Monday Required Reading. Sarah Kay recently released a video of a new poem, and, as with most things she writes, I love it more and more each time I listen to it. This is going out to the ladies who are oh so dear to me.

Sarah Kay says she writes poetry to work things out. I think this is true for a lot of poets. I certainly know it's true for me. I also like that she talks about coming to the end of a poem and suddenly realizing what it has been about. Turns out this little guy was about working through some of my anxieties about the toll my nocturnal habits and writerly/academic tendencies take or could take on my relationships.

Fluorescent Light

You are in the other room
in the bed that I call
mine
or ours
or yours
for you sleep there more than I do
while I sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

You say it is all right
that when darkness comes
my mind retreats
to places
you cannot go
but I can sense the strain
as I sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

I know the day will come
when you will grow tired of waiting
tired of sleeping
alone
in my bed
and so you will leave
and I will sit here
bathed in fluorescent light
writing

-- Bree Keeler, 2012

Monday Morning Required Reading. Or, rather, today it is required listening, required watching. I have a fascination with spoken word poetry. I have no facility for it. Or, at least, having never tried it, but knowing my intense fear of public speaking, I am quite certain that I would not be good at it. Then again, it is just the kind of thing I might love with every fibre of my being. Regardless, today I bring you a TED talk by Sarah Kay. Sarah's poetry astounds me. It makes me laugh and smile and nod in agreement and feel as if there is a string connected to something deep within me, my soul perhaps, or my heart, that is being tugged. This talk opens with a fabulous poem called "B." I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. And it closes with a poem called "Hiroshima" which I also rather enjoy. And the talk between the two is delightful, inspiring, and funny. So here it is:

Now 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 [raises her arms in front of her]. You protect yourself from all the unexpected miseries or hurt that might show up. But I try to walk through life like this [hold her hands out in front of her, palms up]. 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'm ready to catch them.

-- Sarah Kay, also from this incredible TED talk

So, I write poems to figure things out. Sometimes the only way I know how to work through something is by writing a poem. And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and look back and go "Oh, that's what this is all about." And sometimes I get to the end of the poem and haven't solved anything, but at least I have a new poem out of it.

-- Sarah Kay, from this incredible TED talk