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, Cascadian Prophets is bringing back this February 2002 interview with the artist. In it, she discusses the African-American literary avant garde, why such a movement is helpful, and how literature in the U.S.A. has suffered because African-American writers are still "too busy, advocating for our status as human beings in this country.” She also touches on how universities in the U.S.A. have a corporate mindset, and much more, before reading American Sonnets from her book Mercurochrome, Black Sparrow Press 2001. She lived until 2013. Her assessment that "...when it comes to social programs, there's this complacency. There's this huge apathy. Look what happened after the bombing in Oklahoma City, of the Federal Building. what happened after Columbine. This amnesia that seems to fall like a curtain after very significant events. There's a criminalization process taking place of women and youth in this country." continues to be a perceptive and foretelling analysis. The original interview with Wanda Coleman can be found here.

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: And this is 1969? BM: Yeah, 1969. But in that first year here we taught out of the high school. We’d start teaching at three in the afternoon after the high school was out, so we were a night school. We were kind of interlopers. The high school teachers thought, “oh, here are these smarty pants academics coming in and taking over the functions that we’ve provided!”

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 the June 2024 Cascadian Prophets podcast:

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, the land I was born in – the whole continent and hemisphere I was born in – was missing from this otherwise detailed map of the literary world. It was as if there were no Native American culture, no Native American literature – and I knew this to be false,

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 this time in the early Anthropocene. Robert Bringhurst is the author. Trained initially in the sciences at MIT, he makes his life in the humanities from his home on Quadra Island, where he's worked in poetry, Native American linguistics and typography. An officer of the Order of Canada, former Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence. He's our guest today to talk about The Ridge. Robert, thanks for your time and hospitality.

Lorna Dee Cervantes Interview on April on Olympia

John Tanner on Richard Brautigan and How To Make an America

The second half of our July 4, 2023 interview with Steven Thomas, former Seattle poet, co-founder of the Seattle Poetry Festival and former teacher at University Prep. He discussed his life, struggles with addictions, move to Germany and his latest book of poetry What is Between Us.

Stephen Thomas 7.1.2023Before moving to Europe, Auburn, Washington native Stephen Thomas was quite active in the Seattle literary scene. He came back to Seattle (& other parts of the U.S.) to read from his new book What Is Between Us published by Hand to Mouth Books of Walla Walla. We sat on the deck of the Casa del Colibrí in Rainier Beach and had our chat about his poetry influences, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, the Cabaret Hegel, the arts venue he created and about the new book. The recording of his July 1, 2023, reading at The Booktree in Kirkland can be heard here. My intro went like this: Stephen Thomas was born into a working class Catholic family in Auburn, Washington in 1950. At 12 a teacher played a recording of Emily Dickinson’s poems and he says “his fate was sealed.” A pillar of the Seattle poetry scene of the 80s, 90s and 2000s, he founded the Cabaret Hegel in an abandoned factory and presented with many notable performers such as Steven Jesse Bernstein. Stephen Thomas has published work in Exquisite Corpse, Poetry Northwest, the Malahat review and other publications and he currently lives in Germany’s Black Forest where he co-founded Gemeinschaft Sonnenwald, a sustainable agriculture community.

Carletta Carrington Wilson discusses Poem of Stone & Bone in honor of James W. Washington Jr.

Brenda Hillman interviewed on her 2022 book In A Few Minutes Before Later by Paul E Nelson for the Cascadian Prophets podcast

Interview part 1 from Oct 2019 with Mary Norbert Körte at her home in Irmulco, CA.

Cascadian Prophets interview. Why are only 8% of Hollywood movies produced by women, down from 9% 20 years ago? One Hollywood film-maker says the “male gaze” reinforced by a camera angle formula and a subject-object dynamic creates an industry rife with employment discrimination and sexual abuse and assault. That film-maker is Nina Menkes, the Producer and Director of Brainwashed: Sex Camera Power. The movie is showing now in select theaters and it is both disturbing and compelling, as well as uplifting.

Pierre Joris talks to Paul E Nelson on A Nomad Poetics and reads the poem Letter to Steichen, Ed

Interview with Claudia Castro Luna, recorded 17-JUNE-2022 via Zoom about her new book Cipota Under the Moon published by Tia Chucha Press.

Patrick Mazza's blog, The Raven, exists: "To inform the people-power movements crucial to addressing the crises coming upon us at national and global levels, from increasing national divisions and breakdown of institutions, to the climate crisis."

Interview with Pierre Joris recorded May 2, 2022 by Paul E Nelson for the Cascadian Prophets podcast.

Interview with John Brehm, author of The Dharma of Poetry. Recorded by Paul E Nelson for Cascadian Prophets podcast on February 24, 2022 in John's Portland, OR home.

The paintings of Kenjiro Nomura are featured at the Cascadia Art Museum in Edmonds, Washington and a new book by art historian Barbara Johns, Kenjiro Nomura, American Modernist: An Issei Artist’s Journey, is the topic of discussion.

BC poet Fred Wah talks about his lecture The Simple, as well as the concept of serial poetry and his Music at the Heart of Thinking.

James Rasmussen is a Duwamish Tribal member and Superfund Manager for the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition. he talked with Paul E Nelson about his Duwamish heritage, about the effort to gain federal recognition of the Duwamish Tribe, the entities that are fighting that recognition, the land recognition announcements that have become common and the Real Rent Duwamish campaign.

Greg Bem interviews Seattle poet/interviewer Paul E Nelson 4 days after his 60th birthday about his poetry and his work with the Cascadia Poetics LAB (the former SPLAB.)

A 2011 interview with Seattle poet and fiber artist Carletta Carrington Wilson conducted by Paul E Nelson. They talked about Wilson's poetry, filled with Garcia Lorca's notion of duende, what first drew her to poetry (or how poetry called her in elementary school) about how her work reflects her study of slavery and some of her own work which haunts her and which comes from the voice of a person who was enslaved. She calls it the "history of the disappeared."