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.
Interpretation
The quote expresses how personal experiences shape the creation of poetry and understanding.
In this quote, Sarah Kay reflects on the relationship between her personal experiences and her poetry. She suggests that each poem she writes is influenced by her past, utilizing her life experiences as a resource to navigate the complexities of her emotions and thoughts. By acknowledging what she has learned and encountered, she brings depth to her creations, emphasizing that poetry is not just an isolated art form but a reflection of one's journey and understanding of the world.
In practice
In a workshop on creative writing, discussing how personal experiences can inform poetic expression.
When I hear other people's stories, I like to believe that they contribute to my 'Encyclopedia of Human Experience.' The stories I hear help me expand my definition of what love is, what pain feels like, what sacrifice means, what laughter can do.
Spoken word poetry is the art of performance poetry. I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.
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.
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.
If I should have a daughter, instead of "Mom," she's going to call me "Point B," because that way she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me.
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.
We do not go to the theatre like our ancestors, to escape from the pressure of reality, so much as to confirm our experience of it.
Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.
Having books published is very destructive to writing. It is even worse than making love too much. Because when you make love too much at least you get a damned clarte that is like no other light. A very clear and hollow light.
Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.
You see a script, and you say, 'Oh, I can play the heck out of that,' talk to your agent, and he says they don't want to see you. That's heartbreaking.
Cubism is the art of depicting new wholes with formal elements borrowed not only from the reality of vision, but from that of conception.
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