Review of Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia

Make It True cover (front and back)Bless Mary Ann Moore for her wonderful review of the new anthology of Cascadia Poetry Make It True. Dig:

In Lowther’s poem, Nuu-chah-nulth, Good Advice, the decolonization of “my mind,” aligns very nicely with co-editor Paul Nelson’s introductory words about the “wilderness of the mind.”

Lowther writes: “I’ve been advised not to study / French or Spanish, rather / to stand still, make roots from words, / take in the language of the place / I’ve made my home.”

Standing still, listening, observing, witnessing are all practices of the eco-conscious poets in Cascadia. They “take in the language of the place.”

Cascadia is a bioregion spanning from Cape Mendocino in the south to Mount Logan in the north. It is that “bioregionalism, or the effort to reimagine ourselves and the places where we live in terms of ecology, sustainability and harmony with the natural systems” that inspired the four editors in the book’s creation.

The review first ran in the Vancouver Sun and also ran in the Edmonton Journal.

More info on the book here: http://www.leafpress.ca/Make_It_True/Make_It_True.htm

Vancouver Sun Make It True

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.
This entry was posted in Blog and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.