Sarah Kay

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.

or not. I always thought that my beginning was at the Bowery Poetry Club, but it's possible that it was much earlier. In preparing for TED, I discovered this diary page in an old journal. I think December 54th was probably supposed to be 24th. It's clear that when I was a child, I definitely walked through life like this. I think that we all did.

I would like to help others rediscover that wonder, to want to engage with it, to want to learn, to want to share what they learned, what they've figured out to be true, what they're still figuring out. So I'd like to close with this poem.

When they bombed Hiroshima, the explosion formed a mini-supernova. So every living animal, human or plant that received direct contact with the rays from that sun was instantly turned to ash. And what was left of the city soon followed. The long-lasting damage of nuclear radiation caused an entire city and its population to turn into powder.

When I was born, my mom says, I looked around the whole hospital room with a stare that said, this? I've done this before. She says, I have old eyes. When my grandpa Genji died, I was only five years old, but I took my mom by the hand and told her, don't worry, he'll come back as a baby.

And yet for someone who's apparently done this already, I still haven't figured anything out yet. My knees still buckle every time I get on a stage. My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons, mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth. But in Hiroshima, some people were wiped clean away, leaving only a wristwatch or a diary page. So no matter that I have inhibitions to fill all my pockets, I keep trying.

Hoping that one day I'll write a poem I can be proud to let sit in a museum exhibit as the only proof I existed. My parents named me Sarah, which is a biblical name. In the original story, God told Sarah that she could do something impossible, and she laughed. Because the first Sarah, she didn't know what to do with impossible, and me...