Part of the Tacoma Arts Month celebration, the inaugural Tacoma Poetry Fest happens Friday, October 16th and Saturday, October 17th at the Tacoma Public Utilities Building Auditorium.
Headliner David Wagoner and the former Poets Laureate of Tacoma will read Friday night and Saturday features several workshops. (See: http://thetacomapoetryfestival.com/classes-and-workshops/)
One such workshop:
3:15 – 4:45 Session
Personal Myth, Place, Genius Loci – Paul Nelson
What is the myth you are living? Your Personal Mythology, relationship to place and to the spirit of the place in which you live are components of a healthy foundation for poets interested in preparing themselves to respond as deeply as possible to the chaos of our time. Ezra Pound said: “More poets fail from lack of character than lack of talent” and ninety minutes should be enough to dip a pen into the deep waters of self, place and myth.
Writing exercises, some example poems and discussion will be featured and participants will be given resources to continue their own journey into the realm of deep self. Examples will be drawn from Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia and other sources.
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.
