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.