Sarah Kay

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.

I think all the archives are still online, so you can still find it.

And it was sort of a faux advice column.

But really what it was is people would write in and tell us about their very specific heartache

And then we would prescribe them a poem for their troubles.

And again, I think because one of my favorite moments of living is when a poem reaches me at the exact moment I needed it.

And I go, oh, I didn't even know I needed language for this.

And they found it.

And now it's in my hands.

Nothing feels more lucky or aligned for me personally.

And so I love the challenge of trying to create that or something close to it for other people.