Cascadia Poetics LAB logo

PAUL E NELSON

I am both excited and anxious about the 4th Cascadia Poetry Festival starting this Thursday (Nov 3, 2016) and concluding Sunday at 6pm. Working with a local organizing team, we’ve tried to put together a diverse group of poets who reflect aspects of Cascadia to help us better understand how to reinhabit this place in a way that is sustainable and leaves something habitable and sustaining to future generations. Part of my twenty year bioregional cultural investigation, I am hoping to better learn how this place sings through me and I expect that there will be some epiphanies coming.

The festival schedule has been revamped again and it can be viewed here:
https://cascadiapoetryfestival.org/2016-cascadia-poetry-festival/cpf4-2016-grid-schedule/

Since this is my personal website and what is me and what is my non-profit work is often blurred, I thought I would share some links to interviews I have done with poets involved in this year’s festival. I have interviewed more than a few and I think the interview is one of the most underrated mediums. To be a good interviewer you must listen well, find interesting folks who want to share aspects of their own work, or journey, and be prepared to follow hunches in the act of the discussion. I do very little editing post-interview as I prefer the event to be captured as it happens. I do a lot of preparation before the interview, so I know what I am talking about. My interviews are catalogued under the banner American Prophets or:  www.AmericanProphets.org. Click on the photo for the individual interview. (Sam Hamill photo by Sean Arthur Joyce.)

sarah-deleeuw-5-30-16

Sarah De Leeuw

Sam Hamill at CPF by Sean Arthur Joyce

Sam Hamill 

Brenda Hillman City

Brenda Hillman City

Colleen McElroy 4.27.16

Colleen McElroy 4.27.16

Judith Roche

Judith Roche

Marilyn Stablein at the Small Press Fair CPF3, Nanaimo. (Photo by Mary Ann Moore)

Marilyn Stablein at the Small Press Fair CPF3, Nanaimo. (Photo by Mary Ann Moore)