The Arts Council of Greater Lansing is naming a longtime educator and activist to represent the area’s poetry community. Ruelaine Stokes has been named the new Lansing poet laureate.
WKAR’s Scott Pohl talked with Stokes about her poetry, and her plans.
Interview Transcript
Scott Pohl: Ruelaine Stokes, welcome, and congratulations.
Ruelaine Stokes: Thank you so much, Scott. I'm really happy.
Pohl: I want to learn initially more about your career as a writer. How long have you been writing poetry? Do you have certain inspirations in your life that have led you to poetry?
Stokes: Well, I wrote my very first poem when I was in high school as a freshman, and it was dreadful, and I realized instantly that it was really dreadful and that I should never write a poem again. But fortunately, I ran into fabulous poetry teachers. I took a fabulous poetry class in college. I just had the great good luck to run into wonderful teachers, both here in the Lansing area and in other places. And long ago, I went to a poetry reading in Lansing by three young MSU students Lee Upton, Rosa Arenas, and Leon Norris Smith, and they were fabulous, and I was just hooked immediately. And after that, I started seriously writing poetry.
Pohl: To me, part of the delight in talking with a poet is to hear your poetry, so tell me about the poem you've chosen for us today.
Stokes: Well, one of the poets who inspired me, I mentioned a minute before, Lee Upton, who came from this area, was born in Maple Rapids and went to MSU, and is just a fabulous poet, and one time I was having coffee, lunch with her in the restaurant in East Lansing called Small Planet. And at one point she held up both hands and said, “I've always thought we're lucky to have hands”. And I thought that was the most amazing sentence, because I'd always take my hands for granted, and it took me ten years to get that line into a poem. But, I finally did, and that's what the poem's about.
Pohl: What's it called?
Stokes: It's called Fan of Diamonds.
Fan of Diamonds —for Lee Upton
“I think we’re lucky to have hands,” Lee said
years later I would remember that restaurant
in East Lansing, the sunlight glittering
in my glass, Lee’s fingers fanning the air
my own two hands stuffed in the pockets
of my green corduroy jacket.
how lucky I felt just to sit there, light spilling down
around us, Lee laughing and me almost in awe
imagining myself with no hands.
many times in my life, I have been angry at my face
and my thighs, but I have always been grateful for my hands.
they are a perfect copy of my mother’s hands
and my grandmother’s hands—big bones, long fingers
thick, rope-like veins.
in summer, if I make a fist, the veins stand out
like the roots of a tree, when I hold my fingers together
I can feel the blood pulse.
one night, 30 years ago, I was playing cards
on a hill near Stuttgart, Germany.
a man turned to me and said, “You have a beautiful hand.”
he spoke English with a strong German accent.
everyone laughed, he was really good-looking
my German was lousy—I couldn’t speak
but I looked down at the fan of diamonds
spread out before me
and for the first time saw the strange
swan-like beauty
of my hand.
— Ruelaine Stokes
Pohl: I wanted to ask you briefly about your plans as Lansing's poet laureate.
Stokes: Well, the poet laureate has both duties and opportunities, and the opportunity and also the responsibility is to be an ambassador for poetry and engage people with poetry in innovative and inspiring ways. And, there are a certain number of readings I need to give a certain number of workshops in the tri county area, a certain number of official duties, reciting poems at city events, but also poetry projects and special events, and I haven't quite decided. I really want to talk to people in the poetry community, get their ideas, their input, and try to get an idea of what would work really, really well.
Pohl: Ruelaine Stokes is Lansing's new poet laureate as of this week. Again, congratulations. Thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Stokes: Thank you so very much.
Pohl: For WKAR News, I'm Scott Pohl.
