The Cascadia Poetics Lab will mark a decade of poetic exploration and bioregional engagement with its 10th Anniversary Cascadia Poetry Festival, scheduled for October 9-11, 2026, in Seattle. The event will unfold at the Rainier Beach Community Club and Kubota Garden, offering a platform for poets and academics to delve into the intersections of poetry with environmental, political, historical, and sociological themes within the Cascadia bioregion.
This year's festival emphasizes a critical question: how can prioritizing natural and cultural boundaries over arbitrary political ones address climate change and other pressing social and political issues? By fostering dialogue and creative expression, the festival aims to consider alternative frameworks for understanding and responding to these challenges.
The lineup includes a diverse array of voices, such as allia abdullah-matta, Greg Bem, Amaranth Borsuk, Bill Carty, Xavier Cavazos, Zach Charles, Ching-in Chen, Stephen Collis, Gary Copeland Lilley, Tess Gallagher, Gabriella Gutiérrez y Muhs, Geneviève Hicks, Alicia Hokanson, Nadine Maestas, Dion O'Reilly, Roxi Power, Mateo Quispe, Linda Russo, Sharon Thesen, Miriam Tobin, Rodrigo Toscano, Matt Trease, and Terri Witek. These poets and scholars will lead workshops and panel discussions covering topics like bioregional poetics, poetry as politics, lyric and form, the connection between internal and external worlds, and poetry in times of crisis.
Workshops include "Startling the Poem Awake," "Flickers of the Poetic, A Watch Party," "Concerning Work and Poetry (of Course the Mundane is Generative!)," "The Green Being," and "Cascadia as a Field of Action (Poetry as Politics)." These sessions are designed to engage participants in hands-on creative and critical practices. The festival will also feature evening afterparties at a nearby location in Rainier Beach on Friday and Saturday nights.
The festival is supported by a range of sponsors, including 4Culture Sustained Support and 4Culture Public Free Access, Creative West, the Vogt Family Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs, ArtsFund, La Sala, and CPL Supporters. Registration for gold passes, workshop packages, reading packages, and student passes is now open via the festival website at https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2026-cascadia-poetry-festival-10/. A complete schedule can be found at https://cascadiapoeticslab.org/2026-cascadia-poetry-festival-10-schedule/.
Cascadia Poetics Lab, founded in Auburn, Washington, on December 14, 1993, continues to foster a vibrant poetry community. The festival's 10th anniversary underscores its enduring commitment to exploring poetry's role in shaping our understanding of place and identity.
