rain shadow poetics lab

Rain Shadow Poetics Lab, formerly Cascadia Poetics Lab, has been bringing world-class poetry and poetics with a bioregional focus to the Comox Valley since 2017.

The 2025 Festival brings together poets pursuing a sense of deep time and place from across greater Cascadia to pose the question, ‘What is a bioregional poetic practice?‘

From Friday, August 22 to Sunday, August 24, 2025, Cumberland, BC will host readings, workshops and lectures with poets from Quadra Island, Courtenay/Comox, Vancouver, the Okanagan, and Washington State.

To inquire about tickets and accommodations, please email rainshadowpoeticslab@gmail.com.

Featured writers and presenters include:

Paul E Nelson

Founder of Cascadia Poetics LAB in 1993 and Cascadia Poetry Festival (Seattle) in 2012, Robin Blaser award recipient 2014. Professional broadcaster and interviewer, Paul has published 5 books of poetry, two books of transcribed interviews, and co-edited 6 anthologies. His first book,  A Time Before Slaughter (2009), was shortlisted for the Stranger Genius Award. Paul lives in Rainier Beach, Seattle, in the dəxʷwuqʷeb Creek/Cedar River watershed in the Cascadia bioregion. He serves as the Literary Executor for Sam Hamill.

Harold Rhenisch

Harold Rhenisch’s 33rd book, The Salmon Shanties: a Cascadian Song Cycle, was short-listed for the 2025 Purdy Prize. His memoir The Wolves at Evelyn won the George Ryga Prize in 2007. He taught work in progress workshops at the Victoria School of Writing and poetry and short fiction writing at Vancouver Island University. In January 2026, he will lead a 5 week online workshop on Wawa, Cascadian language and poetic form for the Cascadia Poetics Lab. His poetics rise from his life as a horticulturalist and gardener. He lives in Vernon, BC.

Garry Gottfriedson

Garry Gottfriedson, B.Ed., M.A.Ed., LL.D.h.c., D.Litt.h.c. is rooted in his Secwepemc teachings. In 1987, he attended Naropa Institute (Boulder, Co) with an MFA Creative Writing Scholarship. Gottfriedson has published 13 books and co-authored four, including poetry, children’s books, history and academic texts. He has presented his work across Canada, USA, Central and South America, New Zealand, Europe, and Asia. Gottfriedson’s work unapologetically unveils the truth of Canada’s treatment of First Nations. His work has been anthologized and published nationally and internationally.

Daphne Marlatt

Daphne Marlatt is an award-winning poet, dramatist, and novelist. Her poetry titles include Salvage, Steveston, This Tremor Love Is and Liquidities: Vancouver Poems Then and Now. Her novels include Ana Historic (newest edition, Anansi 2013) and Taken (1996). A novelistic long poem The Given received the 2009 Dorothy Livesay Award. The bi-cultural Pangaea Arts production of her contemporary Noh play The Gull was awarded the international Uchimura Naoya Prize in 2008. In 2012 she was awarded the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2025 receives The Pandora’s Collective Distinctive Body of Work Award. In 2014 Wilfred Laurier University Press published her selected poetry, Rivering: The Poetry of Daphne Marlatt, edited by Susan Knutson. She has served as Writer-in-Residence at universities across Canada, taught at Simon Fraser University, and served for several years as co-director (Narrative) of The Writing Studio at Banff.

Robert Bringhurst

Robert Bringhurst is a typographer, poet, linguist and translator. In 2004, his three-volume study of Haida oral literature was awarded the Edward Sapir Prize by the Society for Linguistic Anthropology and was chosen as Literary Editor’s Book of the Year by the Times of London. Two volumes of his lectures and essays – The Tree of Meaning and Everywhere Being Is Dancing – are published by Gaspereau (CA) and Counterpoint (USA). The Ridge, a new book of poems, appeared from Harbour Publishing in 2023. The Selected Poems are published Gaspereau (CA), Jonathan Cape (UK), and Copper Canyon (USA).

Lorin Medley

Lorin Medley is a counsellor and writer from Comox, BC with poems in anthologies including Winter in America (Again, Cascadian Zen: Volume Two, Refugium: Poems for the Pacific, Sweetwater: Poems for the Watersheds, The New Quarterly and subTerrain. Her poetry chapbook, On the Way to Kluusms, forthcoming from Watershed Press, will be launched in Cumberland, BC at Rain Shadow Poetry Festival 2025.