Ruelaine Stokes

poet/spoken word artist

Welcome!

Ruelaine Stokes is a writer, teacher, and performance artist based in Lansing, Michigan. She gives poetry readings, lectures, and workshops on poetry, spoken word, and creative writing.

Ruelaine has a remarkable ability to bring poetry to life and to bring people to poetry.  She is also a gifted teacher who opens new doors for students in workshops that abound with creativity and laughter.

For many years, she has organized poetry performances, readings, open mic events and workshops within Mid-Michigan. She is currently the president of the Lansing Poetry Club.


Jar of Plenty now available!

Jar of Plenty Cover Art

“A collection of poetry with the feel of a novel, Ruelaine Stokes’ new book, Jar of Plenty, is part memoir, part family history, part portrait of the artist through time’s turns. Full of vitality and compassion, the book is a generous, fully realized, inspiring collection—candid and searching and deeply affecting.”

— Lee Upton
Author of Visitations: Stories and
Bottle the Bottles the Bottles the Bottles: Poems

More love for Jar of Plenty…

Magic infuses these poems, the imagery bringing the scenes to vivid life in the reader’s mind and placing the reader square into the action. What a gift, this collection, this organizer, this teacher, this poet.

-Laurie Hollinger
Assistant Director, RCAH Center for Poetry
Michigan State University

Spiritual, intense and deeply touching, Jar of Plenty has a special spot on my bookshelf for, as artist and poet, Ruelaine herself embodies Apollinaire’s declaration of the role of the poet in society: “And so they came/And she pushed them/And they flew.”

-Zack Chartkoff
poet, translator
Grand Rapids, Michigan

Ruelaine Stokes now turns her childhood silence into poetry of great sorrow and grace and joy. Jar of Plenty gives us a poet who has found her voice.

-Linda Peckham
Founder of A Rally of Writers
and emeritus professor of English
Lansing Community College