Ren (Katherine) Powell is a writer, translator, poet - and native Californian living on the west coast of Norway.

Ren has been a member of The Norwegian Author's Union since 2005, and has published three full-length collections of poetry and eleven books of translations. Her poetry collections have been purchased by the Arts Council for national library distribution. Ren's poetry has been translated and published in six languages and her non-fiction essays have appeared in several printed anthologies and magazines.

Ren has a BA in Theater Arts and an MA in Creative Writing. She taught theater and drama at a performing arts school for nine years and her dramatic works have been performed in the U.S., Canada and Norway.

From 2005 to 2008 Ren served as the Norwegian PEN representative for the International PEN Women Writers’ Committee. She also helped establish the International Cities of Refuge Network and is the founding editor of the online literary journals Protest Poems.org and Babel Fruit: Writing Under the Influence.

Ren is currently a graduate advisor with Prescott College’s brief residency MA program and is pursuing a doctorate in Creative Writing at Lancaster University in England.



Early Spring

Nuthatches sing.
Their rusty bedspring prophecy
scrapes through the window casement
with the draught
to prickle your neck.

The iron kettle snags
the wooden spoon.

Oats rise and belch as they cook,
and the whole world goes soft,
obligating you to stand here, waiting
in your wool socks,
your flannel robe.


Singing Lessons

She sets out with her backpack,
her lunch, and a book--
a birthday present,
with the silhouettes
of thirty-five songbirds
and thirty-two shorebirds,
including the great cormorant.

But listening to the birds,
she forgets the book and the birthday--
and remembers her voice-teacher
and his theory that
most people can't sing
because they've been taught
not to scream.

But at the central tendon of her diaphragm,
a tiny frond begins to unfurl-
white now,
like this morning's haze
over the sea and the woods.
But its greening will pierce
the membrane of civility

Chatter

As I recall, I said something stupid,
like, "Imagination is a good thing".
Even then,

even as I watched the sun wolves gathering
near the edge of green sky
and the whole world was heavy
with your compliments.

The rain
all that next day
silent and constant as a marriage.


A Trip to the Orient

Setting up fences to contain the mania that comes every fall. Walking the perimeter
Had a question for you yesterday, but realized as I walked around Breiavatnet for the
second time that I had had too much wine that night to remember your studio door.

I remember the hedgehog in the taxi's headlights, waddling naked past my front gate
when I got home--thinking that I hadn't tasted what was offered, wondering if
that really was a virtue, even while relishing the seldom high tide of wanting.

Today I walk in circles, just to watch the fish jumping.

In the Left Breast

Sorry for the melodramatic
letters of late.

I've a secret
in my breast.

I find myself desperate
to round things off,

to bring things neatly to a starting point.
The doctor says not to worry, so

I begin reading a romance.
The doctor says, “We can't be certain it’s nothing”.

Smiles as though he's delivered good news
breathing on its own.
 

On Not Repeating Myself

She yelps, squirms against me
when I come in the front door.
The puppy can't be still,
when I sit, she makes clumsy circles
in my lap, she bites and tries to stand
on my head.

She's looking for,
determined to make,
an opening. She wants
in.

That was me then
wasn't it?

Once, in Ohio, an infant spoke to me
in the Eiffel Tower of King's Island--
the Ant--Christ leered from over his mother's shoulder.

I didn't hear him and I said
something hip, like,
“Conic again?”

He refused to repeat himself.
It was for the best.

All this to say:

There is this crazy bird,
a girl in cartoon prison garb,
perches on my footboard
two, three times a year--

I gave her the key
to the box with all your letters.