Sarah Kay Quotes
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I write poetry to figure things out. It's what I use as a navigating tool in my life, so when there's something that I just can't understand, I have to "poem" my way through it. For that reason I write a lot about family, because my family confuses me and I'm always trying to figure them out. I write a lot about love, because love is continually confusing in all of its many glorious aspects.
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Every moment I choose to write about is one I have deemed important enough to dwell inside of and share with others. I am holding this moment up to the light and saying, "Wow, will you look at that?"
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Forgive yourself for the decisions you have made, the ones you still call mistakes when you tuck them in at night.
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One thing that I believe is that every time I write something, I am taking the time to celebrate. Even if I am writing a sad story or an angry poem, I am still giving those stories my time and attention.
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Not all poetry wants to be storytelling. And not all storytelling wants to be poetry. But great storytellers and great poets share something in common: They had something to say, and did.
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Spoken word teaches that if you have the ability to express yourself and the courage to present those stories and opinions, you could be rewarded with a room full of your peers or your community who will listen.
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Some people read palms to tell your future, but I read hands to tell your past. Each scar makes a story worth telling. Each callused palm, each cracked knuckle is a missed punch or years in a factory.
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I fell in love with poetry through storytelling, so my poetry tends to be fairly narrative. I like characters, I like having a beginning, middle, and ending, though not necessarily in that order.
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I want to welcome folks to poetry, especially those who may have previously felt unwelcome; I want to celebrate everyone who is trying to make sense of this world through poetry the way I try to.
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I want my daughter to look at the world through the underside of a glass-bottom boat, to look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of a human mind.
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Fingers interlocked like a beautiful accordion of flesh or a zipper of prayer
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Nothing is as universal as some good scatalogical humor. I try to shift the frame in which people think about poetry from being distant or "sacred" to being more human, because then I think it becomes easier to feel like poetry belongs to us, is for us, is from us.
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I write about love and family a lot, because I'm always trying to figure those things out. At different points in my life, just when I think I've finished writing about it, the dynamics shift, and then I have a whole new set of questions and worries and misunderstandings to wrestle with.
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Ever since I was little, I’ve loved making hand-made cards and presents and arts & crafts for people. The book gives me a similar experience. I love being able to hold this object in my hands and say, “This is mine. I made this. It is a gift for you.” I love that feeling. Especially since this particular object contains ten years worth of my poems.
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Hands learn more than minds do, hands learn how to hold other hands.
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It is equally important to listen as it is to speak.
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I think there is a human instinct to tell stories, no matter who you are or where you live.
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Sometimes I am puzzling over something for months and months and the poem gets created in small bursts and rewritten a hundred times, and chopped up and put back together, etc. Occasionally, though rarely, a poem just plops out of my head fully-formed. But always it is a blueprint of what my brain is trying to navigate at that moment.
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I write poems to figure things out
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Things that I have a hard time being able to fully grasp, sometimes writing the poem helps me work through it. Or I get to the end of the poem and I still haven't figured anything out, but at least I have a new poem out of it.