Stepping outside my comfort zone

Happy Tuesday, friends. I hope you're all having a good week. ☺

Last Tuesday I wrote a post about some graffiti that urged people to dare to create. Ever since then, I've been feeling inspired not only to do more of what I love—writing poetry—but also to step outside my comfort zone and look to other forms of poetry that I haven't yet explored.

One of the forms I've found inspiration in is spoken word poetry. YouTube is replete with videos featuring wonderful poets working in this form. One of the most talented (in my opinion) is Sarah Kay, a spoken word poet from New York City who teaches others how to perfect the craft. I watched several videos of her performances—all excellent—before I came across the video I posted here, an animation of Kay's poem "Hands," which was created by artist/designer Sachin Limbachia. In many ways, "Hands" shows how small things—in this case, holding hands—can tell so much about a relationship.

I'm curious about what you think of the video and Kay's words. Have you ever listened to spoken word poetry? Do you like it?

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Wishing you all a wonderful Tuesday. ☺

UPDATE: My friend Madeline commented below that she found that the animation distracted her from Kay's words. Although I think Limbachia did a wonderful job with the artwork in this video, I agree with Madeline's assessment. Spoken word poetry is meant to be performed; there's a lot of value in seeing the poet as he or she speaks. Here's a video in which Kay is performing "Hands." What do you think? Which version do you prefer?

Finding inspiration

Today's 100 words:

Last night a friend in a writing chat room said that, while it's fine to sit and wait for inspiration to strike, sometimes one has to go out with a big stick and hunt it down. I can see her point: it's too easy to give up when we don't feel inspired. I don't think there's anything wrong with staring at the monitor until our creative minds click and we hit upon something to write, but I do agree that sometimes we have to be more aggressive in our search for ideas: freewrite, research, read. Be unafraid of writing crap.