iMedia: Sarah Kay, Spoken Word Poetry

In all honesty, up until about 5th grade, I hated poetry. I hated poetry more than I hated waking up in the morning. I hated poetry more than bruised knees. I hated poetry more than dog-eared pages and monsters under the bed and I even hated poetry more than gym class. And I hated poetry so much because as I read it, I heard this pretentious voice echoing in my head. This voice echoed meaningless, muddy words, that only could be appreciated by pompous adults that pretended to understand the meaning.

It wasn't until one day that we had an odd man as a guest speaker at one of our assemblies to read us poems that finally something clicked in my head. Maybe, just maybe, poetry wasn't this distant concept. It could be read in my voice, and it could be relevant to my life.

The spoken word poetry Sarah Kay demonstrates and teaches is a great way of turning perspectives on poetry. Poetry is such an easily accessible mean of art, but it will always be taught with echoed groans. Anyone could write and get energized about poetry if our education system didn't teach it as a chore. Poetry doesn't need to be a struggle. It doesn't need to be spoken by people with extensive knowledge of every particle in our world, and it certainly doesn't have to only connect to one person. Sarah Kay points out that poetry doesn't need to be indignant or arrogant. It can be relevant to you. Good poetry comes from the intersection of ideas.


I've never quite understood the way my brain seems to function. My thoughts don't extend externally. I don't tend to start with a simple thought and gradually grow words and string sentences together. My thoughts sort of start at the finish and percolate from all directions to finish the start. It's a lot like doing a jigsaw puzzle. You know what you're trying to create but you haven't quite gotten there yet--and then two pieces come together in one spot and two in another and two in another until eventually they aren't just puzzle pieces--they're actually part of a picture. Poetry has always been an outlet for me to express myself in that jigsaw manner, playing with the shapes and fits of words. As Sarah Kay says, "Look through a microscope at the galaxies that exist on the pinpoint of the human mind."