The latest Cascadian Prophets podcast is about Cascadian Zen from the three co-editors of the book, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, Adelia MacWilliam and Paul E Nelson (your humble correspondent.) We recorded the chat Sunday, November 27, 2022 on Salt Spring Island after the launch of Adelia's first chapbook Details of the Passage, "a few select poems of a larger collection that address the collective amnesia in the descendants of the first European settlers on the west coast of British Columbia." This was part of an art exhibit featuring six generations of her family in and near Salt Spring Island.
This is a major effort of the Cascadia Poetics Lab and in the podcast are some news items about the book and the launch. Enjoy!
Cascadian Zen Interview Transcript FINAL
Paul E Nelson:
What is the nature of the bioregion known as Cascadia? How is this insight expressed by the people who live, work, practice, and play here? Is there a connection between Zen practice broadly construed and the Cascadia bioregion? If so, what is it? Who have been the teachers in the relatively short term that Zen has been known in this bioregion? What role does water play here more so than in other bioregions and what implications does that have for the people who live here and for their practice? It's these questions and other questions brought on by these that we seek to explore in the work, Cascadian Zen, which is being edited by Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, myself and Adelia MacWilliam and is to be published in the fall of 2023 under the imprint of Watershed Press, which is the publishing arm of the Cascadia Poetics Lab. Here to talk about this are the three editors, myself, Tetsuzen Jason Wirth, and Adelia MacWilliam here on Beautiful Salt Spring Island. It's a real joy to be here with you today.
Jason Wirth:
I love being here.
Paul E Nelson:
Thank you for arranging this opportunity.
Adelia MacWilliam:
It's been incredible. Yeah, we've just had a wonderful weekend together in the heart. I believe Salt Spring is one of the special centers of Cascadia in terms of things that are coming together north of the border. It's very special that we're able to speak about this together here on Salt Spring Island. Very.
Paul E Nelson:
Which has ancestral importance to you and your family, which we just saw this weekend at the exhibit at the Salt Spring Island Library.
Adelia MacWilliam:
Should I speak about that a little bit? Just a tad?
Paul E Nelson:
Yes.
Adelia MacWilliam:
What happened this weekend was a celebration of my family who first came onto Salt Spring in 1905. So, a compilation of artwork by members of that family and photographs and the journey of looking into the history of the place, which, of course, brings us smack up against what went on in the settler's history of this coast and that journey into the land. I think it was a personal journey for me, but I think it's a journey that we're all in the middle of taking in whatever way or we're learning to situate ourselves in place in a way that we never have before with that historical awareness that we're bringing and also how we're living in our every day.
The experience for me was that writing, the act of writing, the practice of poetry, the practice of outside, took me into that journey and that awareness of what the past was comprised of, how it has influenced us, and the secrets that we thought were buried there that are now being unearthed. That's whole sense of unearthing, which I think relates to what we're seeing in all of the writing in the Cascadian Zen volume as poets, essayists, artists who are responding to the land in unique and beautiful ways.
Paul E Nelson:
This book comes out of a panel discussion that happened at the May 2019 Cascadia Poetry Festival that was moderated by you, Jason. Maybe you can talk about that. It was honoring Sam Hamill, that whole festival, and had a panel about translation and had a panel about Zen. The focus became Cascadian Zen. Sam, of course,