Sarah Kay

This particular event, they had rented out a dive bar on the Lower East Side for this teen group.

competition.

And I was so taken with the whole event.

I thought this is the best thing I've ever seen.

I want to come back next week.

And the week after I want to keep coming back and keep seeing more and keep doing this forever.

And there was a little bar flyer on the way out that said Thursday night poetry slam.

And I said, perfect, perfect.

I'll come back.

But I didn't understand that 364 days a year, it was a dive bar.

Yeah.

And so I came back the next week as a 14-year-old and I was like, hello, I'm here for the poetry.

And they were like, okay, sit over there and don't order any alcohol.

And my parents...

were a little baffled because again they're not writers and they're not performers but they were like okay this is a thing she seems excited about we're not going to let her go by herself but we will go and sit on the other side of the room to not cramp her style and that is where I went to see poetry and I kept coming back and so I spent all four years of high school

going to this dive bar and watching poets perform, mainly poets who were at least a decade my senior.

But it meant that sometimes when I'm feeling cheeky, I say, I didn't fall in love with poetry in a book.

I fell in love with poetry in a dive bar, which is true.

And it also meant that I learned poetry almost in an apprenticeship form.

So by watching what was possible and seeing all these different styles and people who either lived in New York or were coming through New York, I got to experience such a wide range of what was possible in poetry.