Giving words to a stone

For local author Douglas Skrief, that advice translated into a book of poems about the experiences of a Rainy Lake boulder — a landmark near the waterfront cottage that has been in his family for generations.

Skrief uses the literary device of pathetic fallacy in “Stone Poems” to give voice to the rock, which tells a fictional, but quite possible, tale of its existence to a person called “Word-Giver,” the author himself.

“Something that has experienced a lot can talk with some distance about its own experience and what it’s seen, what’s happened around it as well,” Skrief said, noting that, “part of the process was finding a voice for the stone that seemed right in a deep way.”

The anthropomorphize stone tells its story in a collection of 75 poems, which are divided into five sections: Origins, Visitors, Words to the Word-Giver, Awakenings and Change. Skrief said that exiting poems divided easily into these sections, which catalog the moments in, and the passing of, time for thousands of years from the creation of the Earth to modern day.

“So many people have a curiosity about the history of the stones that they see as they paddle through close to the shores of the boundary waters or Rainy Lake, or that might be sitting in their backyard — just what has that stone seen, where has it been, all of that,” Skrief said.

“And because this particular one that I try to give a voice to was part of our family heritage as well our family cottage, it had special significance that way. It’s a little hard to avoid when you get to our cottage — there it sits next to the shore. It invites pondering, I think, about people who pass by it now, and you begin to think about people who have passed by it for 10,000 years.”

The imagery in the poems is pure Borderland — the trees, plants, animals, people and events paint a clear picture of the natural bounty of the area and the ways in which it has changed over time.

The piece of Sand Bay property, including the stone, has been in Skrief’s family for more than 50 years, and some of his earliest memories of the lake include the stone as a backdrop, he said.

The challenge, Skrief said, in creating this collection was finding a voice for the inanimate object that seemed to capture its essence.

The rock, he said, has a complete range of emotions in the book, and said that, in a way, they could all be considered love poems. He also noted that he was even a bit surprised to find that the boulder had a sense of humor at times.

“It’s not just a wise old owl in a monotone about its life experience. It’s got some personality,” he said.

Getting published

A reception for Skrief hosted by the local women’s music group Tuesday Musicale will be held at the Ranier Community Building from 2-4 p.m. on Nov. 22. A reading of selections from the book is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m.

“Stone Poems” was published by Starhaven, based out of London. Skrief said that two friends sent the manuscript to the publisher, who liked it very much. He said he had met the publisher at a book launch for another writer in England several years prior, and email allowed them to work together from a distance.

Skrief also noted that the name Starhaven coincidentally refers to a northern Minnesota retreat owned by the company’s founder.

The book will make its way to readers across the country and across the pond. The book’s launch party was in London this month, and several other signings are scheduled for Minneapolis and Chicago.

Skrief explained that the Notting Hill launch party guests were to include book reviewers, poets, publishers, media, friends and relatives.

“You hope for a review, there’s just no guarantee that someone’s going to pick it up. And it’s a little hard being an American, I think, in that sense. These days publishing is a big business, so for a small book we’re doing all we can to get that out there.”

The writer said that, so far, reaction to the book has been positive, even from people living thousands of miles away with no prior Rainy Lake knowledge.

“The reactions have been strong, so I’m also guessing there is something universal about the stone’s narrative. And I think that happens a lot in art. They tell you to write about what you know and tell that story. People find in it what they’re looking for, what they’re ready to hear. And there seems to be something in these ‘Stone Poems’ that is speaking to the general person.”

Skrief said that he will have copies of the book available for purchase at the Ranier book signing. The book can also be ordered through the publisher’s Web site at http://www.starhaven.org.uk/.

On writing

Skrief has been interested in the written word since he was a child, and started writing plays and poetry as a young man. He has also been a reporter, creative writing teacher, grant writer and owns his own writing business, Skribe Services.

“Stone Poems” is his first published book, but his poetry has also been published in the “Paris Review.” He said that he has completed several other works of creative writing.

“It’s fulfilling — in the way meditation teaches you to pay attention to your own breath as sufficient unto itself. It both takes me away from distraction and myself while enlivening my deepest nature. To share that is a gift,” Skrief wrote in a self-interview he provided The Daily Journal.

And he said that once he had the idea for his poetry collection, the mechanics fell into place easily.

“When you do this for a long time, you begin to edit even before you write things down and you kind of know what’s going to work. I don’t know if the writing comes any easier, it might even become more difficult because you’ve got so many other things to consider. You’ll write a line down and know pretty much immediately whether it’s going to work or not as a line of poetry. And that takes experience and reading and thinking about it.”

“Revision is a large part self-editing. A lot of that revising was finding a deep channel where I could kind of return to in my imagination and keep writing from that spot. And once I found that, then there was less editing and revision that needed to be done afterward.”

Skrief studied art history and English at Harvard College and English at Oxford University. It was in college, he said, where he was inspired to start “responding” to the poetry that he read. He later went on to teach creative writing courses himself at Rainy River Community College.

He was awarded a 2006 McKnight/Arrowhead Regional Arts Council Individual Fellowship grant, which he said afforded him time to concentrate on this collection. Part of that grant included a 2007 reading of selections from this book at RRCC.

In addition to his writing, Skrief is the executive director of Koochiching Aging Options and is on the Northern Counties Land Use Coordinating Board, among other affiliations.

“I’m introduced to people in Britain as an American poet and that kind of surprises me sometimes because most writers have other jobs to support themselves.”

But Skrief said that although poetry books are typically small-run enterprises, poetry writing is growing in popularity worldwide, particularly in Europe, but also in America.

“More and more people are writing poetry. Partly you can see that in the writing programs nationwide,” he said. “You have your local poets who maybe have always been there and done a little bit of verse, but now with the Internet and exchanging things ... I think it’s growing.”

The writer said he hoped to play off and evoke the feelings of the archaic term for a poet, “maker,” when choosing the name he ultimately gave himself of “Word-Giver.”

“I think in the stone’s experience what would distinguish human contact from animal and mineral contact would be language,” Skrief said. “And the business of poetry is language. So that’s really an important distinction for the stone — for humans to have self-consciousness and language and be able to describe things.

“And throughout the work and to end with, the stone encourages the use of that language in giving of thanks and celebration so I think that kind of word-giving is important, too.”

For Skrief, the process of using his language skills is about finding a creative outlet: “There just seems to be times when somebody might have a wood shop and want to create a decoy. What I do when I get that urge to create something is usually about writing poetry.”