Samar Albuhassan joined your humble narrator for a SPLAB-on-the-Road workshop at the Newcastle Library in Renton, WA, Saturday April 4, 2015. While the group gathered was small, perhaps due to the holiday weekend, they were inspired and witnessed a poetry bout demonstration, with Samar and me alternating reading of other people’s poems and judged by a panel of three. Poems by Brenda Hillman, Claudia Rankine, Allen Ginsberg and Victor Hernandez Cruz vied for votes and a lively workshop featuring prompts by both Samar and YHN gave the gathered a good start to National Poetry Month.
My gratitude goes to Donna Day of the Newcastle Library and the KCLS, which has booked perhaps 70 different SPLAB-on-the-Road workshops over the years and has not, as of yet, deleted us from their database.
Samar Albulhassan and Paul Nelson (Your Humble Narrartor) at the Newcastle Library April 4, 2015
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.
