October 30, 2023. Your humble narrator drove to Prince George in July 2015 to conduct an interview with one of the most underrated Cascadian poets ever....
Cascadia Poetics LAB Blog
George Draffan on the Global Assault on Forests
George Draffan is a researcher, the head of the Public Information Network and the co-author of Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests. He discussed the tax subsidies to corporations who...
Call to Poets (Lakewold Gardens)
Hello, My name is Ricardo de la Torre and I work as Curator of Art and Music at Lakewold Gardens. We are a historically recognized public garden and non-profit organization in Lakewood, WA and we...
CA Conrad CPF8 Keynote Reading
CPF8 Friday Night Keynote Reading by CA Conrad On November 1, 2024, we kicked off the 8th Cascadia Poetry Festival at the Hugo House with a keynote reading by brilliant poet and academic CA Conrad,...
Interview with Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden on the book Joanne Kyger: A Poet in Place and Time
Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden are co-editors of the anthology Joanne Kyger: A Poet in Place and Time, a new book of essays examining the work of the longtime Bolinas, California resident poet. Conducted October 5, 2024.
Podcast (prophets-podcast): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 33:15 — 45.7MB)
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.