Chronicle of Ignition & Destruction, by Rhienna Renée Guedry

Poetry, chapbook, 24 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Chronicle of Ignition & Destruction is a meditation on ruin and resilience. This collection captures the precariousness of life in a place where fire consumes, water inundates, and history is etched; a place that is both physically and metaphorically sinking under the weight of its past and future ecological collapse.

Poet Rhienna Renée Guedry examines the interconnectedness of societal and natural histories in elegiac mourning and ecopoetic meditation. Here, the landscape is perpetually reshaped by man-made devastation and environmental degradation. Strong forces—climatic, elemental, political, and systemic—all act as destroyers. Certainly, there is much to grieve. In the aftermath of catastrophe, survivors bear witness and summon the strength to endure. But can we learn from our collective histories and horrors, in the aim to break the cycles of degradation? Chronicle of Ignition & Destruction leaves the reader pondering what comes next, and what remains.

Rhienna Renée Guedry (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer based in Portland, Oregon. A Lambda Literary Fellow, a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, and 2022 Tin House Workshop alum, you can find her work in Maudlin House, Southern Humanities Review, Bayou Magazine, Muzzle, and elsewhere. Rhienna’s favorite geographic locations all have something to do with their proximity to water.