Sarah Kay is a spoken word poet and the author of the new poetry collection "A Little Daylight Left." In this TED Talks Daily Book Club interview with host Elise Hu, Kay reflects on her relationship with poetry — from reading the poems her parents left in her lunchbox to frequenting the local dive bar’s weekly poetry slam to becoming an “accidental ambassador” of spoken word. She also talks about how she uses different artistic mediums to invite others into poetry, showing how the art form can open you to community, healing and vulnerability.The TED Talks Daily Book Club series features TED speakers discussing their latest books and exploring their ideas beyond the page. Stay tuned to our feed for more interviews like this one and for special live book club events open exclusively to TED members. For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Happy Sunday. Today, we're bringing you a conversation between me and writer, performer, and educator, Sarah Kay. We got together virtually in front of a live audience of TED members just a few weeks ago, and we talked about her journey as a poet and her new collection of poetry, A Little Daylight Left.
This conversation is part of our book club series, where we check out new books from past TED speakers that will spark your curiosity all year long. Sarah Kay was in her early 20s when her first TED Talk went viral. She has since given four more and was the host of the podcast Sincerely X from TED.
She's also written five books of poetry and performed her work all over the world, from the cornfields in Iowa to a ship on a Norwegian fjord to a nightclub in Singapore. She's also performed at Carnegie Hall, middle school gyms, the back rooms of dive bars, and more.
She's the founder and co-director of Project Voice, an organization that uses poetry to entertain, educate, and empower students and educators worldwide. Sarah's poems invite us to consider what it might look like to boldly face the hard things we so often run from and to celebrate what we hold dear. The result has been described as a blueprint for discovering beauty in all that makes us human.
I am so delighted to share our book club conversation with you today. Sarah Kay, welcome and thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. Thank you for that kind intro. Of course. Well, I am amazed and long have been amazed at the way you're able to bring together such vast and sometimes overwhelming topics into a space that really feels safe and relatable.
You wrote in your poem Orange about, I'm quoting now, the invisible thread of poetry that so many people are holding on to, even and especially people who may not have anything else in common. In your view, what makes poetry so powerful that so many people are drawn to it and hold on to it?
Oh, that's a big question. Well, I think my relationship to poetry has evolved over my living. But when I am feeling an emotion or going through an experience or revisiting a memory, that feels unlanguageable. And then I discover that someone has found language for it in the form of a poem. That is one of the most magical experiences.
And poetry has provided language, certainly, but also camaraderie or belonging or reassurance or community or a lot of things. Poetry offers a lot of things. And then I get to see the way that other people also build lives around poetry for themselves.
healing for processing for activism for education for collective experience for live performance I mean it goes on and on that's my whole thing let's talk a little bit about your life and where you began you grew up going to see spoken word poetry I believe being performed in New York City and
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