"Poetry is like pooping. If there is a poem inside of you, it has to come out. Sometimes it can be really difficult and take longer than you'd like (it may even be painful), but other times it can be really easy and happen much faster than you expected. But either way - it is important, and it feels so much better when it is done."
Sarah Kay stated this in a 2014 Ted Talk that had been recorded at TED-Allstars. She used this quote in the context of explaining why poetry makes people nervous, and how she tries to explain it to people. I recently stumbled across this Ted Talk in one of my many moments of procrastination of my final exams, and I connected with this description immediately.
The first and most important aspect of this simile is, to me, that poetry is not just for poets. Everyone has written poetry, can write poetry, and probably should write poetry at some point in their life. In whatever form it may come, poetry is important. I'm going to end up with a degree in a hard science and a degree in French studies from college, so I often struggle to truly consider myself as "a poet," or even a writer. As I do not formally study it, it is hard for me to imagine myself having credibility in either of these realms.
However, if like Sarah Kay says, "poetry is like pooping," then it truly is for everyone.
I'm allowed to study hard sciences and to be passionate about learning another language and its culture, while also taking some time out of my day, or my late nights to write poetry and to express myself in the form of words. It is an open invitation to anyone who has ever had words inside of them, to allow them to flourish. Poetry does not have to be perfect, or structured, or even rhyme. It is a form of expression like any other and should be used to do exactly that.
The phrase "if there is a poem inside of you, it has to come out" describes the tension that having a poem inside of you can cause. When we are troubled by something emotionally, or are trying to figure something out, this turmoil can fester within us and render us incapable of focusing on anything else. It is within these moments, that we must allow that tension to release in a form of expression. My choice for that release is most often words, but it could be painting, or dancing, or singing a song. All of these mimic some form of poetry; of constructing a rhythm and allowing our emotions to guide the production of content.
I am not someone who writes poetry just to write poetry, and I believe this is the person that Sarah Kay is describing. The best poems, the best works of art, the best songs, the best athletic performances, whatever they may be are the best because they are driven by something within us that is demanding to be felt, and to be expressed. That demand may even be coming from a painful place, and the expression of that emotion is thus painful as well. However, holding pain inside of us is only more corrosive than allowing it to be externally expressed and recognized.
I think it is crucial that poetry and real, raw expressions of emotions continue to have a place in the world while technology has an increasingly large presence. Being able to put words to an experience, rather than just ignoring it and scrolling through life as though it is only occurring outside of our own selves is important. It is healthy. And, as Sarah Kay has stated, "it feels so much better when it's done."
