Episodes

In this interview on her book Vodou Visions with Sallie Ann Glassman, she discusses becoming a Manbo, or Vodou Priestess, Vodou, its history as a religion created by enslaved Africans, common misunderstandings about it...

Linda Russo is a poet, scholar, essay writer, willing co-creator, collaborator and student of ecospheric care. Through the lens of ecofeminism, or geopoetics, or inspired by indigenous practices of interspecies kinship, her works explore relationality, with a more than human world alongside the complexities presented by fragmentation of land and human attention to place.

Hear a Salish perspective on wellness with Beaver Chief. Fred Beaver Chief Jamison was a spiritual leader who brought out the traditional teachings of the Northwest Coast (Native American) Salish people. He discussed his heritage, the songs and stories that are part of the Shaker Indian Doctor tradition, his collection of medicine songs on a C.D., and some of the differences between his culture and “settler” culture, such as concepts of land ownership.

What a great way to entice someone to read a book: "Like a prize-fighter boxing over his weight, Stephan Torre has long made his home in the wilderness, negotiating environments that are hostile...

On the morning of Wednesday, August 14, 2013, Habib and Paul Nelson awoke before 6A and were hiking with full packs up to “Jack’s Shack." But after an hour, maybe less, they knew they were not going to make it with those heavy packs.

The 9th Cascadia Poetry Festival is happening October 10-12th, 2025 at the Rainier Beach Community Club. One of the featured poets is Sharon Thesen, a legendary B.C. poet who considers herself a "Cascadian poet."

The latest and perhaps most complete translation of Han Shan has been done by Levitt in collaboration with Kazuaki Tanahashi and published by Shambhala Press.

Four contributors to Winter in America (Again discuss how they respond as writers without resorting to rhetoric or invective. The outrages, for any person of conscience in the United States in the trump 2.0 era, almost come hourly. Many warned of a constitutional crisis were we to find ourselves in this situation. Disappearing non-violent citizens and tourists to for-profit gulags while key cabinet members demonstrate no familiarity with the concept of Habeas Corpus ought to tell you something.

A couple years back I steered a kayak over the stone remnants believed to be of that dammed weir and felt the tears of Southwind and his grandmother that broke the spell of ice and separation. In a moment I felt that wheel turning me, releasing the grief over my own people, still a mystery to me from centuries of migrations, of imperial assimilation, erased by the cold wind of empire and science and the myriad attempts to dam up the natural world with standardized time, supply chains, and rows a...

When I said that what's good for general society is also good for poets, I'm talking about a series of cultural opportunities where a much wider stretch of people are allowed to take the opportunity to become writers. I came back from a conference last week where I presented some research on the demographic aspects of the New American poets. The poets that were born and came to maturity in the early to mid-20th century were beneficiaries of broad national scale longevity gains. This [includes] t...

To go back 30 years in one's writing is an exercise fraught with the possibility that the material is very dated, but this book, Cloudhand, Clenched Fist, by Rhea Miller, is a large exception.

Sam Hamill said “Over the past decade or so, no one has done more for poetry in the Pacific Northwest than has Paul Nelson.” With the Poetry Postcard Fest, now in its 19th year, that influence is spreading well beyond the Cascadia bioregion and all over the world.

I am grateful today to bring you an interview with Anne Tardos on Cascadian Prophets, reading from and speaking about her newest book: The Always Already Absent Present.

An interview with Jewell James, Master Carver and Director of the Sovereignty and Treaty Protection Office with the Lummi Nation

Sanskrit translations, a deep bioregional sense of place and homages to dead (mostly) poet friends makes Andrew Schelling's new book a compelling distillation of subjects he’s been tracking for over 40 years. Author of “Tracks Along The Left Coast: Jaime D’Angulo & Pacific Coast Culture” and “From the Arapaho Songbook” and many other titles, he lives in the mountains outside of Boulder, Colorado, and teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University. The new book is Forests, Temples and Glacial R...

This interview with Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Lets’lo:tseltun was originally recorded in August of 2016, just before the first election of the 45th president of the United States of America. The conversation took place in the midst of Yuxwelptun Lets'lo:tseltun's exhibition Unceded Territories, at the Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia.

George Draffan is a researcher, the head of the Public Information Network and the co-author of Strangely Like War: The Global Assault on Forests. He discussed the tax subsidies to corporations who deforest the world, the history of how industrial logging has exacerbated forest fires, and how deforestation is proof Western culture values the rights of corporations over humans, as well as global corporate deforestation, the disproportionate percentage of the world's tree products the U.S.A. uses,...

Harold Rhenisch interviewed by Paul E Nelson about The Salmon Shanties: A Cascadian Song Cycle.

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 t...

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’...

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.