What: Becoming Cascadian When: May 31 – June 3, 2018 Where: Rainier Beach (Seattle) WA Cost: $80, plus meals Who: 10-30 participants, featuring keynote poet Andrew Schelling. Poetry writing experience is not necessary. We hope to provide two Rainier Beach students with scholarships. We are open to giving another scholarship to someone willing to document the weekend via a publishable account for the record. Advance registration required.
The Ecosangha of Seattle University
The Practice of Outside
For poets and bioregional visionaries, a practice of outside will take on several meanings. First should be the colloquial sense of outside, simply “outdoors.” Learn something of your bioregion—Cascadia, the Southern Rockies, or any place else—by getting outdoors. Then, as an inhabitant of the S. Rocky Mountains, for me to visit Cascadia as a poet means I will arrive as something of an outsider. I will explore significant differences between the water-rich, heavily forested, maritime regions around Puget Sound, and the arid high country where I live. I’d also like to explore some of the familiar elements or medicine powers we share. Certain trees (Douglas fir), many of the charismatic large animals (cougar, black bear, coyote), and a storehouse of story and song that may reach back to the last glaciation (“the Girl Who Married a Bear”). With these shared elements in sight, I’ll look at territory our poems share.
Andrew Schelling is a poet, translator, and essay writer. He has published twenty books, including seven of translation from India’s early poetry. His own work encounters the rhythms and features of the natural world, as well delving into linguistics. Recent titles are From the Arapaho Songbook and the folkloric study, Tracks Along the Left Coast: Jaime de Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture. Schelling lives in the Southern Rocky Mountain Ecoregion and teaches at Naropa University
Agenda: We will gather for Zen Meditation at the Seattle U Eco-Sangha, at 7pm on the 31st. Meet for dinner the following night in Rainier Beach, then have an opening circle, during which time participants may offer breakout sessions related to the area at the intersection of bioregionalism and poetics. As in Cumberland later in the summer, we gather to share strategies, discuss our role as poets and bioregionalists at this time of ecological crisis and end-stage empire, and to support one another in our efforts to create the deepest gestures in response to this situation and how that relates to Cascadia. Dr. Jason Tetsuzen Wirth will lead a tour of Kubota Garden Sunday morning. There will be a closing circle Sunday afternoon and a reading by Schelling and some participants Sunday night. Schelling’s Saturday keynote talk/public discussion happens from 2-4 at Red Wing Café in Rainier Beach. Free admission and open to the public.
To register contact Paul Nelson at pen (at) splab (dot) org or at (two-oh-six) 422.5002. You can also Paypal $80 to the pen (at) splab (dot) org address.
Thanks to co-sponsors like the Seattle U Eco-Sangha, Humanities Washington, Red Wing Café and more to be announced soon.
Andrew Schelling FREE Keynote Talk, Saturday, June 2, 2018, 2-4pm at Red Wing Café:
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