25th Anniversary Bookmark

Posted on August 21, 2018 by Splabman

Thank you Koldo Barroso for the fantastic 25th Anniversary SPLAB bookmarks. We hope to see you 7:30pm, December 14, 2018 at the White River Valley Museum at 918 H Street S.E., in Auburn, Washington, the former Slaughter.

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SPLAB Donates Audio Archives to White River Valley Museum

Posted on August 14, 2018 by Splabman

For IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Northwest Broadcaster and Poet Paul Nelson Donates Historic Radio Programming Archive to Auburn’s White River Valley Museum

AUBURN WA:  With a grant from 4Culture, onetime Auburn resident, disc jockey, poet and intellectual Paul Nelson organized his radio programming into a cohesive archive and donated it in its entirety, to Auburn’s White River Valley Museum. Nelson’s extensive archive dates from 1990 to 2005. It has:

  • Approximately 360 radio programs
  • About 1,000 unique interviews including
  • poets Allen Ginsberg, Wanda Coleman, Diane diPrima, Sam Hamill
  • Lummi spiritual leader Beaver Chief [Fred Jamison]
  • yogi Bhagavan Das
  • priestess Phyllis Curott
  • futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard
  • historian Kenneth Davis
  • activist Bill Moyer
  • Aired as public affairs programs distributed regionally and nationally on KING-FM, KZOK, KMTT, KJR AM / FM, KGON-Portland, KISM-Bellingham and many other stations

At the height of Nelson’s syndication his program aired on as many as 18 radio stations weekly. Nelson lived and worked in the Auburn from 1992 to 2009, a significant portion of his professional life. Nelson’s non-profit organization, It Plays in Peoria Productions, was founded at his home in Auburn. In 1999 he built a sound studio and poetry center in Auburn at 14 S. Division. He prided himself as an Auburn community supporter and interviewed many local residents including:

  • community historian Mae Yamada
  • author Stan Flewelling
  • museum director Ron Chew
  • mayor Chuck Booth
  • county executive John Ladenberg
  • farmers Greg & Lorna Lynn
  • community activist Lee Valenta

“I remember Paul as a goateed intellectual with a wily smile,” recalls Museum Director Patricia Cosgrove.“ He has a perfect radio voice and using that he brought both the Auburn community and a much larger audience a wide variety of intellectual, poetic and thoughtful discussions.”  

In addition to being an active poet, Nelson founded various organizations and projects, including: SPLAB (Northwest Spoken Word LAB, now known as Seattle Poetics LAB), Global Voices Radio, It Plays in Peoria Productions and Auburn Community Radio. Among his published works are the epic poem A Time Before Slaughter which documents the pre-history and early history of the town once known as Slaughter and since renamed Auburn.

Curator of Collections Hilary Pittenger is excited to begin work with these treasures. “While it may take a few years, we plan to fully catalogue this collection, create digital copies and make them accessible to Museum patrons and staff for research and programs, and host them on our website, accessible to researchers around the world.”

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Slametan for Sam Hamill

Posted on July 20, 2018 by Splabman

Sam Hamill photographed by Ian Boyden

Though he may not have been excited about the notion of a Javanese ritual event centered around his life, there will be a slametan for Sam Hamill, Monday, July 23, at the Wedgwood Ale House. From Wikipedia:

The ceremony takes its name from the Javanese word slamet, from Arabic: salam, which refers to a peaceful state of equanimity, in which nothing will happen. This is what the host intends for both himself and his guests, by experiencing the egalitarian structure of the slametan and the petitions of supernatural protection from spirits…

This is part of the Easyspeak Seattle Open Mic series, which started over five years ago and has come closest of any local poetry open mics to replicating the quality and feeling of community that Red Sky Poetry Theater had, which is high praise coming from your humble narrator. Peter Munro, the founder and regular emcee is away for the summer, counting fish for NOAA and your humble narrator will guide the evening’s festivities.

Friends of Sam will gather at 6pm, in the billiards room at the back of the building.  Parking behind the building is best. We’ll eat dinner and share Sam stories. The open mic signup is at 7:30, in the same room, and the event starts at 8pm. Nasty Woman will provide music as house band. There will not be a “featured reader” per se, but friends and fans of Sam Hamill will be part of the festivities on the open mic. They will read some of Sam’s poems and talk about the Dean of Northwest poets who died April 14, 2018, at his home in Anacortes.  Those who are scheduled to appear to discuss Sam include Ian Boyden, Michael Daley, Jim Farmer, Lyn Coffin and others.

What: Slametan for Sam Hamill on the 100th day after his death.
Where: Wedgwood Ale House, 8515 35th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98115
When: Monday, July 23, 2018. 6pm for dinner and stories. 8pm for open mic.
(Signup 7:30pm)

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Two Postcard Events!

Posted on June 14, 2018 by Splabman

The August POetry POstcard Fest happens for the 12th year in 2018. The fest has become the biggest annual funder of SPLAB and we’re hoping that you will participate and help spread the postcard love.

Also, there will be two postcard events happening in the Puget Sound region in July:

Saturday, July 7, 2018, 3:30 – to – 5pm at Poets in the Park in Redmond. Anderson Park 7802 168th Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98052. Ina Roy-Faderman, Joanna Thomas, Matt Trease and your humble narrator will talk about the fest, their postcard secrets, will display cards they have received and will lead the gathered in a postcard writing exercise. ALL PAST AND FUTURE PoPo participants are encouraged to attend.

Monday, July 9, 2018, 8pm at Easy Speak Seattle at the Wedgwood Ale House, Ina Roy-Faderman, Matt Trease and your humble narrator will be the featured readers to discuss PoPo, display some cards they have received and read some of their postcard poems. 8515 35th Ave NE, Seattle WA 98115. ALL PAST AND FUTURE PoPo participants are encouraged to attend and read at the open mic. Dinner 7pm. Signup 7:30. Show starts at 8pm.

Ina Roy-Faderman

Ina Roy-Faderman is a long-time participant in the August Poetry Postcard Festival and one of the editors of the 56 Days of August anthology. Her poetry has appeared inRightHandPointing, WhatRoughBeast, Medical Literature Messenger, and Punchnel’s and awarded prize-winners in The Richmond Poetry Anthology, Writer’s Rising Up, and Writer’s Digest.  Educated at Stanford (MD) and UCBerkeley (PhD), she teaches biomedical ethics for Oregon State University, works as a fiction editor for Rivet Journal, and is the librarian for a school for gifted children. Find her at www.inafelltoearth.com.

Joanna Thomas

Joanna Thomas is a recipient of an Artist Trust GAP Grant (2017). Her poems have appeared in Picture Sentence, Found Poetry Review, Otoliths, and shufPoetry, as well as several anthologies. She is the founder of Inland Poetry Prowl, a day-long celebration of poetry that occurs each April in her hometown of Ellensburg, WA.  

 

 

 

Matt Trease

Matt Trease is an artist, poet, IT Analyst, and astrologer living in south Seattle, WA, where he serves on the board of the Seattle Poetics Lab (SPLAB) and co-curates the Margin Shift reading series. His poems have recently appeared in small po[r]tions, WordLitZine, Phoebe, Fact-Simile, Hotel Amerika, Juked, and in the anthology, 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards (Five Oaks Press, 2017). He is the author of the chapbook Later Heaven: Production Cycles (busylittle1way designs, 2013).

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