It is a tradition that I first encountered at the Taos Poetry Circus in New Mexico. The democratic component of that fest and of the Cascadia Poetry Festival is Living Room. Poets gather in a circle and read their own work and listen to each other. The event is free. Ntozake Shange was one of the many renowned poets I had a chance to hear in the intimate setting of the Living Room. I first heard Amalio Madueño‘s work in the courtyard of the café where Living Room was held the three years I attended. George Stanley attended the Living Room one of the days the fest happened in Seattle in May 2014. It occurs to me that Canadians are more likely to understand the egalitarian nature of the event, so who knows who we’ll see in the Living Room in Nanaimo during the 3rd Cascadia Poetry Fest. That it’s happening in the Nanaimo Museum is a bonus. (poster)
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.
