SPLAB @ &Now Cascadia by Anthology

September 10, 2019

by Paul Nelson

&Now 2019 UW Bothell

I am delighted to be part of the &Now Conference, which is being staged at UW-Bothell, September 19-22, 2019, with a rather remarkable collection of “experimental” poets.Not sure what word is appropriate these days for poets who take risks in their work, in many different ways, but if that interests you, surely Bothell is the place that weekend on this continent to get a sense of what the innovators are doing.

The way they say it is:

&NOW is a biennial festival of fiction, poetry, and staged play readings; literary rituals, performance pieces (digital, sound, and otherwise), electronic and multimedia projects; and inter-genre literary work of all kinds, including criti-fictional presentations and creatively critical papers. We particularly encourage pieces that promote linguistic and genre transgressions, along with literary artworks that promote interdisciplinary explorations and conversations with past, present, or future literary concerns and movements.

I will be joined by 3 other SPLAB Board Members Friday, September 20 at 10:45am, in this:

SPLAB is a Washington-based poetics-oriented non-profit organization founded in 1993. Using the tools of literature, our organization addresses the cultural, political, and social issues facing us in contemporary society, among them end-stage empire, the destruction of the biosphere, rampant xenophobia and violence and extreme income inequality. At &Now we seek to create a dialog around the anthologies we have conceived and published, how they fit into our bioregional cultural investigation: how the stance of bioregionalism is founded in sustainability (resistance to colonialism and empire, social diversity (or lack thereof); and the unique culture of Cascadia. SPLAB board members Cate Gable, Nadine Maestas, Paul E Nelson and Matt Trease will each discuss at least one of the recent publications: the Samthology, Make it True: Poetry From Cascadia, Make it True meets Medusario, American Prophets and 56 Days of August, the connections to bioregionalism and the bridges between cultures/interests/affinity groups we have sought to build via these projects. Some of our points of convergence are the specifics of location, transgender politics, serial poetics, ethnicity, and the fallibility of translation.