“Writing ought to be a way to learn about the self. To build a soul.”
— Paul Nelson
Welcome to Fast Five, an occasional series in which I ask my favorite writers five questions as a way to open the door to know more.
Paul E. Nelson is a prolific poet, interviewer, broadcaster, and collaborator. As founder-director of the Cascadia Poetics LAB and Cascadia Poetry Festival, he has created and produced hundreds of events and interviews with poets and activists.
He co-created the Poetry Postcard Fest, an annual worldwide literary event and self-guided practice in spontaneous composition in which participants send 31 original poems on postcards to a list of recipients. Now in its 18th year, the Fest includes 600 poets from 52 states and 10 countries.
Paul has authored over a dozen books, including, A Time Before Slaughter, American Sentences, 56 Days of August: Poetry Postcards, and many more.
He lives in the Rainier Beach neighborhood of Seattle, Washington.
1.
How did you come to writing?
I was a broadcaster for 26 years and did writing for many of the jobs I had in radio from 1980-2006. After 1990 I produced a weekly radio interview program and in January 1994, I began syndicating that to as many as 18 stations a week. I wrote the introductions and questions and conducted the interviews. I also did post-production, wrote promotional announcements and underwriting credits. Once in syndication, I started interviewing poets, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, Joanne Kyger, Wanda Coleman, Ed Sanders, Anne Waldman, Eileen Myles, Jerome Rothenberg, Victor Hernandez Cruz and many others. What a rush to put poetry on the air at major radio stations, though the time of day it aired was not the highest rated time slot. Inspired by these and other poets, I started writing poetry and attending the weekly Red Sky Poetry Theater open mic.
2.
Why did you create the Poetry Postcard Fest?
I had participated in the 3:15 Experiment for a few years but found the time of writing (3:15am every day in August) inconvenient. I loved the notion of having a writing project that would be conducted in August and told Lana Ayers, who was in my weekly writing critique group, about wanting to do something with postcards and she said: “I’ll help.” She did and then August turned into 56 days from July 6 to August 31. I did it in part to give folks the experience of spontaneous composition, but the fest unfolds its depth year after year, from the making of cards, to the graphic experience, to the community aspect, to the love of stamps and support of USPS (a huge part of The Commons), to being an antidote to social acceleration, and many, many other aspects.
3.
Please tell us about organic poetry.
Organic Poetry is a term used by Denise Levertov and Robert Duncan in the middle of their 20+ year correspondence. In her foundational essay “Some Notes on Organic Form” Levertov wrote: “it is a method of apperception . . . recognizing what we perceive . . . based on an intuition of an order, a form beyond forms, in which forms partake . . . Such poetry is exploratory . . . words which connote a state in which the heat of feeling warms the intellect.”
Similar concepts are known as “Projective Verse” and “The Practice of Outside.” These are all different takes on a spontaneous approach to poetry in which first take, or something close to the first take of a poem, is used and not extensive revision. Levertov noted that if extensive revision is required it is likely that the poem did not incubate long enough. How each poem written like this finds its own form is quite satisfying to me. My graduate thesis was a group of essays on the subject, which can be found here, along with other essays which in one way or another are related to this topic. The Poetry Postcard Fest is designed so people can have an experience of this kind, with deep attention to, and trust in, the moment of composition. It is a method which, at its best, allows for a connection to something larger than ego.
4.
You’ve interviewed hundreds of poets, artists, and activists. What have you learned?
I learned that Allen Ginsberg’s approach to composition was similar to meditation; that Jean Houston believes this is Jump Time and that we are “the people of the parenthesis” existing after the death of the old gods and before the birth of the new; from Joanne Kyger that we can learn how to write projectively; from Michael McClure that “if poetry and science cannot change one’s life, they’re meaningless”; from Bhagavan Das that our time is so potent that three days spent in meditation, or some other kind of devotional activity now, would have the same impact of 30 years of practice a century ago; from Father Matthew Fox that ritual will be a growth industry in the 21st century; from Nate Mackey that serial form in poetry may be the most open art form ever invented; from Brenda Hillman that we have permission to be strange; from Christina Baldwin that people gathering in a circle have access to the circle’s ancient powers; from Sam Hamill that our lives change when we take a Bodhisattva vow to poetry; from Peter Berg that we live on this land like invaders and that a bioregional ethos would change that, change our own selves and save the biosphere one bioregion at a time; and so on and so on . . .
5.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received?
Various versions of the notion that abstractions and generalizations are used to cover something up, in poetry, usually a deeper gesture. “Abstractions have to be earned,” said Ezra Pound. Charles Olson warned about “the dodges of discourse” and about how Western Culture has abstracted itself from the very land on which it exists, which is at the core of our climate crisis right now and again validates my interest in bioregionalism.
Bonus Question: What do you wish I would have asked?
What is your ultimate goal in writing, or your reason for writing?
Writing ought to be a way to learn about the self. To build a soul. So many “award-winning poets” are unhappy, shallow or unpleasant people. I wonder why that is so? I suspect that by chasing fame, they strengthen their egos and, as Brenda Hillman said: “the ego project is doomed to fail.” What writing project is NOT doomed to fail?
I think the Saturation Job, the multi-decade research project, the project tied to place and tied to history of that place is bound to teach the poet something about the world and likely something about their own self. Poetry is so far out of the mainstream, to use mainstream (capitalist) objectives when considering the “success” of poetry, that is a tact that is doomed to fail.