35 Degna Stone: poet

Degna Stone is an award-winning poet and poetry editor. They are co-founder and former Managing Editor of  Butcher’s Dog poetry magazine, a Contributing Editor at The Rialto, and an associate artist with The Poetry Exchange. Currently, Degna is Project Manager for the Rebecca Swift Foundation, an organisation dedicated to the craft, creativity and wellbeing of women poets. You can also find them leading Caves with Caveday.org.

Proof of Life on Earth, Nine Arches Press, is their debut poetry collection.

Kathie’s note: You know how some people are so calm, so centered, they just exude warmth and safety? That’s Degna. My impression of Degna, anyway. They are one of the lovely guides at Caveday, all of whom are pretty fabulous and individually unique. I loved this discussion about poetry and being a poet. 

Writers Rotation intro/outro recorded at Dynamix Productions in Lexington, Kentucky.

Transcript

Degna [00:00:00]:
I'm Degna Stone. I'm mostly a poet, so I've published a few articles, essays, and reviews too. Writing is my way of making sense of the world and connecting with others.

Intro [00:00:06]:
Hi. Welcome to the Writers Rotation podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Stamps. I love words and writing and people and talking. So I'm talking to people who write all kinds of things in different professions. It's a Writers Rotation. 

Kathie [00:00:11]:
Hi. Welcome a writer's rotation. How are you doing?

Degna [00:00:29]:
Hello.

Kathie [00:00:30]:
How is the world of poetry?

Degna [00:00:32]:
The world of poetry is good. It's good and exciting. Actually, at the weekend, I was up at, St Andrews in Scotland for Stanza International Poetry Festival, which is an absolute blast. I wasn't performing. I was just there as, representing the organization that I work with and just being a you know, a poetry punter. I really enjoyed that and it was gorgeous weather. Really beautiful.

Kathie [00:00:57]:
I love it. And there's so many kinds of poetry. Yeah. So many forms. Do you prefer one over the other?

Degna [00:01:05]:
Not especially. I guess I like to see what comes to me. So in terms of my own writing I don't adhere to one particular form or the other. I quite like poets who are a bit more experimental with their work although I don't feel like I do that myself but Mary Ruefle, for instance, with some of the—it's not blackout poetry. It's, I can't remember the name of it now, but it is like erasure poetry. And she sort of takes a Tipp-Ex or Wite-Out to text and creates poetry from that in some of her work. So yes, I like poets who are a bit experimental.

Kathie [00:01:41]:
And then a new word to me, ekphrastic?

Degna [00:01:44]:
Ekphrastic, yes. So poetry that responds to art form in some way. So it can be, you know, traditional painting or it can be any art form like song or sculpture, anything that is inspirational. And the thing about ekphrastic poetry, when it's done really beautifully is where  the poem stands alone from the artwork that inspires it. But also when you see the two of them in conversation with each other, you know they enhance each other all the more. But, yeah, I dabble with that occasionally.

Kathie [00:02:20]:
Okay. What about the baby Degna? You're in kindergarten. You're in first grade. You learn how to write.

Degna [00:02:26]:
I used to read quite a lot, and I can't remember exactly what it was that I used to read when I was when I was young, but I used to have a suitcase that was full of books that I would dip in and out of. So I think there'd be things like Enid Blyton and The Wind in the Willows and  things like that. When I was a teenager, I think that's when I came to writing poetry as a way of making sense of the world. Not for sharing necessarily, not for publishing or putting out into the world, but just as a way of, yeah, making sense of what it was like to  grow up in a relatively small town in the middle of England.

Kathie [00:03:01]:
That sounds like an artistic form of journaling.

Degna [00:03:04]:
Yeah, but not quite an intentional one. I don't journal that much, on and off. I'll attempt to, but I'm just really bad at sticking at habits and things like that. I would have a notebook that I would put things down in occasionally, when the need arose. And when I was a young woman, that need arose usually late at night after a few ales. I used to enjoy doing that before I started writing intentionally as a professional poet, I suppose.

Kathie [00:03:36]:
You got a master's, didn't you? A master's degree?

Degna [00:03:39]:
So after I graduated with my first degree, I fell into the heady world of administration. And then eventually I fell into a role at a theater in Newcastle called Live Theatre. And this is kind of like my route back into writing because at the time there was a poet and a novelist and a playwright called Julia Darling, who sadly died in 2005. She was one of the writers in residence at the theater, and she was just one of the most beautiful, kind-hearted, generous-spirited women that you could ever meet. And she was just so encouraging. I sat next to her in the cafe one day and she asked if I wrote and I was like, oh I do these little bits of writing in my notebook. And she was just like, if you're interested in writing, you should pursue it a little more. And then when I found out that the cancer that she had was going to kill her, I sent a little poem that I'd written to try again. Try and process my feelings about it and she sent me a gorgeous email back.

Degna [00:04:36]:
So like, you know, they're just being really positive about the poem and saying keep writing. My first daughter was quite small at the time. I think she was less than a year old. Poetry was a way of finding little pockets of time where you could write these things down and process the things that were happening in the world around you and tap into that creativity. I think I did an artistic degree because I had a drive for creativity within me somehow. And so poetry was a way back into tapping into that creativity, I felt. And  then as any young parent will tell you, time is at a premium and it's really nice to feel that you can finish something, that you can sit down and it might not be finished in terms of well-crafted and all of those things, but there's a unit of work that you've got something to show for it and it helps you to make sense of the days.

Kathie [00:05:35]:
Have you ever played around with song lyrics?

Degna [00:05:38]:
No. No. I've always wanted to, but I'm just, I feel that maybe you—I'll have to ask a songwriter, but I always feel that you hear the music when you're creating song lyrics or there's, like, there's something beyond just the rhythm. I don't feel like I have an inner ear, like an internal ear. Some people have a mind's eye. I don't have a mind's eye, and I think I don't really have an inner ear as well. I can't hear things in the same way that I think people might. So maybe that's why I've shied away from, you know, writing song lyrics.

Kathie [00:06:15]:
Or a play, a short story, a novel?

Degna [00:06:19]:
I've been doing a PhD. There’s been a creative element of that. I'm in the thick of writing it up, and it's not the writing up is not going well, because there's a lot of analysis and synthesis and all of these sort of like things that academics have to do that don't sit very comfortably with me, so I'm having a bit of an internal battle. But as part of that PhD I think I'd started with the intention of writing a sequence of poems that would help me to explore some of the themes. It wanted to be something that wasn't a sequence of poems or it felt like it needs to be something that was in an like a physical space with an audience. And so it turned into a short play, a one-act play with two performers and four characters.

Kathie [00:07:02]:
Were you one of the performers?

Degna [00:07:04]:
Yeah, unfortunately, because I couldn't get any funding. I couldn't get the funding that would allow for a bigger cast. If I'd wanted to get paid, I needed to be in it in some way.

Kathie [00:07:16]:
So how did that feel? Were you like, yeah, I could do this?

Degna [00:07:20]:
No. No. It worked out okay in the end. I had a great director, Matt Jamie, and Luca Rutherford was the other performer and who had been supporting me in the creation of the play, helping me to figure things out. They were really brilliant so they supported and helped me quite well through that process. But yeah no, I'm not an actor. I've discovered I can get through a short play but there was something so interesting about trying to write this piece and then also learning how to project and how to inhabit a character at the same time that was perhaps a little, maybe one or two tasks too many to hold in my head at any one time? But the thing that was really interesting about performing was understanding that if you have a slight unintentional repetition of a line or something, that it makes it really hard to learn because you keep losing your place in the script. Is this line that relates to the theme or am I supposed to be in—so it helped me to think okay, cut back on the unnecessary or the unintentional repetition. If you've said something already then there's probably not a need to say it again in a slightly different way later on in the in the script, unless the plot required it.

Kathie [00:08:39]:
I just pictured a Beethoven sonata, where you’re like, wait. Is this the first time it repeats or this the second time? Are we getting near the end or do we have to do it again?

Degna [00:08:50]:
Yeah. I guess with repeated motifs and things like that that come with certain types of music. Yes.

Kathie [00:08:55]:
So how do you know if this poem is a standalone or it's going to go in a collection?

Degna [00:09:02]:
There was a sequence of poems that I wrote a while ago that had to do with my husband, who had a period of illness, and there was a sequence of poems that were, I guess, documenting that process and working through that process. And so I always knew that they kind of belong together. Some of the poems could stand alone outside of it. Other poems definitely needed to be part of a sequence in order to be understood. But in terms of, if I'm not writing to a specific theme, I don't know if they belong in a collection until I start trying to pull them together. And so I've had a few poetry pamphlets out, which are like small collections. And then I've had like one full-length collection of poetry out, with Nine Arches Press a couple of years ago. And so basically I just brought all of my poems together and working with the editor.

Degna [00:09:52]:
You kind of say, well, this, you know, these seem to be, working to a similar theme or they seem to be doing something. Well, you know, trying to evoke a certain type of feeling. So maybe they all belong together. Maybe they belong in here. And then you can find narrative threads that move through the poems, particularly if you're, you know, writing from experience, which is not necessary to say that you're working autobiographically. A lot of that for me comes after the writing. You find out where does it belong, you know, once you have them all together.

Kathie [00:10:25]:
Are you teaching? 

Degna [00:10:26]:
Not really. I do occasional workshops, and things like that. I tried doing work in schools and I discovered that there are some people who are brilliant in that sort of environment and are fantastic at inspiring people, and children in particular. And so I kind of decided that I would leave that work to them, because I just found the whole process really quite stressful, because I didn't want to be the person who put somebody off poetry at an early age. So I'll do workshops with adults occasionally. And it's always just really lovely to share some of the poets that you've been inspired by or some of the workshop exercises that you picked up over the years that help people to express themselves. I'm a big fan of writing manifesto poems. So I have a workshop that is around that, because if we just leave manifesto writing to the politicians, we're not going to get too far.

Degna [00:11:22]:
So just like, you know, things that help people to think about their own sphere of influence, like, what change can you make in the world around you? These don't have to be big manifesto pledges. They can just be something simple as, within one of my manifesto poems I sort of  pledged to stop saluting magpies because, wanting to trust more in science than superstition, that kind of thing.

Kathie [00:11:50]:
Can the first line be anything or is there a similar way to start a manifesto poem?

Degna [00:11:55]:
The thing with the manifesto poem is it needs to be intentional. So there needs to be like a statement. It can be in either plural or singular, like, we stand for or I will always and you can have that sort of like repetition going through or you can have like something that is maybe just a bit less obvious than that. But it's about putting, you know, intentions out into the world or sort of like an instruction manual. And again, going back to Julia Darling, she had a poem that was almost like an instructions for her daughters kind of thing. These can be really, really beautiful things.

Kathie [00:12:36]:
But declarative and imperative structure and sentences.

Degna [00:12:41]:
Definitely. And from the heart. I think you should always write a manifesto poem with the intention of adhering to it, but it's kind of like you might fall short sometimes, but it's always, this is how I want to live my life. This is the world that I want to be a part of. 

Kathie [00:12:59]:
I have a five-word manifesto. I think it's five. My joy is a nonnegotiable.

Degna [00:13:05]:
Oh, yes. Yes. Fantastic start. Perfect. If you were to sort of give somebody an okay, this is the start of your manifesto. Now go. So you can bring everything else into that as well.

Kathie [00:13:17]:
Oh, okay.

Degna [00:13:18]:
You can bring other things that are your nonnegotiables into that.

Kathie [00:13:21]:
I like that. How'd you get into Caveday?

Degna [00:13:24]:
I'm so glad you asked. I was thinking I must plot my route into Caveday. Poetry brought me into  Caveday actually, because there's a poet, a British Trinidadian poet called Roger Robinson, who I met when I first started writing poetry professionally. And during the first lockdown during the pandemic, he was recommending people to sign up to like a Seth Godin online space that was being run for people. And obviously everybody was online, so you could join from anywhere in the world. And so I joined that and there was somebody who was like running an Artist's Way group. Let's start doing the Artist's Way. So I got into this little group and then somebody in that group was part of CreativeMornings, which I know that you you're a part of.

Kathie [00:14:13]:
Yep.

Degna [00:14:14]:
And so, you know, I was having a look at all the things. And then there was something called Get Shit Done in the Cave, and I like a good swear, so I was like, that sounds really intriguing. And I went along to this taster session that Caveday were running and was just blown away. Like procrastination is, you know, I'm just terrible for it. And so I was amazed that you'd go into this cave with the intention of doing some work, monotasking on one thing at a time, and you'll be able to do the work. You would get the work done in less time than you were doing it and I just fell in love with it and like the community. It was always interesting.

Degna [00:14:49]:
The guides were like incredible. They all seem to have this beautiful energy and they were all different. They all bought something different. So you know, I remember dropping an email  to Molly, Jake, and Jeremy just saying, oh, I'm really enjoying Caveday. I think they only had one European guide at the time, Kelly Decker, who's in Amsterdam. And so I was like, if you're ever thinking about expanding into European hours, I would absolutely love to be involved. And then a short while later, like a few weeks later, they said, Do you want to have a conversation about it? And so I did. And then eventually I got onboarded as a cave guide. So that's coming up five years. 

Kathie [00:15:30]:
I love how most things are: because of this, because of this, because of this, you know, the little pebbles, the stairsteps.

Degna [00:15:39]:
It is. Yeah.

Kathie [00:15:41]:
Do you have a poem that you share when people ask you to share a poem?

Degna [00:15:44]:
Not a specific one, but my youngest turned 18 recently, so I am the parent of adult children, which is mind-blowing to me. So I have a poem that was written when my youngest was small and so I sometimes share that one. If you would like me to share it, I can share it if you want.

Kathie [00:16:04]:
I would love to hear a poem.

Degna [00:16:06]:
Okay. And again, this is like, trying to make sense of being a parent is, is challenging at the best of times, and you're always making mistakes, messing up, and feeling like you're doing a terrible job. So this poem is called Ruby, Aged 4½


She’s a roulette wheel loaded against you
A sure-fire bet when you don’t have the stake
A gun in the hands of a man with a grudge
Like a smudge of silver leaf on a blacksmith’s neck

She’s a giggle that turns into a manic episode
An intermittent broadband connection
A delivery between nine in the morning and six at night
Like a bus driver who waits when he sees you running

She’s a garden wall with loose brickwork
A 90-minute wait for a cab on your birthday
A higher than expected energy bill
Like a footballer with a doctorate in theology

She’s an argument with your boyfriend’s brother
A cobra squatting in a meerkat’s den
A hooded teen walking behind you at night
Like a coin without a date stamp

She’s a bit of a laugh that ends up in court
A train that blasts past at your station
A flag at full mast when the queen is dead
Like the difference between a common puffball and a death cap. 

Like being alive



Kathie [00:17:40] 
Oh wow.

Degna [00:17:41]:
Yes. It's really lovely to be able to share that connection because again, sort of like the point of writing is not only to help yourself to process the world, but it's about making connections and being human, I suppose.

Kathie [00:17:58]:
I love it. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.

Degna [00:18:01]:
Thanks so much, Kathie. I really appreciate it.

Kathie [00:18:02]:
And I will see you in the cave.

Degna [00:18:04]:
That's true. See you.

Outro [00:18:07]:
Thanks for listening to this episode of Writers Rotation. Like and subscribe for more. And remember, writing is a marketable skill. Smiling is a remarkable skill.