One of the most important poets ever to live and work in Seattle, Denise Levertov died in 1997. There is no mention of her time in Seattle outside the Seward Park house she called home for eight years, but thanks to the Rainier Valley Rotary, SPLAB is spear-heading an Indiegogo campaign to purchase and install the plaque. The campaign would also support the 4th Cascadia Poetry Festival, Nov 3-6, 2016, in Seattle at Spring Street Center, which is dedicated to the memory and will explore the legacy of Levertov in Cascadia. Specifically, funds would support the panel on Levertov’s legacy and the ritual walk to her grave on Sunday morning led by JM Miller, Brenda Hillman and Daphne Marlatt. Our thanks go to the Rotary’s Jayne DeHaan, who spearheaded the project.
Contributors to the fundraising effort are offered a plethora of festival-related premiums which can be perused here:
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.
