Rain Shadow Poetry Festival 2025: Language and the Land
August 22–24, 2025 | Cumberland, BC
Presented by Rain Shadow Poetics Lab & Watershed Press
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.
🌲 A Bioregional Convergence of Poetic Voices
This year’s festival is guided by a deep inquiry:
“What is a bioregional poetic practice?”
Poets from Quadra Island, Courtenay/Comox, Vancouver, the Okanagan, and Washington State will gather to explore the relationship between language and the living world, asking how poetry can help us attune to place, ecology, and ancestral memory.
✍️ Featured Writers & Presenters
Paul E Nelson
Founder of Cascadia Poetics Lab and the Cascadia Poetry Festival, Paul is a seasoned interviewer, literary executor of Sam Hamill, and author of A Time Before Slaughter. Based in Seattle’s Cedar River watershed, Paul has been a leading voice in bioregional poetics for over three decades.
Harold Rhenisch
Author of The Salmon Shanties, shortlisted for the 2025 Purdy Prize, Harold’s poetics are rooted in his life as a gardener, horticulturalist, and Cascadian visionary. He lives in Vernon, BC, and will soon lead a workshop on Wawa, Cascadia’s historic trade language.
Garry Gottfriedson
An internationally celebrated Secwepemc poet and educator, Garry's work lays bare the truth of Canada's treatment of First Nations people. His poetry is unapologetic, raw, and essential reading for anyone walking the path of cultural healing.
Jan Zwicky
Poet, philosopher, musician, and gardener, Jan is known for Songs for Relinquishing the Earth and Lyric Philosophy. From her home on Quadra Island, she weaves poetry and ecological insight into an intimate, lyric practice.
Robert Bringhurst
Renowned poet, typographer, and linguist, Robert’s work—such as his groundbreaking translations of Haida oral literature—has influenced generations of poets. His latest book, The Ridge, was published by Harbour in 2023.
Lorin Medley
A poet and counsellor from Comox, BC, Lorin's poems have appeared in Refugium, Winter in America (Again), and Sweetwater: Poems for the Watersheds. Her debut chapbook On the Way to Kluusms will launch at the festival.
Veronica Martinez
Seattle-based poet, musician, and media artist, Veronica is the founder of Disposable Parts, a DIY arts and culture project. Their writing explores identity, grief, and place-based imagination through multimedia expression.
Zach Charles
A dynamic young voice from the Cascadia 2050 Youth Committee and Poetry Postcard Fest, Zach’s debut collection 24 Portraits at 24 was published by Carbonation Press in 2024.
Zaylan Jacobsen
A mountaineer and poet based in Sumner, WA, Zaylan is a rising Cascadian voice who began writing poetry after attending the 2023 Cascadia Poetry Festival. He brings the perspective of place-based becoming to this year’s event.
🌧️ Why “Language and the Land”?
This year’s theme invites us to listen deeply to the stories the land wants to tell. In an era of ecological crisis and cultural reckoning, poetry becomes a tool for remembering, for reconnecting with the landscapes we live in—and the languages we’ve forgotten.
The 2025 Rain Shadow Poetry Festival offers a rare space to gather in creative, contemplative community, in the spirit of Cascadia’s watersheds, mycelial networks, and ancestral memory.
📍 Festival Schedule & Registration
📖 View the full festival schedule here
📬 For updates, follow @rainshadowpoeticslab on Instagram
🌐 Visit rainshadowpoetics.org for tickets, bios, and more
Language shapes our world. Let us gather to shape a world worth living in.
Let us speak Cascadia into being.
