Ren (Katherine) Powell : part five

How does a poem begin?

Something concrete. 

I try to never begin a poem with an idea, or a theme. Never a concept. I feel like when I have done that the poem doesn’t speak back to me. It’s just me dumping my preconceived ideas on the page and there’s no opening – not for me, not for the reader – to hear what the world has to say. If I want to make a statement, I’ll write an essay. 

When my oldest son was four, I was planted in front of the computer on a typical afternoon, and he brought me a dandelion in a cup to put on my desk. As if that weren’t dangerously precious enough – there was a friggin’ inchworm on it. I still haven’t written that poem, because the memory overwhelms me in a way that won’t allow the inchworm to just be an inchworm. 

Yesterday I noticed several of my flowerpots had cracked when the water in them had frozen. I began there, and let the flowerpots lead the way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m mostly a lyric poet, so I may very often land in my own naval, gazing - but I don’t begin there.

Ren (Katherine) Powell : part four

Why is poetry important?

I think this is an interesting question. 

I believe language is a tool that allows us to transcend the limitations of our bodies, and therefore ourselves. Bees inherit the dance steps they perform to communicate vital information. Bees have a kind of language. Birds sing, handing down bits of language that came from those who lived before them, each generation altering them slightly.

Even before written language we sang our stories beyond ourselves. We are social creatures, not only in our present, but with connections to our past. We can commune and collaborate with the dead.

I believe poetry is the most enduring form of language. Language can communicate information, yes, but only poetry recreates life in a way that allows us to leap into one another’s shoes and show us the unchanging condition of being human, even while the cultural norms shift over distances or through time.

Sorry to get academic about it, but I like the distinction that Aristotle wrote about in terms of mimesis. Poetry recreates life. It doesn’t instruct us, it invites us into someone else’s world so we can see through their eyes and understand. We don’t even have to agree to an object truth to understand another human being’s experience. Novels can do this, but poetry (as a form) does this in a way that is communicated in small, memorable jewels. As the Arab poets have described lines of ghazal: pearls on a string. Poems are our heirlooms.

Poetry gives us the ability transcend ours little individual selves. It allows us to comfort one another when we can’t physically embrace. 

I think poetry is vital. 

Ren (Katherine) Powell : part three

When you require renewal, is there a particular poem or book that you return to? A particular author?

There are several poets I turn to for different reasons. When I am feeling vulnerable and need a hug, I pull out my worn copy of Patricia Fargnoli’s Necessary Light (Utah State University Press). She worked as a counselor before she was a poet. I don’t think she ever stopped comforting people. When I’m feeling insignificant, I pull out Elisabeth’s Bishop’s collected poems. Her humor is sly, and her humanity all over the page. When I need to be reminded of resiliency I reread “Song” by Brigit Peegan Kelly. It’s a painfully sweet poem to read again and again. Can you imagine turning out just one such perfect piece of art into the world? 

I have to say, reading these poets doesn’t directly renew my writing life. All of them intimidate me as a writer. But their poems renew me as a person. So it’s just one slow circle.. I come around in the end to a blank page.

Ren (Katherine) Powell : part two

How does your work first enter the world? Do you have a social group or writers’ group that you work ideas and poems with?

About fifteen years ago (oh my!), back in the days of listservs, I was fortunate to be involved in a workshop group that met through Annie Finch’s WomPo listserv. They were then and still are phenomenal poets, all of them very well known now. 

I learned a great deal from these women, many of whom are still working together in the same way. But after a few years, I began to think that too much of my editing process seemed to more of a kind of homogenizing process. Not that our work became interchangeable, but that there did seem to be some unifying style aspects that bordered almost on being a “school”. At the time I thought I wasn’t fitting in well because I was the only member who wasn’t living in America. Or that it had something to do with the fact that I was one of two who didn’t have a university teaching career. Or that I was a bit younger than the others. Of course, it’s entirely possible that they will just always be better poets than I am, but I think it was time for me to be true to my own ear.

These days my husband is my first reader. He isn’t a native English speaker, so he’s never had an inclination to try to rewrite my melodies or suggest tinkering with tone. But since he is someone who reads and loves literature, if he finds something mysterious or confusing in a poem – well, I know that I need to give it a hard look. Did I leave something vital out? (My editing process is almost always a matter of addition not subtraction.)

Ren (Katherine) Powell : part one

Ren (Katherine) Powell is a poet and teaching artist. She is a native Californian – now a Norwegian citizen settled on the west coast of Norway.

Ren has published six full-length collections of poetry and more than two dozen books of translations with traditional publishing houses. Her sixth poetry collection The Elephants Have Been Singing All Along was published in 2017 by Wigestrand forlag.

Her poetry collections have been purchased by the Norwegian Arts Council for national library distribution, and her poems have been translated and published in eight languages.

Ren is currently focusing on handbound poetry collections and mixed media experimentation.

Has your consideration of poetry changed since you began?

Oh, yes. And please, may it keep changing. 

The wonderful poet Theodore Deppe was my tutor during my MA studies. He told me that every poem needs to teach the reader how to read it. As a poet, I try to keep that responsibility in mind. And as a reader, I also try to keep this in mind. I try to approach each poem without a checklist in hand. 

As I write this, there’s a bit of a po-biz buzz on social media about the inaugural poem. People are throwing around that often-used critique: “prose with line breaks”.  If we're going to get academic about it, poetry existed before the written language was its primary means of conveyance. It was metered language. It was spoken. I think critiquing performed poetry using a rubric for written work is weird.

There are many poems that I don’t like, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t live up to some objective, formal standards. I can live with that - without getting insecure about my own competence and searching for “legitimate” reasons not to like something. And the fact is that I like a lot of poetry that doesn’t measure up to prescribed rules. It seems like when that kind of thing happens, some people claim those poems have a “transcendent” poetic quality: too good for mere rules, ladeeda. 

I think there is always room for subjectivity – room or it, and a need for so many diverse voices.

There are days when I’m very happy that I don’t work in academia. I can just wallow in my subjective love/hate of all the poems out there and not have to justify it for anyone. 

You can’t talk someone into (or out of) loving a poem.