Sunday Pick: 20th Anniversary celebration with renowned poets Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn | from Design Matters

March 22, 2026·57 min·4 clips

Sarah Kay describes how 9/11 at age 13 led her to spoken word poetry — and how a room full of strangers told her 'there is room for you.'

A Sunday pick begins with poetry. Elise Hu uses World Poetry Day to hand listeners to a recent Design Matters episode from the TED Audio Collective. Debbie Millman moves through earlier conversations with Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn, pulling out moments about language, identity, memory, and lived experience. The episode keeps things close. Poetry is treated as something people make out of what life leaves behind. Then memory starts to wobble. One guest says she almost remembers something as if she wrote it, which lands as a quiet warning about art overtaking recollection. Craft is not transcription. She wants to make something, not simply record something, while feeling the uneasy line between truth and embellishment under her feet. The risk is personal. If the embellishment went too far, she worried she might make a mistake and no longer know it was a mistake. A mother redirects the path. After hearing that Derek Walcott taught at Boston University, the mother suggests applying, then pokes at her with the chance she might not get in. The challenge works. The guest applies with college short stories, enters the fiction track, and goes anyway because she wants to study with Walcott. That changes everything. Millman ties together the earlier Yale years, John Hershey's help with fictive voice, and Walcott later spotting poetic promise in a diary. The answer is simple. Walcott saw the diary because she showed it to him, a brave move that the episode wisely leaves alone. Its best moments listen for beginnings: memory, family pressure, teachers, ambition, fear, and the odd trust it takes to hand private pages to someone else.

As heard by us

A 20th-anniversary look at poetry as a lived, intimate practice.

Design Matters uses its 20th anniversary to revisit conversations with Eileen Miles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn, tying poetry to language, identity, memory, and lived experience.

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want poetry that feels intimate, profound, and rooted in lived experience.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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