Author Archives: Splabman

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.

Reviews of Becoming Cascadian

To redefine our lives and the places we live by Bioregion, rather than by political boundaries, is not the work of a single morning. It will require small cadres of committed people who become nature literate, write instructive poems and essays, and gradually make sense to their neighbors. This program, Becoming Cascadia, was one node in a larger effort that has been developing. This particular workshop, however, drew not only on Cascadian writers, but drew a handful of people who have been at work a long time on the job! Touring Kubota Gardens provided a direct view deep into the bioregion for many reasons. Eating meals as a group solidified our sense of community. Concluding with poetry gave ceremonial fragrance. The sharing of ideas, books, and other resources, will remain central. Thanks to Mark Gonnerman for a list of resources. Thanks to all for straight talk and careful listening. – Andrew Schelling Continue reading

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Becoming Cascadian Starts Thursday!

SPLAB’s first bioregional poetics retreat is this weekend. Becoming Cascadian is an intensification of the work done at the Cascadia Poetry Festivals we’ve staged over the years and Andrew Schelling, our keynote poet is set to arrive on Thursday. There … Continue reading

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Become Cascadian in Two Weeks

The retreat we have been planning for a few months happens in two weeks. Becoming Cascadian was a response to the desire by the SPLAB Board to continue events that operate at the intersection of poetics and bioregionalism, but do … Continue reading

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Why You Should Become a Cascadian

Republished from the South Seattle Emerald: In attempting to explain what bioregionalism is to one of the other parents at my daughter’s elementary school yesterday, he heard me say that a bioregion is what our nation would be if political … Continue reading

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