“The earth / the earth / the earth / said”
 
In Erase Genesis, critically-acclaimed Kentucky poet and translator Rebecca Gayle Howell transforms the KJV creation story for the climate change age. Devoted to the same three chapters, Howell’s erasures raise a new myth—a story of the Earth’s intimacy with us. Here, man is not given dominion. Instead, the trees and the waters keep eternity, and the Lord Woman seeds tenderness as the only way forward. 
 
A book-length poem with its roots in art, ecopoetry, progressive spirituality, and literary translation—Erase Genesis dismantles centuries of hurt as we bare our beginning anew, in abundance with Earth’s divine call: 
 
“Be light and / let be”
 

Rebecca Gayle Howell’s Best Book of the Year honors include those from The Best Translated Book Awards, Foreword INDIES Awards, The Nautilus Awards, The Banipal Prize (U.K.), Ms. Magazine, The Millions, The Rumpus, and Poets & Writers. Among her other honors are the United States Artists Fellowship, the Carson McCullers Fellowship, the Pushcart Prize, and two winter fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Howell also collaborates with composer Reena Esmail to produce works for classical performance, including A Winter Breviary (Oxford University Press, 2022), an interfaith carol cycle regularly performed throughout the world.
Howell is an Associate Professor of Poetry & Translation for the University of Arkansas MFA program. From 2014 - 2024, she was the Poetry Editor of the Oxford American, the second in the magazine’s history.