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.

Abecedarians Living Room 2.28.12 7P

Abecedarians & Other Constraints This week we’ll take on the notion of the abecedarian and combine it with a page or two from a reference book containing an alphabetical listing of words–the dictionary. From early Hebrew poetry to Harryette Mullen, … Continue reading

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Washington State Poetry Questionnaire (From the new Poet Laureate)

Hi Paul—will you consider filling this out and sending it to your connections?  Thanks!  Kathleen (P.S. The state’s new Poet Laureate will read at the Cascadia Poetry festival on March 25. Details here.) WASHINGTON STATE POETRY QUESTIONNAIRE My goal as … Continue reading

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Never Not Making It New: The Poet’s Always Work (Living Room Tue 2/21)

“Words can neither define nor explain”  -Alan Watts It is not news that the world is in a constant state of flux (just ask the Fluxus poets, or Siddhartha Gautama).  Ever-evolving, it parallels life itself; the only thing absolute is … Continue reading

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What do you Love? (2.14.12 Living Room)

To paraphrase Bo Diddley: I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire, I got a cobra snake for a necktie A brand new house on the road side, and it’s a-made out of rattlesnake hide Got a band new chimney put … Continue reading

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