Thanks to Ra’anan David, video of the main events from the 5th Cascadia Poetry Festival, held October 12-15, 2017, in Tacoma, are now online:
7:30 Friday Main Stage: Readings featuring scheduled poets: Patricia Smith, Bruce Weigl, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Lucia Misch and Philip Red Eagle. MC – Jared Leising.
War Poetry/ Veterans Panel. MC – Abby Murray. Scheduled panelists, Philip Red Eagle, Bruce Weigl, Doug Johnson, Gary Copeland Lilley & Simone Gorrindo.
Tacoma’s Richard Brautigan: Life and Legacy Panel. MC – Nadine Antoinette Maestas. Scheduled panelists: Ianthe Brautigan, CAConrad, Tod Marshall and John Tanner.
Saturday Main Stage: Readings featuring scheduled poets: Ianthe Brautigan, C.A. Conrad, Sharon Thesen, Gary Lilley and Tod Marshall. MC – Thomas Walton.
Brautigan/Bernstein Plaque Unveiling:
Closing reading, Michael McClure, 5 days before he turned 85 years old.
Poet/interviewer Paul Nelson:
Founded: SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival
Wrote: American Sentences (2015), A Time Before Slaughter (2010) and Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies (Lumme Editions, Brazil, 2013). His 2015 interview with José Kozer was published in 2016 (Ranchos Press) as Tiovivo Tres Amigos.
Interviewed: Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders, Diane di Prima, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Brenda Hillman, among others and is engaged in a 20 year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia, including the festival, a MOOC (Innovative Cascadia Poetry), interviews with Cascadia poets indigenous elders and activists, and the anthology Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia. Paul is co-editor of that anthology as well as 56 Days of August the poetry postcard anthology and writes an American Sentence daily.
*MOOC = Massive Open Online Course