In this episode, outgoing Lansing Poet Laureate Ruelaine Stokes shares how her love of writing began in childhood and grew into a passion for poetry. She also talks about her project, My Secret Lansing, and how poetry helps people connect with their community, share their stories, and see their city in new ways.

Mentioned This Episode:

Website: Ruelaine Stokes

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Lansing Community College Library

You are listening to Written in the Stars Books and Beyond, where hosts from the LCC Library sit down with writers, publishers, entrepreneurs and literary enthusiasts of all types.

Join us as we explore the very heart of the written word.

Hello and welcome to Written in the Stars Books and Beyond.

My name is Amy Ewell and I have my co host, John Celaeji here with me.

And today we have a very interesting and special guest.

She is a poet, an artist, an educator, a community advocate, and she is actually the outgoing poet laureate for the city of Lansing.

So please welcome to the show Rulane Stokes.

Welcome.

Hello, hello, hello.

Thanks for having me.

We are very excited to have you here today and we're going to get into some talk about poetry and writing and LCC connections and all sorts of good stuff.

Stuff.

So to get us started today, I know you've had a long career in education and writing and things like that, but when did you first know that writing would be your calling?

Well, actually, I have a good story.

I was maybe about 10 or 11, and I had wanted to be a pilot.

I had had this idea that I would be a pilot when I grew up.

And then my mother told me I had to get glasses because I was near side.

And I said, okay, then I'll be a writer.

And that was it.

And that was it.

Those are two very different things.

Very different things.

Yes.

Yeah.

Do you still have a love for flying, though?

It's fascinating to me.

My.

My grandfather was a pilot and an early glider designer.

And so I was always fascinated with his story and the idea of leaving the Earth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

When you were 10 or 11, kind of when you, you decided to go from pilot to writer, what were you writing then?

Were you interested in poetry at that time or kind of.

Kind of.

What were the first things that you remember writing?

I adored books.

I absolutely.

I always liked books.

I loved, you know, nursery rhymes and stories and all of that and would go to the library when I was a little kid.

But when I was in Livingston, Montana, in third grade, somehow I got my hands on Brothers Grimm fairy tales.

And it must have been a pretty exciting version because I was absolutely fascinated.

The stories were wild and wonderful and scary and rich, and I was just so amazed that I could be transported by the stories into another world.

And when I closed the book, I felt sad.

And then I thought, there are a lot more books at the library.

And so I was a regular.

I was a Regular.

I would check out, you know, a lot of books every week, and I just.

So it was that.

And then I think my grandparents gave me a diary.

And so I started writing in my diary, you know, complaining about my mom and dad and, you know, boys and things like that.

So that was a great companion.

And also what happened, because I read so much, I developed a really big vocabulary, and that was a tremendous help in school.

And so by the time I was in middle school and high school, I was a good writer.

Do you still do a lot of journaling and.

Very regularly, yeah.

It's a great place to sort of get what's in the head out onto the paper.

Yeah.

To get clear, to sort of see things from.

With greater perspective, I think.

Yeah, I do a lot of journaling myself, so I find that very therapeutic.

Yeah.

I always used to tell my students that writing is an act of discovery.

You discover things that you didn't know, that you knew, and you learn things, you know, in the process of writing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's move on to a little bit of your work.

So.

So I think your most recent collection is called My Secret Lansing.

Right?

Tell us about that.

Okay.

This is a project that Laura Apel, who was the second Lansing Poet Laureate, and I did, and we were the editors of this, although we have pieces in here.

But what we did is I created a contest called My Secret Lansing.

And it was prose and poetry and.

And through.

I got a grant through the Arts Council for this.

We had writing workshops.

Actually, it was very, very cool.

We had writing workshops, a lot of writing workshops to get people started.

And we asked people to write, you know, sort of a one page poem or a short story.

And then we had winners for the contest and we made a book out of, you know, out of the writing from 64 writers in the area.

So it's a really incredibly diverse collection of perspectives on the Lansing area.

Yeah.

What made you want to do a collection about the Lansing area?

Well, there's a story.

One of my friends, Dennis Heinrichsen, was the inaugural Lansing Poet Laureate and he also taught here at LCC for a long time.

He taught creative writing and technical writing and probably academic writing.

And I remember one time, this is, I don't know, 15 years ago or so, he once said that he'd always thought that he'd like to write a book called My Secret Lansing about places that nobody else knew about, places that were special to him but were relatively unknown.

And I said, that would be great, that would be fabulous.

But he didn't Write it.

And I was running a poetry series.

And gradually, after several years, I asked him if I could borrow the idea for this poetry contest I wanted to do.

I was running a poetry series at the Creole Gallery, the Old Town Poetry Series.

And we got great stories, great poems from it.

It was really interesting.

We had a wonderful reading.

And then this came out in about 23, I think we did it.

And I wanted.

I wanted to do this, the contest again and put it into a book.

I just thought it'd be really interesting.

So I asked Dennis again if I could use the idea because I always felt like I was kind of stealing it from him.

And he gave me permission again.

So I went ahead and did it.

Yeah, that's great.

It's so nice to see things that highlight Lansing and the.

The people here, the diversity here, and then the wonderful community that we have, too.

So I.

There's amazing cultural richness in this area.

You know, I think Lansing has had successive economic onslaughts or downturns, and then Covid.

But there's amazing cultural richness in this area and fabulous people.

So there's a lot to write about.

There is a lot to write about.

And kind of speaking of Lansing, for the last two years, you have been the poet laureate of Lansing.

How did that come about and kind of.

What are some highlights of your time as poet laureate?

Well, I was back.

I was even instrumental in starting the Lansing Poet Laureate Project.

It came out of a conversation I had with Bob Trezise, who's the director of the Lansing Economic Area Partnership.

And I was complaining about the fact that Michigan didn't have a state poet laureate at that time.

And Bob said, I've always thought we should have a Lansing poet laureate.

And I said I would go talk to Anita Skeen and Laurie Hollinger, who were just the forces behind the Rcah center for Poetry at msu.

So I talked to them, and then Laurie and I did a lot of research about different city poet laureate projects, and we put a proposal together.

We had a lot of people around the table figuring out how to adapt it to our situation.

And Dennis Heinrichsen, that I mentioned before, he was the inaugural poet laureate, and he also taught here for many decades.

And I never imagined that I would be the Lansing Poet Laureate.

But after a while, you know, I realized I could do it, and so I applied.

So I guess forgive Me, if this sounds ignorant, but a poet laureate, what is their job?

I guess what kind of do they do?

A poet laureate is really an ambassador for poetry.

And one belief of leap, the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, is that art is very important in how people understand, envision their community, how we.

How we connect with our community.

Art is just a huge part of culture, and culture is in many ways, what holds people together, you know.

And so the job of the laureate is to promote poetry, to engage the wider public with poetry and the literary arts.

So you give readings, you give workshops, and you do some very cool projects to engage people with poetry and see that poetry isn't just for academics.

It isn't just for, you know, that poetry is a very.

It's a powerful art.

It has a lot of potential.

There are lots of different kinds of poetry.

It's a way to talk about different aspects of our lives that many times we have difficulty talking about.

Death, birth, love, the sort of the big things, war, terrible times, beautiful times, all that.

I love how I feel like most people, even if you're not a big fan of poetry or you don't read a lot of poetry, just about everybody has at least one favorite poem, Right.

That just, like, sits with you or resonates with you in some way.

And I know I have a few that.

And you remember them, too?

Yes, to recall them.

So, yes, I think kind of with the poet laureate now, did you get to do reading at the Library of Congress?

Yes.

That was amazing.

Yes.

Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, I wanted to do this project.

I applied for.

I applied to the Academy of American Poets, which is connected to the Library of Congress.

I applied to the Academy of American Poets for a laureate fellowship.

And to apply for a laureate fellowship, you have to propose a civic project.

And I proposed putting up poetry signs at the Tollgate Drain wetlands.

That was my project.

And then you have to, you know, demonstrate your skill in poetry, both, you know, in writing and orally.

And to my utter amazement, because I thought the chance of getting this fellowship was like an ice cube's chance in a haystack.

To my utter amazement, I was one of the ones chosen.

How cool.

So then did you get to go?

We went to the Library of Congress last September, and it's fascinating.

Beautiful.

We heard readings by some of the wonderful national Poet laureates.

We got to give a reading to.

I don't know.

They said there were 500 people in the audience.

Yeah.

And it was part of the National Book Festival, which is very, very, very interesting event.

Held at the Library of Congress.

It's such a neat place to visit.

I got to go to the American Library association conference.

It's been quite a few years now, but we got to do a tour of the Library of Congress and the reading Rooms.

And then it was.

It's a really neat place to visit, if you like books and writing and all that.

I do recommend it.

It's really fascinating.

It is very impressed.

It is really impressive.

Yeah.

Yep.

So go ahead.

All right, I will.

Although I was kind of going to throw it to you as well, because, Rulane, you were mentioning your project as part of this, which was about the tollgate drain, and Amy actually had a chance to go visit it, so I was going to, like, kick it over to am.

Well, Tollgate Drain, for those who might not know, is located over in the Grosbeck neighborhood, right by the Grosbeck golf course.

And it is a beautiful.

It technically is a drain, but it's a beautiful walking path, all sorts of nature surrounding you, and it's this little urban oasis.

What I was thinking as I was walking through there, that is just.

It's so cool because it works with our sewer drainage system, and it creates this whole ecosystem.

It's so cool.

So you did a very special project with that area.

So tell our listeners about that project and how all the ins and outs of that.

Okay.

I wanted to make poetry visible to the wider population.

And I had been very, very impressed with a project that Dennis did when he was the laureate.

It was the Lansing Sidewalk Poetry Project, in which seven poems were etched in city sidewalks and one was put on a wall on some acetate.

And everybody loved it.

There was great fanfare, people, lot of attention.

Loved it.

The poems, the winning poems were great.

I thought, how wonderful to be walking down the street and just encounter a poem.

It was just amazing.

But I didn't realize that concrete is softer than we think it is.

It absorbs water, and then in winter, that water will freeze.

And so the letters and words became eroded after a few years.

So now you can barely.

You can't read them.

You can barely see that there's once was some writing in the sidewalk.

And I was thinking, oh, there must be a way that you can that's more durable that where you can.

A poem can somehow withstand the forces of Michigan's winter.

And so a friend of mine was telling me about lectern signs, Nan Jackson was telling me, another former LCC professor.

So she said, you have to look at these signs at Tolgate, because there were A lot of signs there that explain how the water is collected in the ponds, the series of connected ponds there, and then how natural materials remove the pollution from the pond.

And so there are these really interesting signs that explain how the science works.

And so I went over there to look at the signs and the signs I thought were beautiful and they looked durable.

I thought, this is just the kind of sign we need.

So I fell in love with the signs.

And while I was walking around, I fell in love with Tollgate.

I started looking for sources of the signs.

I called the office of the drain commissioner because they manage the toll gate drain.

And, you know, in a few days I was walking with the drain commissioner over the Montgomery, which is on the east side of Frandor.

It's a huge still in process.

Yeah, it used to be the old sledding hill.

Yeah, exactly.

And now they've sort of done a similar project on that side now of Frandor.

Yep.

Right.

So I was walking with Pat Lindemann and he liked the idea of poetry signs in the drain.

So I started writing grants.

And the second one I wrote was the application for the Laureate Fellowship.

And that one worked.

So the project was to create a poetry contest for the Tri county area called we are Water.

And we had writing workshops.

This time the writing workshops were all held outside.

A lot of them, it was warm weather.

We held a lot of them at Tollgate.

The others we held at other wetland areas either beside the grand river or the Red Cedar river, some on the east side of East Lansing.

So they were all held outside.

And we started including water science and environmental science mini lessons in the workshops and then having people do writing.

And we got fabulous poems.

We got 241 poems in the contest.

We chose six winners.

And Kim Kaufman, who also taught, photographer, taught at LCC for many, many years.

Fabulous photographer.

She did all the photography, which is all from Tolgate, and the graphic design and the signs.

And then now they're up.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We have six winners.

Five of them are under 33 MSU students.

Two very, very interesting.

Tim Lane also is one of the winners.

I could give you their names if you want, but.

Really?

Yeah.

Should I?

Yeah, go ahead.

Please.

Share, share us share.

The winners still.

Well, who's, I believe a young, I think Kendall Stillwell, young MSU student.

Melody Wright, a former park ranger.

Jasmine Snow, MSU master's degree in journalism student.

And let's see, Kendall, I think is pre veterinary student.

Tim Lane works for the city of East Lansing.

Daisy Roberts is a yellow yoga Instructor, a nature lover.

Dana Hardy is a music student at msu.

And what they have in common is they all were great observers.

Most all the poems, I think, are written about Tolgate.

Great observers.

And so their eye for detail and then for metaphors based on those details is really vivid.

And the poems are really strong and beautiful.

They are very strong.

When I walked through, I really took my time going through yesterday and reading the poems and sitting and sort of reflecting on what I was seeing around me.

And then the words, and they really are beautiful and do really, I think, reflect the feeling and the spirit of that whole area there.

So what a cool project.

Really cool.

I'd urge everybody to go check it out.

I was trying to get John too.

You gotta stop and go check it out.

So.

It's a wonderful place.

I like to.

I think there was one called Ducks.

Yes.

I love that.

I loved that.

I love that.

The first line is, the ducks do not care that you are here.

It's just really fun.

Really fun.

Yeah.

Some really kind of outstanding poetry.

And what a great way to bring the community in to do something like that.

So I love it that you're there in Tollgate reading about exactly the place where you are.

You're reading about and noticing all these things about where you are and that the photographs are also about Tollgate.

So it's like this experiential process of reading poetry.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I noticed on the.

The stands where the homes are at, there's kind of etchings on the bottom too, of different.

I think the one with the duck poem has a little duck.

And there was some other elements too.

So it was really creative and interesting.

I'm glad you saw it.

Yeah, it was fun.

It was definitely fun.

So what is next for you?

What are you working on next?

Well, the fellowship that I got also provided money for my own work.

And one thing I want to do is create a book based on the Tollgate project.

Kim Kaufman has all this beautiful photography she did of Tollgate.

We have the signs and the poems.

I'd love to get stories from the young poets themselves.

What drew them to the contest, why, what their experience was of writing the poem.

And also add water science.

It's amazing to me.

I didn't really realize Michigan sits on and is bordered by approximately 20% of the world's fresh water surface, fresh water, which is a huge percentage.

And it's really precious.

When you think of the percent of fresh water in the world, it's the percent of all the water.

It's a relatively small percent.

And I think to be good stewards of our natural resources, we need to know a lot more about water because all life is water based.

We are water based creatures and we need to preserve basically what is the source of life.

Yeah.

And I think that's the other really incredible thing about Tollgate park there or the Drain is that just the science behind it too?

Of every.

It's almost like everything in that drain is there for a reason, from the lily pads to the wildlife to the different plants that you find, you know, the monarch butterflies and the milkweed and things like that.

So it's.

And then throughout the park too, there are those signs that tell you exactly what's happening here and the science behind it.

So that is really great.

Right.

Natural materials can detoxify water, you know, take the pollutants out of it.

And that's amazing when you understand how it works and you realize that all nature is really interconnected and when you get the right balance, it works out pretty well.

So are you going to come back to LCC and teach some science classes?

You know, I'm fascinated by science, but I didn't really study science much in high school.

I was so fascinated by literature that.

And I didn't think I was a scientist, but I'm really fascinated with science and fascinated with, I guess, the intersection between science and creativity.

Creative writing, that's one thing that became so interesting in this project for me.

And also experiential writing, which I didn't intend it, but my master's in teaching was based a lot on using experiential learning in the classroom.

And what I realized in the process of doing these workshops is that basically it was an experiential learning project that we were providing information about tollgate, but then they were in the environment and writing about what they could see and hear and feel and connect with.

And that's a powerful process, powerful process of learning.

So all that's really interesting to me.

Yeah.

And it's so fun to see, I think writing kind of come together with science and that normally you see those things as so separate things, but to really see how they do go together.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

So beyond going to visit Tollgate Drain, which people should do, how else can people learn about your work and learn more about your projects and what you have done?

1.

I'm the President of the Lansing Poetry Club and we have a poetry series that's open to the public.

It's free of charge.

We love donations.

But you know, you can, you can just come if you want.

We have a Facebook page called Lansing Poetry Club and we have a Gmail account, Lansingpoetryclubmail.com so those are two ways to get in touch with us.

I have a book of poetry called Jar of Plenty.

What else?

I give workshops.

I like to give workshops.

I'm available for giving writing workshops or finding your voice as a performance poet.

I do that too.

Yeah.

I did catch some of your videos of your spoken word and boy, you just have a lovely.

A lovely way.

It was almost to hear your poetry kind of brought to life too.

And it's said out loud.

So.

Poetry originally was an oral art form.

You know, it existed probably before language was written.

It's ancient.

Very, very, very ancient.

It's connected to music.

It's connected it to storytelling.

And the rhyme and the rhythm were ways that people could remember it, you know, memorize it.

So I think there's a powerful.

I think poetry thrives when it's not very far from our oral tradition because then we're more in tune with the rhythms and the tonal quality of it, the sound quality, which is really important.

Important.

Poetry is kind of condensed language.

The ideas sometimes are compressed and then the musicality of the.

Of the language.

So it's.

It's a way to say something that can have a big impact.

Well, you have certainly made an impact on the Lansing community, and we were so happy to have you here today.

So thank you for being here here.

Thank you so very much.

Very, very much.

Thank you guys.

It was fun to chat with you and I hope you'll come back again sometime, too.

I'd love to.

Yes.

And you can check out.

You also have a website.

Yes, rulane stokestokes.com.

Yeah, so you just type it into Google and go.

Right.

It'll come up for you.

Exactly.

So check out our LCC show notes too.

We'll have everything linked out in there.

And thank you for being our guest and thank you for listening to Written in the Stars Books and Beyond.

Thanks so much.

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Visit lcc.edu library to find the titles discussed in this episode.

You can find previous episodes of Written in the Stars and and other LCC Connect [email protected] In the words of Miguel D. Amuno, I hope, reader, we shall meet again and we shall recognize each other.