Ella McGrail’s reaction to being selected the first New Hampshire Youth Poet Laureate can be described as a fairly standard teenage reaction. “Oh, this is a joke,” the Portsmouth High School senior recalls in an interview about her new appointment. “Are you kidding me?”

But her tender age and surprise at the honor don’t do justice to her deep credentials in the New Hampshire writing community. She’s a published poet and youth activist who writes a blog called Civic Teen for Seacoast Online. She’s also a public speaker, and was personally selected by New Hampshire Poet Laureate Alice Fogel for the new post, which she will hold through August. Future Youth Poets Laureate will apply for the position.

Fogel says the idea behind the position was to pick a high school-aged student who has shown commitment as a creative writer and thinker, is an advocate for others, and can give a voice to the concerns of young people. “Ella is a remarkable young woman who fills all these criteria in her own unique, humble, and strong way,” says Fogel.

Given that McGrail has been writing “as long as I’ve been aware of myself” and wrote her first novel by the age of 13, she seems a good pick to provide direction for the program and give other young writers an example and role model. But her technique and work ethic could be an example for adult writers as well.

“The more you write, the better you become,” she says. “I’m largely self-taught, but I read a lot and love to read so I know how it’s supposed to sound. I write every day or at least journal every day. I carry a notebook everywhere.”

As a teenager, McGrail has strong thoughts about a writer’s life. Take writers’ block. “I’m skeptical of writer’s block; it seems like an excuse for people that just don’t feel like writing,” she says with a laugh. “I mean I love it, but you’re not going to always be in that golden stage. The rest of the time is slogging through what sounds right and that’s where the real mechanics come in.”

McGrail says her poetry—a cross between political activism and fantastical imagery—owes its style to New Hampshire. “I love living in a state where people care about big issues and defend them,” she says. “Much of my writing and definitely some of my poetry has been inspired by the passion of New Hampshirites defending their beliefs. It is also a state of incredible natural beauty. I spend most of my time on the seacoast and find a bottomless source of inspiration in both the ocean and the beauty of the Portsmouth area.”

While McGrail writes enjoys other kinds of writing, she finds poetry’s dual nature particularly alluring. “Wonderful poetry and fun poetry can be written about things that aren’t your beating heart in your hand,” she says. “But things we love and things that make us scared are likely the same things. With love comes fear. Along with something you’re deeply passionate about comes fear of having it taken from you. Pain and love can be interchangeable.”

“Watercolor”
I would have been an impressionist painting
Resting in a field, perhaps
Or looking out through a kitchen window,
Absent-minded
Fingers curved and head tilted
As I let myself slip from the task at hand
Into church bells and distance
I would have to be an impressionist work
Because I appear so unfocused to myself
Features and convictions unclear
Truth ripples from water lily into reflection
Much better then, to be unsure
Where my hair ends and the clouds begin
Where my apron melts into grass
Checkered cloth becomes shadow
Villages fade into light and mist
Yes, emotions are best described by these unsolid brushstrokes
But it is comforting
This message in the softly painted smiles of blurred women
That I may remain beautiful
A better artwork for my uncertainty.

Ella McGrail – New Hampshire Youth Poet Laureate
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Website

The post Meet New Hampshire’s First Youth Poet Laureate appeared first on Take Magazine.

I was moving like a monsoon through a forest. I was thinking about where I saw myself in two thousand years . . . And where I saw myself was a tiny subspace ripple sliding through the corridors with a plastic horse in my hand. – Bianca Stone, Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours

Bianca Stone was born and raised in Vermont. She is the granddaughter of American poet, Ruth Stone; the daughter of fiction writer, Abigail Stone; and she herself is a poet, visual artist, and Chair of the Ruth Stone Foundation.

A proud descendent of a strong line of women, it makes sense that Stone would want to work hard to preserve the history and creative vigor of her family. “I moved to New York City for graduate school, and lived there for almost 10 years. I’ve just moved back so that I can work full time on the Ruth Stone Foundation,” said Stone. “My husband and I loved Brooklyn so much, but we knew if we were really going to make our dream happen with the foundation, we would have to be here putting everything into it.”

Being raised by a single mother, Stone spent a lot of time with her grandmother growing up.

“She encouraged me to constantly write, as did my mother,” said Stone.

After her grandmother’s death in 2011, Stone was appointed trustee of her estate along with Poet Laureate of Vermont, Chard deNiord, and Nora Swan. Together they have founded The Ruth Stone Foundation at the site of her home in Goshen, VT.

Page from I am Full of Mythos by Bianca Stone

“We’ve just started a new project called The Ruth Stone House Reader, which features chapbook-length collections of poetry from Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Jennifer Tamayo, Cathy Linh Che, and Carolina Ebeid,” Stone says.

Established in 2013, The Foundation serves to fulfill Ruth Stone’s wish that her physical and literary estate would be used for the furthering of poetry and the creative arts. It was created not only to nurture contemporary poetry and art in its many forms, but also to cultivate and celebrate the works and legacy of the poet herself.

Stone says, “as a yearly anthology, the Reader looks to Ruth Stone’s legacy of supporting her community and offers each author a residency in Vermont. Taking on a range of voices, styles, and subjects, the collection highlights the boldness and complexity of poetry in the early 21st century. This is writing that embraces those who offer care and confronts those who don’t. This is writing that spans narrative meditation, intertextual performance, and lyrical bravado. This is poetry that will challenge and engross you.”

When she’s not working with the Ruth Stone Foundation, Stone is publishing books of poetry and poetry comics on her own. She is the author of the poetry collections Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Tin House/Octopus Books, 2014), Poetry Comics from the Book of Hours (Pleiades Books, 2016), and multiple chapbooks.

“I’ve always been a visual artist as well as a writer, but it wasn’t until graduate school at NYU that I had to opportunity to work with Anne Carson and Matthew Rohrer that I heard the term ‘poetry comics’ and I leapt on the chance to start experimenting on deliberately combining text and image in the form of poetry,” said Stone.

She is also a contributing artist for a special edition of Anne Carson‘s Antigonick, and along with her husband, the poet Ben Pease, Stone co-edits the small poetry press Monk Books.

“Currently I’m working on my new book of poetry,” shares Stone. “I’m about the have a baby so I’m trying to get the first draft done before she comes!”

With the newest Stone daughter on her way, we can’t help but wonder…will she be a writer too?

For more information on Bianca Stone please visit her Website for a deeper exploration of her work. 

All images courtesy Bianca Stone

The post The Daughters Stone appeared first on Take Magazine.

Her passion and purpose extend far beyond her poetry, though. Williams is also a Professor of English and the Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Bates College.

You’ve made quite an impact at Bates College in the 3 years you’ve been on staff. Can you tell us more about the programs you’ve implemented?

Programmatically, we have created a series of distinctive interventions that seek to support, inform, and energize the community. Some of them include:

The Dinner Table program, which focuses on prompt-based storytelling as a means by which students increase measures of empathy, broaden their perspectives on what constitutes diversity and why diversity is a mutually held source of power and effectiveness, among other outcomes. Just two weeks ago, this year’s final storytelling event featured ten Dinner Table storytellers, nominated by their peers, on the main stage at our Olin Arts Center. Listening to stories that reflected an enormous range of experience – a Black woman’s move to wearing natural hair, a student’s struggle with suicide ideation, a Black man’s journey to shrugging off the stereotypes that once bound him, and a young man who nearly burnt his house down making nachos – reminds us all of our commonalities and distinctions, and how much we learn from and rely on each other.

Bobcat First!, a First Year, cohort-based program focused on supporting students who are first in their families to attend a four-year college, which actively involves first generation to college alumni and faculty and staff.

Lingua Franca, a student-driven, college-wide open forum meant to spark conversations across differences. Bates community members identify topics for discussion, and call on faculty and staff experts as well as a unique community circle model of small group discussion.

SPARQ!, our new multi-platform program supporting LGBTQIA+ identified community members and allies.

We are still in the early days. Each of these programs is new to the College, but to-date, the data we’ve collected suggests that they are helping us accomplish some of our primary goals, which include providing students, staff, and faculty with opportunities to build stronger, more inclusive communities, networks, feel more empowered, and more successfully engage a fundamental part of our mission statement, to engage, “the transformative power of our differences.”

You were recently commissioned by MoMA to write poems as part of the Jacob Lawrence Migration Series exhibit. What was that like?

Well, certainly, being involved in anything related to MoMA is a great honor. And I was particularly honored that Elizabeth Alexander, who I so admire, invited me into the project. But I was also thrilled to have been able to substantively engage with Leah Dickerman, who catalyzed this multi-disciplinary project. To be surrounded by so much brilliance and excellence is always a privilege. In this way, my inclusion in this project has seeded so much new thinking—oh, about poems, new forms, partnerships and potential projects. From one endeavor, I hope, will emerge many! So it has meant a reinvigoration of sorts, for which I am profoundly grateful.

You have published four collections of poems, that’s impressive. Out of these collections, a line that intrigued me was “The heart is a beautiful monster, it nearly always survives its fate.” Break this down for us…

I love that this line struck you as being of interest. That is, I think, the beauty of poetry—it asks us to slow down, ponder, turn language and meaning over in our heads and hearts. For this reason, I’m loath to answer the question because, ultimately, the line must mean something to the reader and that meaning may be quite different from my own.

That said, I think our “hearts” or spirits are our most robust qualities. They are from whence emerge our kindnesses and our travesties. So they can be both monstrous and beautiful and are often both—at once. This duality is what makes human beings, at least to me, so very interesting and compelling. And, in the context of the poem, the heart/spirit in this regard, can and will survive its fate, which was deep sorrow.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

Do you have anything new in the works right now?

In relation to my own writing, I have grown especially interested in work that employs multiple voices and multiple angles of vision that address the same topic and/or event. I am currently working on a book meant to be read as a memoir comprised of monologues interconnected by voice and topic and also performed as a play.

Having lived in Detroit, Madrid, Portland, and New York City—what’s most appealing to you about Lewiston?

What I most appreciate about Lewiston, and what reminds me most of my hometown, Detroit, is its working class nature, the people who live here who are making their way, their strong communities and traditions. These feel very familiar to me, even though I am not part of those communities and traditions. I appreciate its very “real” feeling, especially having lived for so long in Portland, Oregon, which could easily be characterized as a life-style city, resplendent with so many trappings of a world too few Americans experience and/or can afford. I like that Lewiston reflects and therefore reminds me of the millions of Americans living in cities and towns just like it—good people, hard-working people, people who want something more for their family and friends.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

The post Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor appeared first on Take Magazine.