7 Asterisks, or Why I Got into this Cascadia Thing When I Kept Saying I was Already Exhausted and Trying Not to Do So Much

Tomorrow starts the Cascadia Poetry Festival, four days of lots and lots of readings, workshops, panels, critique groups, open mics, and slams all weaving their way in, through, and around the theme of Cascadia. This is probably the largest single event-co-ordination I've been involved with. Specifically, I've been co-planning the Beer Slam and the Afterparty, both events which will hopefully provide the splashing, fun, raucous dolphin caught in an otherwise fairly serious tuna net.*

That said, when co-planning as a loose part of Seattle Poetry Lab, there's a fluidity to the conversation and action that can be electrifying**; a sense that the crew is more than just a collection of folks executing specific tasks to fit a schedule, this is a group of people united around ideas, or at least the discussion of them. Of bringing ideas to a table.***

I think, as Paul Constant points out in his excellent Stranger article, that discussion is in its infancy, or maybe its pimpled teenhood, but it's still growing. There are specific elements of the Cascadian Thing I'm interested in; Place has always tormented my writing no matter how much I tried to get away from it**** and the idea of a Cascadian Voice is intriguing to me, partly because of its simultaneous specificity and vagueness. It's far more specific than just "The Northwest," and more inclusive-- CPF (as it forever shall be known) draws heavily from Canadian poets.

But it's also a little vague; as a generations-native Seattlite, I can tell you there's a big goddamn difference in experience, perspective and artistic input between someone who grew up in Maple Leaf, Seattle, and someone who grew up in Walla Walla, or a farm outside La Grande, or a condo in downtown Vancouver.

What I hope is that discussions of Cascadian Poetry can grow to acknowledge this variety and encourage a more global view of Northwest/Cascadian/WABCOREGONSOMECALIFORNIAANDMAYBEMONTANA poetics.***** As a Seattle writer, I've gotten more and more interested in how that translates to writing about and experiencing other places, and how the experience of other places influences writing Seattle.******

I'll be interested to see where all the talks-- formal and especially informal-- go. More than most fests, what interests me about this is the conversation. This is a poetry fest for people who want to be interested, who want to engage. I suspect I'll probably disagree at some (many?) points on what constitutes "innovation," and I'll be straight up that the more hardcore political/anarchist/decolonize elements of the Cascadia movement hold no interest for me. I'm glad though, that a wide swath of writers are included******* and, that, as hard as it's been to program, a competitive element is included; the Northwest has had a long history of producing or housing performance poets whose work interacts with and crosses over into academic circles, blurring (what I think are largely manufactured) lines.

Okay. I told myself I'd not get past 7 asterisks, so read all my clarifications below and come to the fest. It'll be less work than reading this whole thing was, I swear.

*the other events will probably also be fun, but mine are the ones with "beer" in the title, where FUN IS ON THE AGENDA.
**Which is important, because this has been a lot of goddamn work.
***Or, you know, just bringing the table.
****The writing about place, or the place itself.
*****As opposed to a less global view, which so many NW-focused writing events tend to do, inadvertantly. There's a certain element of privilege that happens here, I think, especially when writing gets too exclusively nature-y. But that's a convo for another time, especially since I'm helping out with a fest whose flag has a tree on it.
******There's a certain Seattle Travel Poem boilerplate that seems to go "I went to New York and it was amazing but kind of dirty, and I thought about Frank O'Hara. . .  I went to LA and blah blah smog. . . I went to the midwest and relished their hospitality but oh! their politics. . . I'm glad to be back in the land of (lame joke about coffee or flannel, and SCENE.)" I am so weary of that boilerplate.
*******For the record, between myself, Aaron K, Paul Nelson, and some help from Jocelyn M, and Nadine M (different Ms) we scheduled near on fifty poets for just the runoff slam, beer slam, and afterparty alone. ALONE. So we aren't suffering for volume, that's for sure.

Silence, Communication, Rosemary and Thyme

Thursday night I participated in Silence and Communication (check out the link two posts down, I'm feeling lazy.)
You can read The Stranger's review, which describes things pretty well from an audience point of view. It went well, and while I believe that Greg Bem, Matthew Thompson and Jason Conger (who probably also have links I could link to, but, lazy) put together a fantastic reading lineup, the concept was well-executed enough it almost didn't matter who the readers were. It was a whole piece. A concept. Plenty of folks showed up to support their friends, but there wasn't a feeling of a "headliner" or what-have-you. That said, definitely enjoyed a lot of the specific pieces on their own as well.
As for my part, I read a piece called "context(subtext)" that existed prior to getting the invitation, but hasn't made it out much, so I hacked it up. The event consisted of straight up poetry, prose pieces, sound poems, noise music, performance art, etc etc etc. Alllll sorts.


Nico Vassilakis tore up the above paper into a microphone for his piece.


Sole Repair, photoed from the balcony. Once the event got going I didn't have much time or energy to take more pics. Suffice to say there were a lot more people there.

I was pretty damn out of it the whole day/night. This added an additional level of surrealism to the experience for me. Note how it looks like my face is falling off.

I do not remember whose head this is the back of.


We sat in chairs around the room. I was in chair number 9, next to Jarrett, who sometimes wears a hat similar to those which I used to own.

Repost: Barrooms/Community Building.

In this article, Stranger books editor Paul Constant makes a call for a "writer's bar" where the entirety of Seattle's literary community can gather. It's not a bad idea; I think it's healthy for writers of different styles-- entirely different styles, not just different styles of fiction or poetry-- to rub elbows and bounce ideas. Take the ingredients you like from an essayist and put it into your short story. Things like that.
That said, I do wonder if Seattle (and other) literary types get too into "being literary." A good bar where you can talk as pretentiously as possible about whatever you've read or are working on-- that's a rad idea. but it'll always need to be balanced by the good bars where you can people watch, write in solitude or, gasp, places and activities not involving alcohol.

which I could use a bit more of lately.

off in a bit to meet with Brian about Works in Progress, which if I haven't talked about here yet, I'm not unpacking now.

To Fix the Gash In Your Head

Perpetual States

To be forever eating, to be forever drinking, never sated. What they said it would be like in hell (a variety of sources, don't ask me to be specific,) the vice of choice shoveling, battering, inundating. To be forever packing snowballs with no one to throw them at. To be forever pissing, never relieved (bad example: in the act itself there is relief)what they said hell would be like when they believed in it. Sometimes the bus is forever turning a corner and Jerry is always just missing his connector. At times like this the sky remains exactly the same as it was the moment before and pieces of bread fall from the old lady's hand to the pigeons (who eat the crumbs, this old lady is not in hell.) At times like this, and sometimes at other times, Jerry thinks of Joe Wenderoth, sitting in Wendy's, completely dazed on cough medicine and perpetually wanting to fuck the red, soft, wet
mouth of the girl at the register. How sore would you get, from shifting in your seat, due to that wanting, and what about those days when people think you terrible for disenjoying their picnic and being unthankful for your peeling sunburn? There are a few of us, and we are forever realizing we aren't alone.


I wrote these both in under 25 minutes at work. Or you could read James Burns' Largely Correct rant/take on Indie Rock in all it's linguistic meaninglessness. I quibble with some definitions, but I think the larger thrust of what he says is well stated and something I'd have written here but am lazy and hate writing about music a lot of the time.

Pinching, Pulling

Crabs running sideways in sunglasses make me hop quicker than a dance with "hop" in the title ever could. My girlfriend is hungover from wine and whisky after wandering the streets of Columbia City lost but nonplussed. Eventually the bar (there's always one of those) overcharged me for drinks and the man who makes a living playing guitar on cruise ships was talking to the off-duty bartender. It was like a dance. Or hop. The woman he will see later is in California, so it will be much later. I think the off-duty bartender's swooping dark hair has him convinced. Successfully, I guide my wandering girlfriend to her whisky-ginger, which is now mainly melted ice (I hadn't known about the earlier wine) and in low light I still drink IPAs like they were ales with half the strength (maybe why I always have a headache) and the on-duty bartender is reluctant to do anything at all. Half the walk home I had my fingers through blonde hair, staggery past fields of disused tires. This morning I was glad I can give directions and cook eggs, because if there'd been a pack of wild dogs, I doubt I'd have been able to fight them off.