3/9   A world aswirl of politics—the Republican primaries will be going on for 3 months or so! then we get bombarded increasingly til november. all the better to stop thinking about that and immerse in words.

     participating in the cascadia poetry festival in seattle in a just over 2 weeks (http://splab.org/cascadia/)  which is a  regional conference, exploring the culture of,  I’ll be one of 5 or 6 making remarks in two events about cascadian culture, which I’m having thoughts about, though mine tend more to thoughts of the spirit(s) of a region and not quite ‘culture.’ I figure I’m there to represent my way of bringing language forth (don’t know all of the writers but those I do I’m at least a little to the linguistic/spacial left of) as well as the sole Oregonian (not even native) on the “faculty.” in this Cascadia  part of oregon is the south end.

     I am influenced by place. place has something to say. if I lived somewhere entirely different I think my writing would only be different because of how my life would be different—climate, urbanity, economics, social network—not in how the place directly affected my poetic parts (wherever they might be.) If the other changes in my life in a new place didn’t debilitate my ability to write poetry, I could write anywhere, things would change—subjects, references, might not be as much rain in this new place, etc.—but my angle of approach would not—that’s part of me..

     it’s very important to be tuned into your physical environment, but it shouldn’t make one exclusionary or defining, we don’t write that way here. regional writing often implies writing about the region which usually means being representational, re-creating an experience. not what I do. still with the rain in my poems the city in my poems, the trees, the cultural multi-ism of portland and oregon I am of here. been active in the local scene for a good while—poet, reading host, publisher and performer.

     here isn’t everything. everything can possibly be here (maybe not all at once.)