For the Reporter
Poetry at the Rainbow Café presents the works of Brian Desmond and Paul Nelson on Monday, Dec. 3.
The program is from 7 to 9 p.m. in the banquet room at the café, 112 E. Main St.
Coffee and conversation follow readings. It is an open mic opportunity. The public is invited.
About the poets
Brian Desmond likes the word “wanderlust.” He was born in Cyprus and has lived in Iran, Ecuador, Madagascar, Okinawa, England, and in several disparate states.
His poems are often rootless, though some have been fortunate to find fertile soil in City Arts Magazine, Phoebe, In Tahoma’s Shadow, Phrasings, WRIST, and Tacoma in Images and Verse.
Desmond seems to move through jobs, too. He has worked as an actor, director, and playwright at theatres throughout the country; as a professor in theatre and English departments at numerous universities; as a narrator of recorded books; as a performer in film and television; and as a mascot for a professional baseball team. He first found sustenance delivering newspapers, which is probably why he continues to put one foot in front of the other and share words with all who are willing to receive them.
Nelson is a onetime Auburn resident, disc jockey, poet and intellectual.
He founded: SPLAB (Seattle Poetics LAB) & the Cascadia Poetry Festival
He wrote: “American Prophets” (transcribed interviews 1994-2012) (2018), “American Sentences” (2015), “A Time Before Slaughter” (2010) and “Organic in Cascadia: A Sequence of Energies” (Lumme Editions, Brazil, 2013). His 2015 interview with José Kozer was published in 2016 (Ranchos Press) as Tiovivo Tres Amigos.
He interviewed: Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Joanne Kyger, Robin Blaser, Anne Waldman, Ed Sanders, Diane di Prima, Nate Mackey, George Bowering, Brenda Hillman, among others and is engaged in a 20-year bioregional cultural investigation of Cascadia, including the festival, a MOOC (Innovative Cascadia Poetry), interviews with Cascadia poets indigenous elders and activists, and the anthology, “Make It True: Poetry From Cascadia.” Nelson is co-editor of that anthology as well as “56 Days of August,” the poetry postcard anthology, and writes an American Sentence daily.
The Rainbow Cafe, Striped Water Poets, the NorthWest Renaissance, Auburn Arts Commission, City of Auburn, and King County 4Culture make the program possible.
