I write poetry to figure things out. Any time Iām trying to wrap my head around something, poetry is like a puzzle-solving strategy for me.
Sarah KayMost 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 KayI 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.
Sarah KayPart 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 KaySometimes 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 KayI have always thought of poetry as an act of celebration. Just by nature of writing a poem you are taking the time to dwell on whatever it is that you're writing about...you can be celebrating anger, you can be celebrating sorrow... you are spending the time to focus and observe and try to understand the various parts of being human.
Sarah Kay