Since 2017, Rain Shadow Poetics Lab (formerly Cascadia Poetics Lab – Canada) has been bringing world-class poetry and bioregional poetics to the Comox Valley. This summer, in collaboration with Watershed Press, the Lab returns with the Rain Shadow Poetry Festival 2025, a powerful weekend celebration of language, land, and the poetic imagination. From Friday, August 22 through Sunday, August 24, the village of Cumberland, British Columbia will welcome poets, artists, and thinkers from across the Cascadia bioregion for a rich series of readings, workshops, and lectures.

The Cascadia Poetry Festival returns to Seattle for its ninth year, inviting poets, artists, and culture-makers to explore what it means to create place-based poetry in a time of ecological urgency and cultural transformation. Organized by Cascadia Poetics Lab, this four-day gathering brings together voices from across the bioregion for workshops, readings, panels, and performances rooted in the spirit of Cascadia—where the watersheds speak, the stories run deep, and the arts offer both refuge and revolution.