Whose Words These Are (9): Sarah Kay

Aired, On Brown's Campus, Podcast, Shows, Whose Words These Are | chris, October 7th, 2009

In anticipation of the 2009 Massachusetts Poetry Festival, the question has been: where does poetry come from these days? And where is it going?

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Before she could write, spoken word poet Sarah Kay began dictating poems to her mother. Today, at 21, Sarah has become a successful, artful practitioner of spoken word. Sarah’s poem “Hands,” rocketed her to 18-year-old fame when it, and she, were featured on the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. Sarah is a senior at Brown now, a teacher of spoken-work poetry at Hope High School in Providence, and a coach of students of all ages. She founded Project V.O.I.C.E. to encourage teenagers toward creative self-expression. She tell us how her own voice is the product of a Japanese American mother, a Brooklynese photographer father, of New York City and the influence of “page poets” ranging from William Carlos Williams and Adrienne Rich to Rumi.

Q: What were the poems that made you want to write poetry, and told you you could, or had to?

A: In the page world: William Carlos Williams, Rumi, Wislawa Szymborska, Adrienne Rich, Billy Collins — all over the map, really.

In the spoken world: Taylor Mali, Buddy Wakefield, Rives, Anis Mojgani, Cristin O’Keefe Aptowicz.

Q: Which talent would you like to have that you don’t, yet?

A: A thicker skin. I don’t know if that counts as a talent. I would love to be athletic, which I am utterly not.

Q: Who’s your favorite character of all time in fiction?

A: Does Winnie the Pooh count? My favorite book, my favorite piece of fiction is 100 Years in Solitude. That’s the only book that I have memorized the first line of the book:

“Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.”

Q: Who do you think of as fellow travelers in other mediums?

A: My father is a photographer; he and I share a love of finding the moment and trying to capture it. He does it visually, I do it with words.

I love Renee Magritte. I think that his work is very playful and often dark, but also he’s very concrete. He uses things that I can see and recognize and feel, and that’s something I try to do.

There’s a filmmaker named Wong Kar-wai, from Hong Kong, who made the film In the Mood for Love, and 2046.

Q: What’s the keynote of your character as a poet?

A: There’s a saying which is “write what you know” and I was taught “don’t write what you know, write what you don’t know and are trying to figure out.” For that reason, it comes from a very personal place.

Q: What quality do you look for and love in a poem?

A: I love a good ending — if you have a killer last line, that’s really something.

Q: What’s your motto?

A: “Say Thank You.”

Hear more of Sarah Kay’s poetry here.