Rebecca Gayle Howell: Erase Genesis, Visions of the Future, and the Flow in Poetry | Rattlecast 357

Rebecca Gayle Howell joins Timothy Green on The Rattlecast for a conversation about poetry, erasure, climate change, spirituality, and her new book, Erase Genesis. A poet, translator, editor, and librettist, Howell is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern American Poetry, and a Pushcart Prize. She previously served as poetry editor of the Oxford American and currently teaches poetry and translation at the University of Arkansas. Howell is also a former Rattle Poetry Prize finalist and Readers’ Choice Award winner for “My Mother Told Us Not to Have Children.” In this episode, we discuss Erase Genesis, a book-length poem that repeatedly erases the first three chapters of the King James Bible to reimagine the creation story for the age of climate change. We’ll talk about erasure poetry, visual poetry, ecopoetics, literary translation, faith and spirituality, and the process of making each page by hand with watercolor. Rebecca will also look back at earlier poems—including her Rattle Readers’ Choice winner—and read work spanning different periods of her career. As always, we’ll open the lines for this week’s prompt-based poetry reading. Find more about the poet here: https://www.rebeccagaylehowell.com/ This Week’s Prompt: Write an ode to an antiquated piece of technology. Next Week’s Prompt: Write a poem about a time that speed was a big factor in your life. Submit your poem through Submittable by midnight Sunday for a chance to be invited on the show: https://rattle.submittable.com/submit/269309/rattlecast-prompt-poems-online The Rattlecast livestreams every Monday on YouTube, Facebook, and X, then becomes available as an audio podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you listen.