Sarah Kay

And we're still reaching for language for the unlanguageable.

And I think because I fell in love with poetry in a dive bar, so much of my love of poetry comes from its communal possibilities, both as language.

shared experience of live performance, but also opportunity for community building, opportunity for healing, opportunity for naming, opportunity for showing each other

and our vulnerable humanness and our bravery.

And I would not be here if a room full of adults had not taken me seriously as an artist before I took myself seriously as an artist.

And so I'm so aware of the many shoulders upon which I stand, many of whom are also standing next to me.

You know, I think an accidental, incredible gem of a gift happens.

of being in that dive bar is it allowed me to have intergenerational friendship which is rare but because i was 14 in a dive bar i became friends with people who were at least a decade my senior sometimes more but they were my friends they weren't my parents friends and so having intergenerational friendship

from the beginning then became so ingrained in me as important as a way to learn from someone whose life is at a different stage than yours.

And so now I also have friendships with people who are generationally younger than me.

We are both descendants of and ancestors to at the same time, all the time.

And I hold both of those roles with great esteem and importance and responsibility.

I would tell them the best thing about poetry is there are no locked doors in front of you for trying.

There's so often barriers or barriers

obstacles or equipment standing between you and the art you're curious about.

Right, right.

Movies and novels take a long time, but poems are quite small and you can read many of them pretty quickly and you can watch many of them pretty quickly.

And so watching and reading and listening and seeing, you know, as many different kinds of poems from as many different kinds of people is the best way to just learn about poetry.

what is possible, and then you can expand on what is possible.

So PoetryRx was a column that I got to co-write with two other poets, my dear friends Kava Akbar and Claire Schwartz, for a little while at the Parish Review online.