Cascadian Prophets Podcast

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.

Paul E Nelson interviews Tessa Hulls on Feeding Ghosts her graphic memoir

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 Perspective Dr. E. Richard Atleo Wednesday, March 1, at 4pm Oberto Commons, SINE 200 Zoom access is available RSVP for the conversation Today 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.

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.

I did not get a chance to write about my experience with the 12th Poetry Postcard Fest yesterday as I was leaving Ian, Jennifer and Gavia Boyden and their home on San Juan Island with my daughter Ella. We had been there to help Ian celebrate his NEA award to translate the poetry of Tibetan poet Tsering Woeser. (Photo by Ian Boyden) There were several noteworthy developments for me in this past fest. I abandoned epigraphs to start the poems and instead went with a seriality, or sequential effort. I recorded Sam Hamill a few years ago discussing this impulse, or approach, and just listened again to his words. Hear them here. As to the why of seriality/sequential, hear this. His thoughts are very much in sync with the spontaneous methods that I've alluded to many times before and helpful in understanding the APPF's emphasis on spontaneity. Sam was a presence during this festival not just in this sequential method, but in the content as well. I mentioned him directly in 18 of my 45 poems and indirectly in a few more. I went to his books for inspiration and could even hear what I pegged to be his own voice coming into one of the poems. I put all of his words from two different books of poetry into wordclouds and wrote a poem based on that and others which used phrases derived from his wordclouds:         754. Sam's Rain Mask to Libby Maxey was a good example of Sam's influence coming in through wordclouds. Others coming through the poems included Corita Kent, Georgia O'Keeffe, Kenneth Rexroth. Ted Joans, Emanuel Swedenborg, Basho, Denise Levertov, Leonard Cohen, Ian, Jennifer and Gavia Boyden, Jack Kerouac, Van Morrison, Pat Metheny, Patricia Barber, Ed Varney, Gary Snyder, John Coltrane, Michael McClure, Langston Hughes, Merce Cunningham and Stanley DelGozo. I loved the postcards of his that came to me and Bhakti, as they were casual, authentic postcards that were very immediate and very much out of his own experience written to us. Not an attempt to write great literature, but to simply connect us with his huge heart. Thank you Stanley. Ella Nelson, August 2018, American Camp, San Juan Island As Amy Miller did in her fest this year, as reported in her 2018 wrap-up, I composed many poems in clumps and then sat-out a couple of days. You have to get the poems while the mood is right and also strike when there are no six year olds vying with the muse for attention. Some things that DID get my attention during the "month" included specular reflectance, my older daughter Rebecca's engagement, the (sans U.S.) World Cup and, as always, the domestic terror of the Blue Angels. That was early in the fest. Once I was clearly past the bar of my required 32 poems (we had an extra poet in the first few groups this year) I was liberated to take time and create collage cards, which was a very satisfying way to end the fest and send bonus cards to some friends and other poets handpicked from groups 2 through 4. I wish I could have done more. Examples include one EARLY collage poem that was a collage front and back. The back was made up of words taken from other sources, like a ransom note and did not arrive in one piece: One collage went to Ina Roy-Faderman, the driving force behind the 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards anthology: The last one went to Aaron Kokorowski: And then September came. Ugh. Moving "august" up into July seems just fine to me, but moving August into September does not. Maybe it's because September is my birth month. Maybe because I have backpacking to do, which I have done most Septembers since 1995. I don't know, but each year the Poetry Postcard Fest gets better. As Judy Jensen said: Thanks to Paul and Lana for kicking off the August Poetry Postcard Festival and to Paul, for continuing to steward this creative endeavor from year to year. As a longtime participant, the fest has become a fixed part of the calendar, as established as Easter or Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s been lovely to see old timers’ names from year to year, and new poets popping up each year. I appreciate all of your poems, postcards, and thoughts here in the Facebook Group and wish you the very best of luck with your poetry. Until next year— Judy Jensen This is something postcarding during other times of year does not achieve. And an attempt to alleviate the confusion about starting a fest that has the word August in its name, but starts in July, I am considering that word, august, an adjective in this context and not a proper noun. That should solve things. The countdown clock on the official fest page has been reset to July 4, 2019 at 12:01am PST. This means there are 305 days of the year that are NOT part of the fest, but the PoPo police are not stopping folks from continuing to send bonus cards in the "off-season." I intend to give late-senders some slack and write about cards I got before too long. Paul E Nelson, August 2018, photo by Bhakti M. Watts.

Thursday and Friday, (5.10 & 5.11.2018) I will be the Methow Valley for events that involve the August Poetry Postcard Fest.  Fest registration starts in less than two months and this is the first fest we've facilitated since the release of 56 Days of August, the poetry postcard anthology. Judy Kleinberg Christine Kendall is a Methow Valley resident and veteran postcard fest participant. Working with the Methow Arts Alliance she's set up three events involving me and one other co-editor of 56 Days, Judy Kleinberg:   Tod Marshall       And after a day of workshopping at the local high school Friday, we will be part of a reading with Tod Marshall: DATE: Friday, May 11, 5:30-7:30pm. LOCATION: Trail’s End Bookstore in Winthrop, WA. CONTACT: Methow Arts, info (@) methowartsalliance (dot) org, 509-997-4004. As of today I have written 728 postcard poems. I am participating in the 52/52 project, a spin-off from the August Poetry Postcard Fest conceived and produced by Kristin Cleage. It will probably come up in the workshop, or at the high school workshop, but postcards, for me, are all about composing spontaneously and about seriality. I have been blessed in my poetry life to have access to the minds of master poets, via my radio career and the interviews I was doing for a syndicated radio show, through facilitating events for SPLAB and by being interested in this stance toward poem making. This past Sunday I had the good fortune to interview George Bowering and George Stanley in Vancouver, BC. Their new book is a "tumble book" meaning that one end the book is written by one George and the other by the other George. There is no back! And they talked about writing each other into their poems. Listen as they read poems (or parts of poems) from the new book, including two epistles: (text of two of the poems, here) George Stanley George Bowering and his blasphemous t-shirt George Stanley reads a portion of "3", a poem from West Broadway :27. Click here to listen. George Bowering reads "Letter to George Stanley." 1:19 Click here to listen. George Stanley reads "Letter to George Bowering." 1:38. Click here to listen. That these poets are masters, having taken the job of writing and the study of poetry quite seriously for almost 60 years is important. That they've been part of communities that have transformed the practice of composing poetry (the San Francisco Renaissance in George Stanley's case, TISH in George Bowering's) and very much understand the organic method, is also critical. After 60 years, some of the conclusions these two master poets have come to include the notion of spontaneity and the notion of seriality. How to address a subject that has great importance to you, but not worry about being definitive, but knowing that you can take further stabs at attempting to articulate (or transcribe from whatever outside source) exactly what is happening? Sam Hamill talked about a "provisional conclusion" and he understood the power of the serial method as well. I hope the folks in the Methow Valley get some sense of the power I intuit in spontaneous composition and serial form.

An August Poetry Postcard from 2015 featuring yet another photo of mine from 2014, this one from the Skokomish Rez, I love the allusion to the American Indian Movement and hope President Obama will finally pardon Leonard Peltier. But the poem is more about apprehending the moment, the eternal moment. Is it because I am getting older that this is more important to me? (For audio, click here.)

Poem #2 in the 2015 August Poetry Postcard Fest. (Audio here.)

Joanne Kyger This is the first "official" poetry postcard of mine for 2015, year 9. I sent out one "practice card" to someone from last year's list, but THIS year I decided to use Joanne Kyger's new book On Time as a source of epigraphs. I am getting so much out of her work which owes much to Philip Whalen, whose biography I am also reading, slowly, this month. The combination of Buddhism, politics and snark are unparalleled in Kyger's work and, approaching 80, she has been at it for about 60 years. I bet she does not like being reminded of this but it's better than the alternative, right? It is not yet September, but this card was sent the on the first day of the fest, when the early registrants (Group 1) had signed up and gotten their list for this year's fest, so off we go to starting to post all of these. https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/506.-Curved-Projections.mp3

I was taking my corridor walk June 23, 2015, and was stunned by the reflection of the sun on wavelets of Lake Washington. I tried to get a decent video capture of the phenomenon (after looking at a Seagull I thought was a Blue Heron) and you get some idea from that. I remember Beaver Chief talking about how he called staring at water, whether it be a river or lake, as "Indian Meditation." A meditative moment, til the car comes and how loud it is! But the experience paved the way for a postcard. Since the 2015 list won't get started for another ten days or so (from the day I wrote the poem), I just went to last year's list. Was planning to use Joanne Kyger's work for my 2015 postcards (and still am) but could not find On Time, her new book, so used the next book I am reading, an old selected of Daphne Marlatt's. More on her before too long. https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/20150623_094422-.mp4 150623_001

Jimi Hendrix Stamp WooHoo! The last 2014 August Poetry Postcard! (See all here.) And with only 221 days until the next call goes out. Hawthorn Presence uses an image I took on my cellphone of the house Denise Levertov lived in, images of my visit with Charles Potts in Walla Walla and one smudge from a Hawthorn berry I put in my pocket while Charles took Mer, Ella and I up to a ridge on the back 750 to see his horses and a 360 view that included Black Snake Ridge. Hear it here. Thanks for suffering through all these poems. I hope you'll consider participating in the 9th year of the postcard fest in Summer 2015. I'd love to publish a book with some of the best of these poems with poets from all over the world who've participated in one of these fests. Maybe in time for year ten in 2016?

496. The Occasional Chicharrón has more Congress and Puebla reflections, another reference to Vargas Lugo’s butterfly nation flags and the impending USAmerican football season, the advent of which signals the end of summer in many different ways. The intense violence of the game is a contest to the pastoral nature of baseball, which has no clock and is a summer game. George Carlin’s bit on the difference between the two sports comes to mind, but that the U.S. is addicted to violence in every manifestation is a living example of Diane di Prima’s prophetic line, “the only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it.” 496. The Occasional Chicharrón https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/496.-The-Occasional-Chicharrón.mp3

An August poetry postcard sent to Linda Roller. https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/492.-Star-Lings.mp3

This is the first poem I wrote for the 2014 August Poetry Postcard Fest. It was inspired by a renewed plunge into Carla Bley's landmark album Escalator Over The Hill. (Audio. Pdf.) If you listen to the record, you'll have more context. Gato in this poem would be Gato Barbieri. I have been using lines from Denise Levertov as epigraphs this year. 471. Killing Gato

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.

Habib mesmerizes Jed Myers My posts on the August 2013 Seattle visit of Morrocan poet and Beat scholar El Habib Louai were quite long, (archived here)  so I am creating this post in the hopes that viewers of this blog will take a listen to the interview we did at the top of Desolation Peak, right next to the Lookout where Jack Kerouac spent the summer of 1956. August 12, 2013, Habib was the featured poet at Peter Munro's reading in the Wedgwood section of Seattle. North End Forum Habib's reading is here: Habib at North End Forum, Wedgwood Ale House, August 12, 2013, Part 1 (16:40) Peter Munro & Habib Habib at North End Forum, Wedgwood Ale House, August 12, 2013, Part 2 (19:37) (For audio of all the Habib-inspired postcard poems I read at the Wedgwood Ale House that night, click here (4:53. You can see and hear the poems here. They are #452 through #458.) El Habib Louai Interview atop Desolation Peak, Part 1. In the first segment, Habib talked about his background, his parents (who are illiterate), how he found the Beats and how their counter-culture ethos greatly appealed to him and seemed to be a method for changing the culture of his country. He discussed the cultural encounter between the Beats and Moroccan poets in the 50s and 60s and hopes, through his Ph.D. dissertation to dispel the myth of Euro-centricity. Mohamed Choukri is one of the Moroccan novelists on which he will be focused. (14:13) El Habib Louai Interview atop Desolation Peak, Part 2. In the second segment, Habib talked about his tour of the U.S., how it came to be mainly through Facebook networking, his visits to New York, Paterson and Newark, New Jersey, (retracing the steps of Allen Ginsberg and others), Altoona, PA, Boulder, Portland and Seattle. He recorded some of his Ginsberg translations at the Ginsberg Trust with Peter Hale, visited Amish country in Pennsylvania, rode the bus from Altoona to Boulder, Shambhala Mountain Center and sites in Seattle and the Northwest, including the graves of Denise Levertov, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce and Brandon Lee and a visit with the very live and always entertaining Sam Hamill, who introduced Habib to sushi. He also talked about his poem Kerouacian Epiphanies in Portland Greyhound Bus Station, how that was composed and how he tends to write organically, in a first take manner. (17:25) Habib at Jack's Shack with Hozomeen El Habib Louai Interview atop Desolation Peak, Part 3. Habib discussed his method of composition which he says owes something to the projective method, his deep experience listening to Michael McClure's poem Dolphin Skull, how it must have been written at a deep level of consciousness and how moved he was to hear it. He discussed the upcoming stops on his tour, including San Luis Obispo, Santa Rosa, Berkeley and Los Angeles and visits with Michael Rothenberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger and other friends and poets. He also discussed his plans for the future. (16:20) Once down from the top of Desolation Peak, we camped on the mountain that night and the next day at Noon our water taxi whisked us to the trailhead that led to the short hike to the car and the short drive to the North Cascades Institute's Environmental Learning Center. A beautiful center on Diablo Lake, we had a chance to shower, have some lunch and coffee before our talk that evening. Habib and I had been invited to speak to the Beats on the Peaks class. NCI Executive Director Saul Weisberg, longtime North Cascades National Park employee Gerry Cook and his wife Hannah Sullivan are huge Beat poetry fans and very capable guides for the Beats on the Peaks program. It was the first night of the 2013 Beats on the Peaks event. Gerry Cook discussed Fire Lookouts in the North Cascades and showed some very dramatic photos of the Lookouts in winter. I talked about four different Beat-related soundbites. (See this post for details.) (21:35) Habib talked about the Beat connection to Morocco and other aspects of his Ph.D. research. Habib at NCI, 8.15.13, Part 1 (15:21) Habib at NCI, 8.15.13, Part 2 (17:02) Habib at NCI, 8.15.13, Part 3 (12:27) The following morning Habib and I got into my car early and I made sure he was on the 9:35 Coastal Starlight to San Luis Obispo with the instruction to tell Michael McClure: The Amtrak is a person as much as people are. I am grateful to everyone who made Habib's visit to Cascadia a huge success, including those mentioned above, my wife Meredith who took great care of our little girl Ella and especially the Subud International Cultural Association and the Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. Habib, your trip was mythic. May your mythic journey continue in the best way. I am honored to call you my Brother. Subud International Cultural Association Seattle Office of Arts & Culture El Habib, Paul, Hozomeen

(click here for audio) 470. Lowell Murphree, Ellensburg, WA - Relentless Meow

(click here for audio) 469. Elyse Brownell, Boulder, CO - Fennel or Nasturtium Blossoms

(click here for audio) 468. Matt Trease, Seattle, WA - Nerve Endings and Rainstorms

(click here for audio) 466. Joe Chiveney, Olympia, WA - The Empty River

(click here for audio) 465. T. Clear, Seattle, WA - Late August Rain Vigil

(Click here for audio) 464. Jami Proctor-Xu, San Ramon, CA - Baby Gate

(Click here for audio) 463.-Linda-Crosfield-Castlegar-BC-Hummingbird-Plot.mp3

(click here for audio) 462. Kenneth Greg Watson, Auburn, WA - Rapturous Vocalization

(Click here for audio) 461. Arthur Tulee, Toppenish, WA - Losing Time

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(click here for audio) 459. Kristen Cleage, Atlanta, GA - Full Sunflower Moon

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(click here for audio) 458. Linda Lee Harper, Augusta, GA - How Many Habibs

(click here for audio) 457. Amy Miller, Ashland, OR - A Taste This Side

(click here for audio) 456. L. Lisa Lawrence, Tacoma, WA - Shooting Hozomeen

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(Click here for audio) 454. Phebe Davidson, Westminster, SC - Berber Works the Wood.

(Click here for audio) 453.-Bridget-Nutting-Vancouver-WA-Put-a-Berber-on-it.mp3

(Click here for audio) 452. Richelle Selig, Olympia, WA - Berber in Cascadia

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