Living Room, February 15, w/ Paul Nelson

OPEN BOOKS

Paul Hunter

Paul Hunter

If we don’t read one another
who do we ever read
and if we don’t read one another
who can we expect to read us?
and if we don’t read one another
and if we don’t read
why bother writing
these lines so deep in our faces
that take so much living
to begin to make a dent
the child’s dimple a tiny word
the frown of a young adult
a curse and the sags the scars
by forty a couplet
by fifty or sixty scarce a sonnet
even by ninety and a hundred
the tale told rarely an epic
but always
always worth another look

– Paul Hunter

Writers of all ages and skill levels gather every Tuesday at 7P at SPLAB to read new work, the work of someone else or to just be in the engaging company of other writers. At Living Room this week we’ll take the first 30 minutes to learn about someone else in the circle and take another look with a writing exercise created by Anne Waldman and based on a technique used by Jack Kerouac. Paul Nelson facilitates.

Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman

Your donation of $5 helps SPLAB put on special events and continue programming AND gets you an entry in our monthly raffle for way cool prizes. You must be present to win. Please bring 8 copies of the work you plan to read. If you do not bring copies, they are available for 10c.

Living Room happens at SPLAB in the Cultural Corner of the old Columbia School, between Rainier AV S and 36th AV S, on Edmunds. We’re 2 blocks from the Columbia City Link Light Rail Station. Free parking is available on the school grounds.


About Splabman

Poet & interviewer Paul E Nelson founded SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival. Since 1993, SPLAB has produced hundreds of poetry events & 600 hours of interview programming with legendary poets & whole systems activists including Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Diane di Prima, Daphne Marlatt, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Barry McKinnon, José Kozer, Brenda Hillman & many others. Paul’s books include American Prophets (interviews 1994-2012) (2018) American Sentences (2015) A Time Before Slaughter (2009) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (2013). Co-Editor of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia (2015), 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (2017) and Samthology: A Tribute to Sam Hamill (2019) Make it True meets Medusario (2019), he’s presented poetry/poetics in London, Brussels, Nanaimo, Qinghai & Beijing, China, has had work translated into Spanish, Chinese & Portuguese & writes an American Sentence every day. Awarded a residency at The Lake, from the Morris Graves Foundation in Loleta, CA, he’s published work in Golden Handcuffs Review, Zen Monster, Hambone, and elsewhere. Winner of the 2014 Robin Blaser Award from The Capilano Review, he is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia and lives in Rainier Beach, in the Cascadia bioregion’s Cedar River watershed.
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