Cascadian Prophets

When I said that what's good for general society is also good for poets, I'm talking about a series of cultural opportunities where a much wider stretch of people are allowed to take the opportunity to become writers. I came back from a conference last week where I presented some research on the demographic aspects of the New American poets. The poets that were born and came to maturity in the ear...

To go back 30 years in one's writing is an exercise fraught with the possibility that the material is very dated, but this book, Cloudhand, Clenched Fist, by Rhea Miller, is a large exception.

Sam Hamill said “Over the past decade or so, no one has done more for poetry in the Pacific Northwest than has Paul Nelson.” With the Poetry Postcard Fest, now in its 19th year, that influence is spreading well beyond the Cascadia bioregion and all over the world. 

I am grateful today to bring you an interview with Anne Tardos on Cascadian Prophets, reading from and speaking about her newest book: The Always Already Absent Present. 

An interview with Jewell James, Master Carver and Director of the Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office with the Lummi Nation

Sanskrit translations, a deep bioregional sense of place and homages to dead (mostly) poet friends makes Andrew Schelling's new book a compelling distillation of subjects he’s been tracking for over 40 years. Author of “Tracks Along The Left Coast: Jaime D’Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture” and “From the Arapaho Songbook” and many other titles, he lives in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado,...

This interview with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun was originally recorded in August of 2016, just before the first election of the 45th president of the United States of America. The conversation took place in the midst of Yuxwelptun Lets'lo:tseltun's exhibition Unceded Territories, at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.

George Draffan is a researcher, the head of the Public Information Network and the co-author of Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests. He discussed the tax subsidies to corporations who deforest the world, the history of how industrial logging has exacerbated forest fires, and how deforestation is proof Western culture values the rights of corporations over humans, as well as global co...

Harold Rhenisch interviewed by Paul E Nelson about The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle.

  Wanda Coleman Super Bowl of Poetry bookmark. (Held at the Auburn  SPLAB.)Wanda Coleman, born in Los Angeles, was an award-winning poet, author, and former scriptwriter. She wrote more than 20 books across forms, from her first poetry chapbook Art in the Court of the Blue Fag, published by Black Sparrow Press in 1977, to Heavy Daughter Blues, also published by Black Sparrow in 1987. This month, C...

Jane Falk and Mary Paniccia Carden are co-editors of the anthology Joanne Kyger: A Poet in Place and Time, a new book of essays examining the work of the longtime Bolinas, California resident poet. Conducted October 5, 2024.

An interview with Dr. Rudolph Rÿser, founder and board chair emeritus of the Center for World Indigenous Studies.

An interview with Frank Abe, co-editor of the new anthology The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, conducted September 20, 2024 by Paul E Nelson

Paul: You know, you moved up here and one of the first things you did as a teacher in Prince George - was it UNBC at the time when you moved here – the University of Northern British Columbia? Barry: No, it was the College of New Caledonia. Paul: And you were teaching English in a welding class? BM: Yup, it was a technical school. We moved into a technical school before they built the college. PN:...

Jerome Rothenberg was a legendary poet, translator and anthologist. His work on various poetry anthologies, including Poems for the Millennium were an inspiration for our Cascadian Zen series. He died on April 21, 2024 and we're presenting this archive audio of the interview conducted in November 2001 as our latest Cascadian Prophets podcast. R.I.P. Jerome! Our introduction from 2001.

Cecil Giscombe talks about his friendship with BC poet, the late Barry McKinnon, about how people in the US consider Canadian poets and about his own work in an interview conducted by Paul E Nelson June 23, 2024 in Prince George, BC.

Bob met me at the retro Atomic Motel and we talked for over an hour about his new book, the poems in it, his childhood, bioregionalism, his trip to Cuba, Vladimir Nabokov's notion via biographer Brian Boyd of "attending to the individuating detail" of one's life (an upgrade from the same notion I've gotten from Blake and Pound) and his general "thing" "close attention to the natural world." It's t...

Paul E Nelson interviews Bill Porter on the film "Dancing With the Dead: Red Pine and the Art of Translation as it screens Sunday, April 21 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian.

The Poet Laureate of Wisconsin Nicholas Gulig discussing the influence legendary poet Lorine Niedecker had on his work, recreating her trip around Lake Superior and discussing the poem's similarity with an altar.

Paul E Nelson interviews Tessa Hulls on Feeding Ghosts her graphic memoir

Poet Roxi Power sings from her new book The Songs Objects Would Sing

In the third and final part of an October 22, 2023 interview Robert Bringhurst, he talks about blister rust, how bioregionalism is an antidote to bad politics and other subjects connected to his 55 page poem The Ridge,

Through his books, I took lessons from Ezra Pound, who was a schoolmaster at heart and had a lot of things to say about what young poets should read and how they should read it. His politics were bonkers, but his ear was a good ear. I learned a lot from him and from others. But it dawned on me one day that my literary schooling had a gaping hole in the center. Except as a colonial construction, th...

The Ridge is a poem in 20 parts, a meditation on a geological feature of Quadra Island, a large island in British Columbia, just north of the Strait of Georgia, and thus the Salish Sea. But the poem is also a meditation on what's happening on the island and on the planet we share in what's been described as devastating imagery. I would add that it's a meditation on the human species as well, at th...

Lorna Dee Cervantes Interview on April on Olympia