Rebecca Gayle Howell is an award-winning poet with close ties to Kentucky. Her newest book, Render/ An Apocalypse, came out in March. Accents had a chance to talk with her about that book, its response, and more information about the specific poems.
(The interview was conducted by Accents Junior Editor, Christopher McCurry.)

Christopher McCurry:
Do you care to start at the very beginning? When and how you decided to write poems? How did Render: An Apocalypse happen?

Rebecca Gayle Howell:
My grandparents were subsistence farmers in Eastern Kentucky. They raised enough food to feed their family and that was it—my grandfather didn’t pursue the money economy. He never so much as logged his mountain. I admire their life choices more than I know how to say; when I remember love, I remember their land, its humidity, chickens, and hillside. But maybe this is the perspective of my privilege. My mother, who was raised as the daughter of subsistence, knew true poverty. What I mean is—she knew absence. And longing.

So my family’s narrative is dynamic. It shape-shifts, depending on who is telling the story. Throughout my life I tried to pin it down, until I realized I was mistaken to do so. My friend at the Fine Arts Work Center, Salvatore Scibona, told me the key was to take all of it, every last bit of the past, and throw it in the compost. What grows from compost is its own life. I suppose a point came when I realized we all share a shape-shifting narrative told by well meaning and unreliable narrators. Continue reading →