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I write poems to figure things out

Sarah Kay

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Sarah Kay
Age: 28 †
Born: 1971
Born: February 3
Died: 1999
Died: February 20
Author
Educator
Playwright
Writer
Brentwood
Essex
Sarah Marie Kane
Poems
Figure
Figures
Write
Writing
Things

More quotes by Sarah Kay

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Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away.
Sarah Kay
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No matter your wreckage. There will be someone to find you beautiful, despite the cruddy metal. Your ruin is not to be hidden behind paint and canvas. Let them see the cracks. Someone will come to sing into these empty spaces.
Sarah Kay
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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.
Sarah Kay
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If I should have a daughter, instead of Mom, she's going to call me Point B.
Sarah Kay
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There are parts of me I only recognize from photographs.
Sarah Kay
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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.
Sarah Kay
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Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
Sarah Kay
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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.
Sarah Kay
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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.
Sarah Kay
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Ever since I was little, I’ve loved making hand-made cards and presents and arts & crafts for people.
Sarah Kay
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Our day-to-day lives are pretty chaotic. So in terms of the writing part, you have to get pretty disciplined about finding quiet moments and making sure you're making time for the art side, on top of all the time-consuming business side.
Sarah Kay
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Poetry makes people nervous. Especially in schools.
Sarah Kay
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It does not matter how strong your gravity is, we were always meant to fly.
Sarah Kay
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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.
Sarah Kay
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Nothing is as universal as some good scatalogical humor. Even if it means having to be a little silly or cheeky, I think it is worth it.
Sarah Kay
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Part of what I try to do in schools is take poetry off of a pedestal and make it a little more accessible and approachable.
Sarah Kay
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You can only fit so many words in a postcard, only so many in a phone call, only so many into space before you forget that words are sometimes used for things other than filling emptiness.
Sarah Kay
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Most days it feels as if the world is whirling around me and I am standing still. In slow motion, I watch the colors blur people and faces all become a massive wash.
Sarah Kay
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I use poetry to help me work through what I don’t understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I’ve been.
Sarah Kay
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I think you can perform any poem. But what I believe is that the best examples of spoken word poetry I've ever seen, are spoken word poems that, when you see them, you're aware of the fact they need to be performed. That there's something about that poem that you would not be able to understand if you were just reading it on a piece of paper.
Sarah Kay