Sarah Kay
Sarah Kay
Sarah Kay is a professor of French at New York University...
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth19 June 1988
CityNew York City, NY
fun illustration giving
If you know what you're looking for, the illustrations might give you a tip about what is coming in that section. But it takes a lot of study and familiarity with the work for anyone to really "decode" it, and there are also images that are just thematically important, and not necessarily pointing to specific poems, so mainly it was just a fun puzzle for ourselves.
way logic make-sense
When words become a poem, it makes sense to me, but I don't know how to explain to someone why the words are the way they are. It's just the logic of the poem to me.
writing museums people
Hiroshima”, I find a few of the lines to be very poignant yet hopeful. These lines are: “But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying, hoping that one day I’ll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed
school people nervous
Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.
important speak
It is equally important to listen as it is to speak.
hard-work artist editing
Artistry is important. Skill, hard work, rewriting, editing, and careful, careful craft: All of these are necessary. These are what separate the beginners from experienced artists.
writing hard-times able
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.
writing figures
I write poems to figure things out
writing thinking always-trying
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.
writing love-is always-trying
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.
trying world may
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.
thinking people trying
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.
writing trying strategy
I write poetry to figure things out. Any time I'm trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.
brain trying together
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.