Sarah Kay

and my home, and the poets who performed encouraged me to share my stories as well. Never mind the fact that I was 14, they told me right about being 14. So I did, and stood amazed every week when these brilliant grown-up poets laughed with me and groaned their sympathy and clapped and told me, hey, I really felt that too.

Now, I can divide my spoken word journey into three steps. Step one was the moment I said, I can. I can do this. And that was thanks to a girl in a hoodie. Step two was the moment I said, I will. I will continue. I love spoken word. I will keep coming back week after week. And step three began when I realized that I didn't have to write poems that were indignant if that's not what I was. There were things that were specific to me. And the more that I focused on those things,

The weirder my poetry got, but the more that it felt like mine. It's not just the adage, write what you know. It's about gathering up all of the knowledge and experience you've collected up to now to help you dive into the things you don't know. 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.

When I got to university, I met a fellow poet who shared my belief in the magic of spoken word poetry. Actually, Phil Kay and I coincidentally also share the same last name. When I was in high school, I had created Project Voice as a way to encourage my friends to do spoken word with me. But Phil and I decided to reinvent Project Voice, this time changing the mission to using spoken word poetry as a way to entertain,

educate and inspire. We stayed full-time students, but in between we traveled, performing and teaching nine-year-olds to MFA candidates from California to Indiana to India to a public high school just up the street from campus. And we saw over and over the way that spoken word poetry cracks open locks.

But it turns out sometimes poetry can be really scary. It turns out sometimes you have to trick teenagers into writing poetry. So I came up with lists. Everyone can write lists. And the first list that I assign is 10 things I know to be true.

Ja tässä tapahtuu. Ja tässä on se, mitä löydät myös, jos aloitimme kertomaan listamme äänellä. Jotenkin ajattelit, että joku on samaa asiaa tai jotain eri asiaa kuin sinun listassasi. Ja sitten joku muu

Something the complete opposite of yours. Third, someone has something you've never even heard of before. And fourth, someone has something you thought you knew everything about, but they're introducing a new angle of looking at it. And I tell people that this is where great stories start from. These four intersections of what you're passionate about and what others might be invested in. And most people respond really well to this exercise.

But one of my students, a freshman named Charlotte, was not convinced. Charlotte was very good at writing lists, but she refused to write any poems. Missed, she'd say, I'm just not interesting. I don't have anything interesting to say. So I assigned her list after list, and one day I assigned the list ten things I should have learned by now. Number three on Charlotte's list was, I should have learned not to crush on guys three times my age.

I asked her what that meant, and she said, Miss, it's kind of a long story. And I said, Charlotte, it sounds pretty interesting to me. So she wrote her first poem, a love poem, unlike any I had ever heard before. And the poem began, Anderson Cooper is a gorgeous man.

Did you see him on 60 minutes racing Michael Phelps in a pool? Nothing but swim trunks on, diving in the water, determined to be the swimming champion. After the race, he tossed his wet cloud white hair and said, you're a god. No, Anderson, you're the god.

I know that the number one rule to being cool is to seem unfazed. To never admit that anything scares you or impresses you or excites you. Somebody once told me it's like walking through life like this.

You protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt that might show up. But I try to walk through life like this. And yes, that means catching all of those miseries and hurt, but it also means that when beautiful, amazing things just fall out of the sky, I am ready to catch them. I use spoken word to help my students rediscover wonder, to fight their instincts to be cool and unfazed, and instead actively pursue being engaged with what goes on around them, so that they can reinterpret and create something from it.

It's not that I think that spoken word poetry is the ideal art form. I'm always trying to find the best way to tell each story. I write musicals, I make short films alongside my poems, but I teach spoken word poetry because it's accessible. Not everyone can read music or owns a camera,

Kaikki voivat kommunikoida jossain tavalla, ja kaikilla on tarinoita, joita me toiset voimme oppia. Lisäksi puhelinpäätöksentekijöiden saattaa olla täysin yhteyttä. Ei ole epäonnistunut, että ihmiset tuntevat, että he ovat yksin tai ettei kukaan ymmärrä heidät, mutta puhelinpäätöksentekijöiden opetus on, että jos sinulla on mahdollisuus esittää itseäsi ja vahvoisuus esittää niitä tarinoita ja mielipiteitä, voit olla kiinnostunut yksiköiden tai yhteiskunnallisiin, jotka kuulevat.

Ja ehkä jopa iso iso kaveri, joka liittyy siihen, mitä olet kertonut. Ja se on mahtava tunteehto, erityisesti kun olet 14-vuotias. Lisäksi nyt YouTubella se liittyvyys ei ole yksinkertaisesti vain se, missä olemme. Olen niin onnistunut, että on tällainen arkkipiirre, jonka voin kertoa opiskelijoille. Se antaa heille vielä enemmän mahdollisuuksia löytää poeta tai kirjaa, jolla he liittyvät.

Now, it is tempting, once you've figured this out, it is tempting to keep writing the same poem or keep telling the same story over and over once you've figured out that it will gain you applause. It's not enough to just teach that you can express yourself. You have to grow and explore and take risks and challenge yourself, and that...

is step three, infusing the work you're doing with the specific things that make you you, even while those things are always changing. Because step three never ends. But you don't get to start on step three until you take step one first. I can.

I travel a lot while I'm teaching, and I don't always get to watch all of my students reach their step three, but I was very lucky with Charlotte that I got to watch her journey unfold the way it did. I watched her realize that by putting the things she knows to be true into the work she's doing, she can create poems that only Charlotte could write about eyeballs and elevators and Dora the Explorer, and I'm trying to tell stories only I can tell.

Like this story. I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to tell this story, and I wondered if the best way was going to be a PowerPoint or a short film, and where exactly was the beginning or the middle or the end, and I wondered whether I'd get to the end of this talk and finally have figured it all out.