Pacific Rim Poetics Preview (workshop)

Pacific Rim Poetics

(a SPLAB Workshop Preview

Saturday, October 30, 2010, 12N-3P)

Basho

Basho

People in the rest of the U.S. and in Europe have difficulty in adjusting to the fact that the Pacific Coast of America faces the Far East, culturally as well as geographically… The residents of California, Oregon, and Washington are as likely to travel across the Pacific as across the continent and the Atlantic.

– Kenneth Rexroth

What does it mean to be a West Coast poet? Or to broaden the view, a Pacific Rim poet? In this course, we’ll explore innovative (& classic) Pacific Rim poetics. Basho’s Haibun, Sei Shonagon’s list poems, the serial poems of Jack Spicer, Nathaniel Mackey and Robin Blaser and Lissa Wolsak’s phosphorus of the mystery. Class time will be given to readings (& listenings) of work, as well as writing exercises and discussion. Get a better understanding of your place as a poet in this corner of the world.

Lissa Wolsak Marqueed

Lissa Wolsak Marqueed

Paul Nelson: Founder of SPLAB (SPokenword LAB). Author: Organic Poetry (essays, Oct. ‘08, VDM Verlag, Germany) & a serial poem re-enacting the history of Auburn, WA, A Time Before Slaughter (Oct. ’09, Apprentice House). Interviewed: Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Anne Waldman, Sam Hamill, Robin Blaser, Eileen Myles, Jerome Rothenberg & others. M.A.: Lesley

Paul Nelson in Brussels, May 2010

Paul Nelson in Brussels, May 2010

University. Shortlisted for the Stranger Genius Award in Literature, 2010.

The workshop happens Saturday, October 30, 2010, from 12N – 3PM at SPLAB, 3528 S. Ferdinand, but enter in back, on Edmunds. Suggested donation $20, students $10, but no one will be turned away.

Robin Blaser

Robin Blaser

Pacific Rim

Pacific Rim

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.
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