Cascadian Prophets Podcast: Recent Episodes
Paul E. Nelson
Interviews of Cascadian creative luminaries and the practice of poetry to deepen connections to place, self and the present moment.
Paul E Nelson interviews Bill Porter on the film "Dancing With the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation as it screens Sunday, April 21 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian.
Stephen Thomas 7.1.2023Before moving to Europe, Auburn, Washington native Stephen Thomas was quite active in the Seattle literary scene. He came back to Seattle (& other parts of the U.S.) to read from his new book What Is Between Us published by Hand to Mouth Books of Walla Walla. We sat on the deck of the Casa del Colibrí in Rainier Beach and had our chat about his poetry influences, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the Cabaret Hegel, the arts venue he created and about the new book. The recording of his July 1, 2023, reading at The Booktree in Kirkland can be heard here. My intro went like this: Stephen Thomas was born into a working class Catholic family in Auburn, Washington in 1950. At 12 a teacher played a recording of Emily Dickinson’s poems and he says “his fate was sealed.” A pillar of the Seattle poetry scene of the 80s, 90s and 2000s, he founded the Cabaret Hegel in an abandoned factory and presented with many notable performers such as Steven Jesse Bernstein. Stephen Thomas has published work in Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Northwest, the Malahat review and other publications and he currently lives in Germany’s Black Forest where he co-founded Gemeinschaft Sonnenwald, a sustainable agriculture community.
Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs w/ Paul E Nelson
What a joy to engage Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs for a Cascadian Prophets podcast interview. I hosted her at Casa del Colibrí on June 15, 2023 and discussed her book: ¿how many indians can we be? Here is my introduction:
¿cuantos indios podemos ser? is the title of the latest book by Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, or in English ¿how many indians can we be? A good question. To be a Chicana and represent the United States at a poetry festival in India can be a transformative experience, allowing one to see shared traumas, shared mechanisms for coping with the realities of cultural colonization and an opportunity to use poetry to better understand just what is going on. Dr. Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs is a polylingual poet, critic, translator, cultural worker and professor in Modern Languages and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies at Seattle University & our guest today to talk about ¿how many indians can we be?
Poems extracted from the interview, with the interview below.
- Tamed Tongues (Lenguas Domadas)
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Tamed-Tongues-Lenguas-Domadas.mp3
- Apiary of the Unconscious
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Apiary-of-the-Uncounscious-Columnar-de-la-Subconcienca.mp3
- Bernardo Looking for Needles in a Haystack
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Bernardo-Looking-for-Needles-in-a-Haystack.mp3
- The Dead (Los Muertos)
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-Dead-Los-Muertos.mp3
- Hum Pedro Hum
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Hum-Pedro-Hum.mp3
- The Threshold
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/The-threshold.mp3
- Once I Was a Guitar
https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Once-I-Was-a-Guitar.mp3
With the assistance of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, I had the good fortune to interview E. Richard Atleo in 2005. Umeek is hereditary chief of the Ahousaht, grandson of the Keesta, the last of the Ahousaht whalers. He’s a research affiliate at the University of Manitoba and author of Tsawalk: A Nuu-chah-nulth Worldview.He will be speaking in Seattle, Wednesday, March 1, 2023 at Seattle University:Healing and Reconciliation:A Nuu-Chal-Nulth PerspectiveDr. E. Richard AtleoWednesday, March 1, at 4pmOberto Commons, SINE 200Zoom access is availableRSVP for the conversationToday I present as part of the Cascadian Prophets podcast, my 2005 interview with E. Riichard Atleo. You can read the transcript in the book American Prophets.
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 the chat Sunday, November 27, 2022 on Salt Spring Island after the launch of Adelia's first chapbook Details of the Passage, "a few select poems of a larger collection that address the collective amnesia in the descendants of the first European settlers on the west coast of British Columbia." This was part of an art exhibit featuring six generations of her family in and near Salt Spring Island.This is a major effort of the Cascadia Poetics Lab and in the podcast are some news items about the book and the launch. Enjoy!
“I am a warrior, so that my son may be a merchant, so that his son may be a poet.” A quote attributed to John Quincy Adams, though it is quite possible that is a paraphrase. To go from being a gang-banger in Othello, Washington, to a bigger gang called the U.S. Army, almost dying three times in the theater of war, to find himself as a poet, interviewing undocumented people and telling their stories in lyric verse in Spanish and English. This is the story of Ricardo Ruiz and it’s told in his debut book: We Had Our Reasons or Teníamos Nuestras Razones in his lengua materna.
How to capture the soul of a subject, live your life dedicated to your own art, the process of discovery and even plan your syncretic memorial so that all your ducks are in a row? This seems to me efficient, humble, gentle and visionary all at the same time and could describe the work & life of artist Fumiko Kimura. Co-Founder of Puget Sound Sumi Artists, her life story was written as a collaboration with David Berger, and he’s our guest today to discuss Fumiko’s life, his study with her and her art. The book is Persimmon and Frog: My Life and Art, a Kibei-Nisei’s Story of Self-Discovery. David is an author and artist and former visual arts critic at the Seattle Times. David welcome. (The podcast is below the bonus audio tracks.) David Berger An Empty Sky Haiku David Berger Into Waiting Hands Haiku David Berger on Haiga
Interview with Claudia Castro Luna, recorded 17-JUNE-2022 via Zoom about her new book Cipota Under the Moon published by Tia Chucha Press.
Patrick Mazza's blog, The Raven, exists: "To inform the people-power movements crucial to addressing the crises coming upon us at national and global levels, from increasing national divisions and breakdown of institutions, to the climate crisis."
Interview with Pierre Joris recorded May 2, 2022 by Paul E Nelson for the Cascadian Prophets podcast.
Interview with John Brehm, author of The Dharma of Poetry. Recorded by Paul E Nelson for Cascadian Prophets podcast on February 24, 2022 in John's Portland, OR home.
To dwell with conifers. Eaves drip, echo cedar's arm shedding water down Spray scales waxy (cover you lost. -Daphne Marlatt from the poem Under published in Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now
Daphne Marlatt My cultural investigation of the bioregion known as Cascadia continues with Daphne Marlatt, one of the best known Canadian poets, a participant in the seminal 1963 Vancouver Poetry Conference, feminist and Buddhist. It was in segment five of our January 11, 2014, interview in which she read the poem from which the above snippet was excerpted and she gives us a sense that water clearly shapes Cascadia more than your typical bioregion. Water, as mist and fog, may have a huge role in how things get masked here as well and I am thinking of the legendary passive aggression here and Daphne Marlatt does not get into it, but this is a little taste of what workshop participants will get when she facilitates the only workshop at the upcoming Cascadia Poetry Festival. The workshop is halfway sold out at this point and registrants will be limited to 15. I suspect that events like this will likely will be seen as quite important when the history of this bioregion is being written in the future. We should be as focused, perceptive and dedicated as writers like Daphne Marlatt. Hear segment five here. In a Word, or Many: Where Language meets Terrain Limited to 15 participants. This poetry workshop (which does not exclude prose) will investigate the ways words come to us in the act of writing when we situate ourselves on the threshold between our outer and inner worlds, with language as the sill for that threshold. We will look at how perception works linguistically, moving through lexicon and syntax, and relationally, within the locale, creatures and persons that sustain us. There will be writing time in the workshop as well as time for discussion and exchange.
Bio: Daphne Marlatt has published more than twenty books across a wide range of genres, including poetry, fiction, criticism, and theory. She has also been the founder of ground-breaking journals, including Tessera and periodics, and an editor on several other journals.
She has published three innovative novels: Zocalo, Ana Historic, which received critical acclaim, and Taken. Her early poem sequence, Steveston, led to the writing of The Gull (2009) an award-winning Noh play based on the traditional Japanese drama form. Marlatt’s The Given (2008), a long narrative poem, won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was awarded the Order of Canada in 2006 for her contributions to Canadian literature.
Allergic To Cats
Wednesday night I attended a poetry reading of younger women poets on Capitol Hill. Organized by Jocelyn Macdonald, it was called Allergic to Cats A Feminist Poetry Reading. While some poets could have "sung shorter" as they say in Taos, the evening was thoroughly enjoyable and it is delightful to see younger folks organize readings. Below, the audio - as it happened - in four hunks. Each offered at least one quite poignant moment: Laura Wachs, thoughts about her late friend and mentor Jack McCarthy, Anastacia, her serial poem portraits of some of her middle school students as they turn into young women, and a detailed account of an abortion by Clare McGuinness. Here's how the reading was promoted on Facebook:
Allergic to Cats 2
Intro, Jocelyn Macdonald (4:03)
Laura Wachs, Part 1 (16:06)
Laura Wachs, Part 2 (10:54)
Anastacia Tolbert (18:17)
Claire McGuinness (19:35)
Mickey O
Mickey O'Connor and Nico Vassilakis read in the first SPLAB matinee reading, Saturday, September 17 at 3:30. Here's is the unedited audio from Mickey O, who read from Pushkin's Umbrella, among other works. Here is the unedited audio from Nico V. Here is the SPLAB Presents that featured Mickey O'Connor.
Nico V
Andrew Schelling
Andrew Schelling is a poet, translator and longtime teacher at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, part of Naropa University, as well as the Deer Park Institute in India. In July, 2011, he talked with Paul Nelson about his new book: From the Arapaho Songbook. The whole interview is archived here.
Dodie Bellamy
In town for a celebration of an exhibition by feminist artist Carolee Schneemann, Dodie Bellamy read from The Buddhist at the Henry Art Gallery on October 20th, 2011 and an excerpt was featured on SPLAB Presents for the week of October 31, 2011. Her whole reading is archived here.
Brenda Hillman finished off the SPLAB 2011 Visiting Poets Series in fine fashion November 11 and 12 with a brilliant talk on Innovation and Activism in Poetry Friday the 11th (Veterans Day), a workshop that left at least one participant "buzzing all day" and a reading featuring her brilliant new work. One long-time stalwart of the local poetry scene said it was "the best reading I have ever seen her give."
So, the audio of the reading is here. (Paul Nelson's intro here.) (Post-reading Q & A here.) Video here: Intro, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. Thank you Ra'anan David for the video.
The interview she did with Paul Nelson is here.
Read about the confrontation she & her husband had with the SWAT team called out to the UC-Berkeley Occupy Rally here.
Brenda Hillman Workshop
On September 24th 2011, poets gathered (at SPLAB) & in 450 cities around the world in an event called 100 Thousand Poets for Change. The event is designed to change how we see global community and work to cure symptoms of a world that, in Gary Snyder’s words, is “upside down.”
Seattle’s venue for 100 Thousand Poets for Change was SPLAB in Columbia City and the featured poet was Suquamish native Cedar Sigo. After growing up on the Port Madison Indian Reservation across the Sound from Seattle, he attended Naropa University on a scholarship and now lives in San Francisco. His new book is published by the famed City Lights and is entitled Stranger in Town. SPLAB Presents for the week of September 12. For the week of September 19th. The entire interview can be downloaded here.
Audio from 100 TPC: Brian McGuigan, Eugenia Toledo, Lawrence Matsuda, Nilki Benitez, Judith Roche, Deborah Woodard, Frances McCue, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Cedar Sigo workshop, Cedar Sigo reading.
Brenda Hillman City
Brenda Hillman finished off the SPLAB 2011 Visiting Poets Series in fine fashion November 11 and 12 with a brilliant talk on Innovation and Activism in Poetry Friday the 11th (Veterans Day), a workshop that left at least one participant "buzzing all day" and a reading featuring her brilliant new work. One long-time stalwart of the local poetry scene said it was "the best reading I have ever seen her give."
So, the audio of the reading is here.
Paul Nelson's intro here. Post-reading Q & A here.
The interview she did with Paul Nelson is here.
Brenda Hillman & Bob Haas
Read about the confrontation she & her husband had with the SWAT team called out to the UC-Berkeley Occupy Rally here.
See video of that confrontation here, with Brenda and husband Robert Hass visible at about the 4:00 mark.
For a woman whose work pushes the art ahead, she surely finds herself in the thick of confronting the injustice of the "American Way." How many people have so much going on two critical fronts?
Thanks Brenda.
Xi Chuan, peN
While in China for the 3rd Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival this past August, I met one of the most renowned younger Chinese poets, Xi Chuan. He has a book coming out next year entitled Notes on the Mosquito, published in translation by New Directions. In Seattle recently to celebrate the release of an anthology of contemporary poetry from China, Push Open the Window (Copper Canyon Press) he talked about the opening in Chinese poetry after the Cultural Revolution. SPLAB Presents for the week of October 17, 2011. Part one of the interview. Part two is here. SPLAB Presents aired Thursdays at 4:30P on KBCS.FM, 91.3.
Johnny Moses
This week on SPLAB Presents, Paul Nelson has a bit of Johnny Moses from his new CD, produced at Jack Straw Productions. Johnny Moses is a Tulalip Native American raised in the remote Nuu-chah-nulth village of Ohiat on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Johnny, whose traditional name is Whis.stem.men.knee, was raised in the traditional native ways by his grandparents, and is a master storyteller, oral historian, traditional healer and respected spiritual leader. He has two new recordings, one of which is Snohomish Songs of Puget Sound. Johnny discusses the Tulalip Coast Salish Powwow Club and sings the welcome song. http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/SPLAB_20111010_Johnny_Moses.mp3
Andrew Schelling
Andrew Schelling is a poet, translator and longtime teacher at the
From the Arapaho Songbook
Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado, part of Naropa University, as well as the Deer Park Institute in India. In July, 2011, he talked with Paul Nelson about his new book: From the Arapaho Songbook. SPLAB Presents for the week of Oct 3, 2011 is archived here. The whole interview is archived here.
Cedar Sigo
On September 24th, poets gathered at SPLAB & in 650 cities around the world in an event called 100 Thousand Poets for Change.
Featured poets at SPLAB for 100 Thousand Poets for Change included City Lights poet and Suquamish native Cedar Sigo, who also facilitated a workshop on poets of the San Francisco Renaissance (Jack Spicer, Joanne Kyger and John Weiners), as well as writing exercises based on an idea by Ted Berrigan. Here is he SPLAB Presents segment for the week of September 12. For the week of September 19th. The entire interview can be downloaded here.
The local poets were curated by Judith Roche and Carolyne Wright, who also read their own work. Audio from 100 TPC: Brian McGuigan, Eugenia Toledo, Lawrence Matsuda.
Nilki Benitez, Judith Roche.
Deborah Woodard, Frances McCue, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Carolyne Wright.
Cedar Sigo workshop.
Cedar Sigo reading.
100 THOUSAND POETS FOR CHANGE IS ORGANIZING A GLOBAL EVENT FOR SEPTEMBER 24th 2011 600 Events – 450 Cities – 95 CountriesJoin other poets around the USA and across the planet, on September 24th, in a demonstration/celebration of poetry to promote serious social, environmental, and political change.
Judith Roche 100 Thousand Poets for Change Seattle (Schedule) 11a Welcome: Paul Nelson
Judith Roche emcee:
11:15: Brian McGuigan, 11:30: Eugenia Toledo, 11:45: Lawrence Matsuda, 12:00: Nilki Benitez, 12:15: Judith Roche
12:30 Break
Carolyne Wright
1P: Carolyne Wright emcee:
1:15: Deborah Woodard, 1:30: Frances McCue, 1:45: Jourdan Keith, 2:00: Carletta Carrington Wilson.
2:30: Break
3P: Paul Nelson emcee, Cedar Sigo Workshop ($20 suggested donation)
Joanne Kyger
San Francisco Renaissance (Joanne Kyger, John Weiners and Jack Spicer) and will feature Ted Berrigan’s blueprint for a poem to be written spontaneously. We ask a $20 suggested donation for the workshop.
6P: Break
8P: Cedar Sigo Reading (Hear part of an interview with Cedar Sigo discussing Lushootseed and his efforts to write about his home town.) More on the event here. This event supported by Poets & Writers, Inc.
Cedar Sigo
Mickey O
Mickey O'Connor and Nico Vassilakis read in the first
Nico V
SPLAB matinee reading, Saturday, Sept 17 at 3:30.
Here's is the unedited audio from Mickey O, who read from Pushkin's Umbrella, among other works.
Here's unedited audio from Nico V.
Cedar Sigo
On September 24th, poets will gather (at SPLAB) & in 450 cities around the world in an event called 100 Thousand Poets for Change. The event is designed to change how we see global community and work to cure symptoms of a world that, in Gary Snyder’s words, is “upside down.”
Seattle’s venue for 100 Thousand Poets for Change is SPLAB in Columbia City and the featured poet is Suquamish native Cedar Sigo. After growing up on the Port Madison Indian Reservation across the Sound from Seattle, he attended Naropa University on a scholarship and now lives in San Francisco. His new book is published by the famed City Lights and is entitled Stranger in Town. SPLAB Presents for the week of September 12. The entire interview can be downloaded here. Hear SPLAB Presents every Thursday at 4:30 on KBCS.FM, 91.3.
From Qinghai Lake to Tongren, Xi’an and Beijing, Sounds of China In August, 2010, I received my invitation to the 3rd Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival and a year later arrived in China with my wife Meredith on August 6, 2011. We spent a night in Beijing and arrived the next day in Xining, where we stayed at the Qinghai Hotel and met Jidi Majia, the Head of the Information Department for Qinghai Province and the man who envisioned and organized the festival.
I carried a small Sony .mp3 recorder and recorded many of the sounds we encountered during our visit, which included interactions with festival poets from around the world (54 nations were represented), as well as a tour of Tibetan cultural attractions in Qinghai, a visit to Xi’an which included a featured reading at the Chang’an Poetry Festival, the terra cotta warriors and a visit to the Poetry Department at Capital Normal University in Beijing.
Poets are treated with a great deal more respect in China than in the United States and the Chinese people we met really respected Americans. One cab driver said that the world does not know the history of China and he’s quite right. I learned matcha tea originated in China and that the original cut-ups using lines from failed poems were not done by surrealists, but by the late T’ang-era poet Li He.
From our first night in Beijing, we were amused by what our guide (& my translator) Denis Mair called Chinglish. Essentially it’s a poor or mistranslation of English into Chinese.
8.7.11 – Sign in Beijing’s Guigo Hotel bathroom warns: “Be careful of landslide.”
The paper I presented at the festival was Pacific Rim Poetics, noting how (among other things) North American West Coast poetry owes more to Asian and Native American cultures than to Europe.
Denis Mair, peN present Pacific Rim Poetics
There was some confusion as to how I would make my presentation, but what eventually happened was that I read from a short version of the paper and showed most of the powerpoint and Denis Mair translated on the fly. Here’s the sound of our talk:
http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/audio/8.8.11_Pacific_Rim_Poetics_PN_&_D.Mair.mp3
Denis told me that he had received some help from native Chinese speakers regarding the translation of my Elegies for Slaughter into Chinese. About the poems, Denis’ friend Shu Chi said “He has a way of creating structure that gives abundant detail.” The Chinese version of Elegies for Slaughter is here.
Jidi Majia is the head of the Qinghai Dept of Information. The visionary behind the conference, he gave a copy of his book, in English and Chinese, to all festival participants and autographed my copy. (We had our copy shipped home and I plan on posting on his work upon its arrival.) This sound is Denis explaining what Jidi Majia wrote and the 2nd part is a poet from Nepal, Manjul, learning how to pronounce Meredith’s nickname, Almondina. http://www.globalvoicesradio.org/audio/8.8.11_Denis_Explains_Jidis_Inscription_&_Junmal_on_Almondina.mp3
Mer, Javier Bello, peN
On the first day I also recorded the presentations of Javier Bello of Chile and Mai Mang(Li Bin) of China, who is now teaching at Connecticut College, among other people. Mai Mang’s talk was entitled: In Search of the Absolutely Blind Encounter.
Our guide for the road trips we took to Qinghai Lake and Guide County went by the name Coco, because she loves coconuts. Here are a couple of examples of her bright announcements to the gathered poets on the poetry bus. 1. Coco Bus Announcement. 2. Coco Bus Roll Call.
Chinese government officials LOVE to have official dinners and once the barley liquor starts flowing, you never know what some of them will do, including singing opera.
This is some of the Tibetan Buddhist chanting I recorded at a Qinghai shrine.
Here is Coco’s introduction to the Temple of the Jade Emperor.
Javier Bello read a poem (en espanol) at the bar, which was very smoky thanks,
Nico Vassilakis has been active in Seattle's literary community for 20 years. His recent work includes co-editing The Last Vispo: Visual Poetry Anthology 1998-2008 forthcoming from Fantagraphics Books in Fall 2012. Mickey O'Connor is the author of three books of poetry, the most recent entitled Pushkin's Umbrella. He has been a poet for many years, written thousands of lines of poetry, hundreds of poems & given poetry readings at numerous venues in the USA. He lives & writes in Seattle. The reading is a rare SPLAB matinee, Saturday, September 17 at 3:30PM. Suggested donation $5.
SPLAB Location: 3651 S. Edmunds, Seattle, WA 98118, in the Columbia Cultural Corner (the former Columbia School). Enter from Edmunds. Off street parking is available and we’re three blocks from the Link Light Rail stop in Columbia City.
Audio of Nico here. Audio of Mickey here.
George Bowering is a prolific Canadian novelist, poet, historian, and biographer. The author of more than 90 books, Bowering is the best-known of a group of young poets including who studied together at the University of British Columbia in the 1950s. There they founded the journal TISH. On SPLAB Presents for the week of August 15, 2011 George talks about his new book My Darling Nellie Grey. See more interviews here: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2010/11/interviews/ and listen for SPLAB Presents Thursdays at 4:30P on KBCS.FM.
Paul Nelson reports from the 3rd Qinghai Lake International Poetry Festival. Meredith Nelson's photos are featured.
Trev Carolan
Trev Carolan is the editor of Making Waves: Reading BC and Pacific Northwest Literature. Paul Nelson caught up with him at the Prophouse Cafe in Vancouver to talk about the book. SPLAB Presents for the week of July 25, 2011. The whole interview with Trevor Carolan. The interview page is being updated weekly at: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2010/11/interviews/ and we will eventually get much of the SPLAB archive up there. These segments air Thursday afternoons around 4:30PM on KBCS.FM.
A new feature on KBCS,91.3FM Thursday afternoons is SPLAB Presents, featuring segments from interviews Paul Nelson has conducted, or segments of readings he's recorded. Judith Roche is a Seattle poet and arts educator who is featured on next SPLAB Presents produced for the week of July 11, 2001, reading from her Salmon Suite recorded at the Vashon Island Poetry Festival May 2011.
See other interviews and interview segments on the SPLAB website under the banner LISTEN, and listen for the segments around 4:30 each Thursday afternoon on KBCS.
From Brian McGuigan: The best reading series in Seattle--"Cheap Wine and Poetry"--gets busy for the bards this Thursday, April 28 with Roberto Carlos Ascalon, Elizabeth Austen, Paul Nelson and Katie Ogle. If you're not there, you are seriously missing out. Richard Hugo House. There was a standing-room-only crowd, the biggest in the history of the series, with at least 120 people and some turned away at the door.
Audio from the evening:
http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/1.BrianMcGuigan_Introductory_Remarks_4.28.mp3 http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/2.Charla_Grenz_Introductory_Remarks.mp3 http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/3.Katie_Ogle_4.28.mp3 http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/4.Paul_Nelson_4.28.11.mp3 http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/5.Roberto_Ascalon_Elizabeth_Austen_4.28.11.mp3
Sharon Doubiago photo by by Andrena Zawinski
Poetry Writing Workshop, Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 12N @ SPLAB w/ Sharon Doubiago
This workshop for creative writers at all stages of development will approach writing that comes from soul first rather than craft. I use memory, self-exploration, poetry and aesthetics exercises and experiments to help participants identify their true stories, concerns, rhythms, words, images, dreams, issues, aesthetics, beliefs, voices, etc. We will explore the idea of strengthening our writing into mature and finished pieces by staying close to the sources, rather than imposing repressive rules from outside, or indulging current cultural biases against “memory.”
But then, we will turn to “craft.” True craft comes from the deepest self, from the lifelong honing of personality, is not different or separate from one’s life story and way in the world. Craft is an extension of content, is of the soul’s aesthetics. We will produce meaningful, publishable writing.
(*“Greatness of soul does not stoop to tactics,” Terence des Pres)
The workshop will be facilitated by Sharon Doubiago, Sunday, April 17, 2011 at 12N at SPLAB in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School. 3651 S. Edmunds. Parking is available on site and SPLAB is a short walk from the Columbia City stop of the Link Light Rail. Suggested donation is $30.
P.S. Dear Folks, I recorded Sharon's reading at Elliott Bay Books last night and put it on-line here: http://www.GlobalVoicesRadio.org/audio/Sharon_Doubiago_Elliott_Bay_4.16.mp3 It is un-edited. I look forward to seeing most of you at today's workshop at SPLAB. Paul
Nathaniel Mackey's visit to Seattle was a remarkable weekend. He gave a reading and facilitated a workshop at SPLAB on Saturday, March 12 and gave a prose reading and engaged in a conversation at the NW African-American Museum on Friday, March 11.
Earlier on that Friday, Nate sat down with SPLAB Founder Paul Nelson to discuss his poetry, his poetics and the soul-building opportunity for a poet in wartime.
He also discussed his wariness of the notion of "coherence." Certainly the postmodern era is one in which realities are plural and relative. He noted:
We have to be wary of the will to cohere because, as we've seen, the will to cohere - certainly in the west - has led to these qonquistadorial regimes that just regard, for example, the non-European as irrelevant; to be subjugated or eliminated but certainly not to be invited in as a vital participant and a source of information about the expansive possibilities of being human.
Here are links to Nate's:
Saturday, March 12, 2011 reading His reading of the Splay Anthem poem On Antiphon Island The Friday, March 11, 2011 interview with Paul Nelson and The March 12 workshop (huge file).
Again, SPLAB is grateful to Poets & Writers, 4Culture, The Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, WESTAF, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Island Soul Restaurant, CD Forum, Jeanne Heuving and all the dedicated SPLAB volunteers and Board Members. Thank you!
Our Fall 2011 Visiting Poet will be Brenda Hillman, November 11 and 12, 2011.
The SPLAB Visiting Poet Series welcomed Nathaniel Mackey to Seattle March 11 and 12, 2011, for a prose reading and conversation, a workshop and a poetry reading. For many reasons, this event set a new high water mark for SPLAB.
Mackey was the 2nd Visiting Poet to read for SPLAB since we moved from Auburn, Washington to Seattle’s Columbia City neighborhood in 2009. Michael McClure visited in March 2010. The year of intense networking since then has paid off.
The prose reading on Friday night happened at the Northwest African-American Museum. Mackey’s first reading in Seattle since 1994, it was co-sponsored by the CD Forum. Their mission: To present and produce Black cultural programs that encourage thought and debate for the greater Seattle area. CD Forum suggested the format, an interview session and Q & A following the reading. The interview was conducted by University of Washington-Bothell professor Jeanne Heuving. Mackey read from the new epistolary novel: From a Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate. Mackey’s letters from N to a mysterious figure known as the Angel of Dust relate the experiences of a jazz band in Southern California in the late 70’s and early 80’s. A work in progress, Heuving combined the insight of a very serious scholar, with a very personable touch, engaging the audience.
Saturday’s events brought the first Visiting Poet event to the new SPLAB space in the former Columbia School’s Cultural Corner. The workshop was at capacity and Mackey gave some introductory notes, suggesting a different approach to looking at the poems. He suggested we consider “incident vs. narrative” and said he was interested in the “vivification of incident.” He also suggested that gathered poets consider the “sound/sense ratio” of poems. His grace and warm presence allowed for intensity, and his insights, often delivered at the end of the feedback for each poet, was very incisive. Post-workshop comments from participants were extremely positive.
His reading Saturday night lasted approximately 50 minutes and included work from his 2006 National Book Award winner Splay Anthem, as well as work to be published by New Directions in the Fall from the collection entitled Nod House. New work, from an as yet untitled collection, was also read. The two threads of his ongoing serial poem, entitled Mu and Song of the Andoumboulou, are continued into these as yet un-published works. The Andoumboulou, as Mackey points on in Splay Anthem, are the rough draft human beings from the Dogon culture of Mali in West Africa. Lines such as “each the other’s increment” and “star wobble gave us away” give one a sense of Mackey’s reach, from the intimate and indigenous to the galactic.
The most recent work featured poems entitled A Night in Jaipur and Moment’s Gnosis, the latter a play on the classic Oliver Nelson jazz composition Moments Notice. When asked at the post-reading gathering why the recent look to the east, he suggested it is part of growing old and the east’s notion of impermanence is central to this new thrust in his work
In an interview conducted during his visit, he downplayed the notion that what he is doing is an example of what Robert Duncan called the World Poem. Duncan’s examples are The Cantos of Ezra Pound, Paterson by William Carlos Williams and H.D.’s Trilogy. In describing Duncan’s concept in his book of essays and interviews, Paracritical Hinge, Mackey says
It is though the war were some sort of muse – a taunting muse, to be sure, but a muse nonetheless. A challenge and a dialectical goad, it elicits acts of the imagination that envision its abolition…The ordeals of hell give birth to a new vision of heaven
He goes on to suggest Williams was writing about this view advanced in 1941 in a piece entitled “Midas: A Proposal for a Magazine” in which he calls for a flurry of artistic activity to combat the war then raging in Europe. “The Midas touch, the alchemy of the mind which cannot be seduced by...
SPLAB welcomes legendary poet, essayist, novelist and editor Nathaniel Mackey to Columbia City for a reading, workshop at the new SPLAB location, 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School and a talk at the NW African-American Museum.
On Saturday, March 12, Mackey will lead an afternoon writing workshop from 1:00 to 4:00PM, followed by a public reading at 7:30PM. The workshop cost is $75 per person, and space is limited. Admission to the public reading is $5. The workshop and reading will be held at SPLAB, 3651 S Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School.
The workshop is filling up. To register, or for more information, please contact Paul Nelson at pen(at) splab (dot) org or call 206.422.5002.
Nate in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Recordings of Nate reading his poetry.
Sponsored by 4Culture, Poets and Writers, CD Forum, The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Richard Hugo House and WESTAF.
SPLAB welcomes legendary poet, essayist, novelist and editor Nathaniel Mackey to Columbia City for a reading tonight at 7:30 at SPLAB, 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School.
Admission to the public reading is $5.
Poet and novelist Nathaniel Mackey was born in 1947 in Miami, Florida. He received a B.A. degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from Stanford University.
His books of poetry include Splay Anthem (New Directions, 2006), which won the 2006 National Book Award in Poetry; Whatsaid Serif (1998); Song of the Andoumboulou: 18-20 (1994); School of Udhra (1993); Outlantish (1992); Eroding Witness (1985), which was selected for the National Poetry Series; Septet for the End of Time (1983); and Four for Trane (1978).
He is also the author of an ongoing prose work, From A Broken Bottle Traces of Perfume Still Emanate, of which three volumes have been published: Atet A. D. (2001), Djbot Baghostus's Run (1993), and Bedouin Hornbook (1986).
The poet Robin Blaser has called Mackey's work "a brilliant renewal of and experiment with the language of our spiritual condition and a measure of what poetry gives in trust—'heart's/meat' and the rush of language to bear it.
Nate in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Recordings of Nate reading his poetry.
Sponsored by 4Culture, Poets and Writers, CD Forum, The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Island Soul Caribbean Restaurant, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Richard Hugo House and WESTAF.
SPLAB welcomes legendary poet, essayist, novelist and editor Nathaniel Mackey to Columbia City for a reading, workshop at the new SPLAB location, 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School and a talk at the NW African-American Museum.
The workshop is filling up. To register, or for more information, please contact Paul Nelson at pen(at) splab (dot) org or call 206.422.5002.
On Friday, March 11, Mackey gives a talk and prose reading at 7:00PM at the Northwest African-American Museum, 2300 S. Massachusetts St. Admission is $5, and space is limited. The event is co-sponsored by the CD Forum. Details: https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/?p=2260
On Saturday, March 12, Mackey will lead an afternoon writing workshop from 1:00 to 4:00PM, followed by a public reading at 7:30PM. The workshop cost is $75 per person, and space is limited. Admission to the public reading is $5. The workshop and reading will be held at SPLAB, 3651 S Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School.
Nate in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Recordings of Nate reading his poetry.
Sponsored by 4Culture, Poets and Writers, CD Forum, The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Richard Hugo House and WESTAF.
SPLAB welcomes legendary poet, essayist, novelist and editor Nathaniel Mackey to Columbia City for a reading, workshop at the new SPLAB location, 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School and a Friday night talk at the NW African-American Museum at 2300 S. Massachusetts Av. at 7PM.
On Saturday, March 12, Mackey will lead an afternoon writing workshop from 1:00 to 4:00PM, followed by a public reading at 7:30PM. The workshop cost is $75 per person, and there is one space left. Admission to the public reading is $5. The workshop and reading will be held at SPLAB, 3651 S Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School.
To register for the workshop, or for more information, please contact Paul Nelson at pen(at) splab (dot) org or call 206.422.5002.
Nate in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Recordings of Nate reading his poetry.
Sponsored by 4Culture, Poets and Writers, CD Forum, The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, Island Soul Caribbean Restaurant, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Richard Hugo House and WESTAF.
SPLAB welcomes legendary poet, essayist, novelist and editor Nathaniel Mackey to Columbia City for a reading, workshop at the new SPLAB location, 3651 S. Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School and a talk at the NW African-American Museum.
The workshop is filling up. To register, or for more information, please contact Paul Nelson at pen(at) splab (dot) org or call 206.422.5002.
On Friday, March 11, Mackey gives a talk and prose reading at 7:00PM at the Northwest African-American Museum, 2300 S. Massachusetts St. Admission is $5, and space is limited. The event is co-sponsored by the CD Forum. Details: http://www.cdforum.org/season/3838
On Saturday, March 12, Mackey will lead an afternoon writing workshop from 1:00 to 4:00PM, followed by a public reading at 7:30PM. The workshop cost is $75 per person, and space is limited. Admission to the public reading is $5. The workshop and reading will be held at SPLAB, 3651 S Edmunds in the Cultural Corner of the former Columbia School.
Nate in conversation with Charles Bernstein.
Recordings of Nate reading his poetry.
Sponsored by 4Culture, Poets and Writers, CD Forum, The Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, The Shirley Marvin Hotel, Richard Hugo House and WESTAF.
Paul Nelson at Deception Falls, May 1, 2017 This page features some of the SPLAB archive, including interviews done for SPLAB with Visiting Poets, Northwest Poets, readings at SPLAB and elsewhere that we've recorded, & radio segments including SPLAB Presents, which aired for several months in 2011 and were produced by Paul E Nelson. See below. Please also check out the ongoing interview project of our Founding Director Paul E Nelson at American Prophets.
Poets
George Bowering
Trevor Carolan
Brenda Hillman
Andrew Schelling
100 Thousand Poets for Change: Brian McGuigan, Eugenia Toledo, Lawrence Matsuda, Nilki Benitez, Judith Roche, Deborah Woodard, Frances McCue, Carletta Carrington Wilson, Cedar Sigo.
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SPLAB Presents
Voices from Occupy Seattle
Xi Chuan
Johnny Moses
Photo by Inye Wokoma
Carletta Carrington Wilson is a poet and graphic artist who recently was artist in residence at the Washington House and studio in Seattle’s Central District. She honored James Washington, the late sculptor by creating an installation, many original pieces of art and a poem. On Memorial Day weekend, she led a tour of the space and her work there, the focus of the SPLAB Presents for the week of July 18, 2011. Carletta will be part of the 100 THOUSAND Poets for Change event at SPLAB on September 24th. (A 2010 interview of Carletta Wilson by Paul Nelson is available here.) *****************
Judith Roche is a Seattle poet and arts educator who curated the Bumbershoot literary arts programs for over 20 years. On the SPLAB Presents produced for the week of July 11, 2001, she reads from her Salmon Suite recorded at the Vashon Island Poetry Festival. ************ Frances McCue is a Seattle poet, Writer-in-Residence at the University of Washington and co-founder of Seattle’s writing center The Richard Hugo House. Her new book, the Bled, was written in response to her husband’s sudden accidental death in Morocco. Frances McCue on SPLAB Presents for week of 6.20.11 Segment two for the week of June 27. Segment three, for the week of July 4, 2011. The entire interview conducted by Paul E Nelson at SPLAB May 13, 2011. *********SPLAB Presents for the week of May 31 featuring wildlife biologist Dominick DellaSalla.For the week of June 6 it's here. Other segments can be hear here as well as here. Hear the whole interview, recorded May 9, 2011, here. **********SPLAB Presents for the week of May 30 (from C.A. Conrad's May 1, 2011 SPLAB reading) and May 23, 2011, reading some of his Somapoetics poems at Open Books, April 30, 2011. Our thanks to Open Bo oks for help in making this recording possible. His 4.30.11 Open Books reading His 5.1.11 SPLAB Reading *************SPLAB Presents for the week of May 9, 2011. Allen Ginsberg reading and discussing Autumn Leaves from an interview with Paul Nelson recorded June 12, 1994. SPLAB Presents for the week of May 2, 2011. Allen Ginsberg discusses First Thought, Best Thought from an interview with Paul Nelson recorded June 12, 1994. ************Interview with Nate Mackey, March 11, 12, 2011, conducted by Paul E Nelson, during Nate's trip to Seattle as part of the SPLAB Visiting Poets Series. Here are links to Nate's: Saturday, March 12, 2011 reading His reading of the Splay Anthem poem On Antiphon Island The Friday, March 11, 2011 interview with Paul Nelson and The March 12 workshop (huge file)...
May 19, 2010
Michael read to a partisan crowd at the legendary Moe's Books in Berkeley on Wednesday, May 19, 2010. The audio available here, skips past the introduction and the assorted GRAHHRS offered by the audience as Michael is welcomed to the mic.
He read from his latest, Mysteriosos, which John Olson reviewed here. McClure is revealed at the top of his game with this book and the reading confirms it. Charles Olson articulated the process of composition which has enabled McClure's stunning gesture in his essay Projective Verse, Olson was not able to accomplish what McClure has done. McClure started writing projectively in the 1950's at about age 22 and 55 years later, continues to mine this process, writing some of his best work.
Olson, on the other hand, died at 60 after coming to poetry later in life and knew he needed another ten years to accomplish what he had set out to do.
Likewise, Robert Duncan, another one of McClure's guides, took a 15 year break from publishing to reveal Ground Work: Before the War / In The Dark, a project which did not have the same energy and potency of three earlier books, The Opening of the Field, Roots and Branches and Bending the Bow.
My review of Mysteriosos is forthcoming in the Pacific Rim Review of Books, but in the meantime, enjoy the audio of McClure in Berkeley, and remember that you are an animal connected to everything that was with the power to shape that which will be.
(More on my take on Projective Verse is available here.)
Last night I drove up to Vancouver to attend the Fred Wah book release party. With Fred as the night’s headliner and the emcee being George Bowering, two of the most important North American poets of a generation, I knew this would be an event well worth attending. I left Seattle early, checked into the downtown hostel and arrived WAY early, but basically had my pick of seats.