Bianca Stone Named New Vermont Poet Laureate

Bianca Stone readily admitted that often she doesn't understand a poem the first time she reads it — and perhaps even after a second or third reading. It's a surprising confession from the 41-year old poet and teacher from Brandon, whom Gov. Phil Scott just named Vermont's 10th poet laureate on Wednesday.

But as Stone explained, “It’s not about understanding poetry ... You kind of let poetry happen to you and surrender to the not knowing.”

In literary circles, the name Stone has long been synonymous with poetry. Bianca Stone is a granddaughter of acclaimed Goshen poet Ruth Stone, who served as Vermont's sixth poet laureate, from 2007 to 2011. The elder Stone, a National Book Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist, died in 2011 at age 96.

Since then, Bianca Stone has carried on her grandmother's legacy. Soon after Ruth's death, Stone cofounded the poetry nonprofit Ruth Stone House in Goshen, which she renovated and turned into an artists' retreat; it's now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. There, Stone teaches in-person and online classes on poetry; hosts a podcast, Ode & Psyche; and serves as editor-at-large of the online art and poetry quarterly Iterant.
Stone is the author such books as What Is Otherwise Infinite, which won a 2022 Vermont Book Award; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief, published in 2018; Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (2014); and I Saw the Devil With His Needlework (2012). She also illustrated Anne Carson's translation of Sophocles' Antigonick (2014) and edited The Essential Ruth Stone (2020) . Her work has also been published in the New Yorker, Atlantic, Poets and Writers, the Nation, and elsewhere.

Often described as Vermont's ambassador for the art of poetry, the poet laureate performs various ceremonial functions during the four-year term. But for Stone, who will teach poetry to anyone from graduate students to those who've never taken a poetry class, her goal in the position is to create spaces for people who normally don't discuss or engage with poetry as writers or readers, or simply see it as antiquated or abstruse.

“Our culture doesn’t have poetry myths entrenched in it anymore,” she said. "As a result, we often don’t know how to read it or interpret it."

Yet, for Stone, “Poetry is in many ways closer to how our minds actually work in terms of understanding the complexity of thought and being in the world."

Unlike, say, a novel or other prose, poetry can convey seemingly random imagery from our consciousness, often in nonlinear ways that defy easy explanation. “You’re not always sure what it means," she added. "But there's a lot going on in our minds that we don’t understand.”

The Vermont Arts Council has managed the poet laureate selection process since 1988. Stone was chosen by an outside selection committee after it had received more than 200 nominations of 31 Vermont poets. Past Vermont poet laureates include Louise Glück, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Grace Paley, Sydney Lea, Chard deNiord and, most recently, Mary Ruefle.

A formal appointment ceremony for Stone with Gov. Scott is being planned for sometime this spring.