In the 1880’s Nietzsche declared, God is Dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Atheists would argue God was never alive to begin with. Religious fundamentalists disagree. But for the large majority of us – Agnostics, freethinkers, lapsed…whatevers – there’s an element of uncertainty about the existence of the divine – however defined. Rather than engaging in a theological debate, we’ll examine poems that question the notion of big-G God – poems that describe those moments when we’ve felt something. Did that really just happen? Did I feel what I think I felt? Am I a believer or a non? Bring poems – original or otherwise – that investigate this theme. Alex Bleecker is your facilitator.
Living Room is a wrier’s critique circle that happens in 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. Parking is available on the school grounds.) Join us every Tuesday at 7PM, suggested donation $5 to help keep the lights on.
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.
In the 1880’s Nietzsche declared, God is Dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Atheists would argue God was never alive to begin with. Religious fundamentalists disagree. But for the large majority of us – Agnostics, freethinkers, lapsed…whatevers – there’s an element of uncertainty about the existence of the divine – however defined. Rather than engaging in a theological debate, we’ll examine poems that question the notion of big-G God – poems that describe those moments when we’ve felt something. Did that really just happen? Did I feel what I think I felt? Am I a believer or a non? Bring poems – original or otherwise – that investigate this theme. Alex Bleecker is your facilitator.
