M. Stone : part one

M. Stone is a bookworm, birdwatcher, and stargazer who writes poetry and fiction while living in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in San Pedro River Review, Star 82 Review, UCity Review, and numerous other journals. Find her on Twitter @writermstone and at writermstone.wordpress.com.

How did you first engage with poetry?

My sixth grade teacher read the class one of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories, and I was an immediate fan. I went home and told my mom all about this story, and then discovered that she too had been a fan of Poe’s when she was in school. So we went to the bookstore, and she bought me a big volume of his collected stories and poems, and then she read “The Raven” aloud to me. I was eleven and honestly had no idea what the poem meant, but I loved the cadence of it, and the music in the verses. Then I began writing my own poems—really bad ones—generally as a way of expressing adolescent angst.