Sarah Kay

That's what I understood a poem was from a very early age.

And so that's what I treated poems as.

I wrote them in a notebook.

They were a secret and they were a small unit to present to someone I loved, usually my parent.

And then when I was around

13, 14 years old, I got a letter in the mail.

This was before email times.

I got a physical letter in the mail that said, congratulations, you've been registered to compete in the New York City Teen Poetry Slam.

The Poetry Slam was a competition for

poetry that was performed, which I did not know.

I had never seen a poetry slam.

I had never heard of a poetry slam.

I'm an elder millennial, so we didn't have YouTube back then, so I couldn't look it up.

All I knew about this event was that it was for teenagers in New York City who liked poems, and that was me.

And so I went to this event, and it was a room full of teenagers sharing poems that they had written.

and listening to each other and applauding each other and making room for each other.

And I had never experienced something like that.

And the lightning moment was in discovering that poetry, which had previously been a solitary, secret,

Could also be a communal experience.

And that is what lit my wick.