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

Date: March 22, 2026
Host: Debbie Millman (Design Matters, excerpted and curated for TED Talks Daily)

Episode Overview

To mark the 20th anniversary of “Design Matters”—and in celebration of World Poetry Day—host Debbie Millman revisits her most memorable conversations with four celebrated poets: Eileen Myles, Elizabeth Alexander, Sarah Kay, and Amber Tamblyn. Through candid interviews and performances, this episode explores poetry’s capacity to reflect on identity, memory, lived experience, and the ongoing negotiation between the personal and universal. Each poet offers insight into their creative processes and the vital role that poetry has played in their journeys.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Eileen Myles: A Life Lived Through Poetry

(Segment begins ~05:08)

• On Being a Poet

  • Myles reflects on the misunderstandings people have about what a poet “does”:

    "Part of what's interesting about being a poet is that nobody knows... it's almost like you're like a professional human." —Eileen Myles (06:40)

  • The role of the poet as the hero of modern-day epics:

    "You're still that person... except that the saga is kind of a postmodern day, and you're sort of in it, kind of telling the story of it." (07:14)

• The Beginnings and Influences

  • Myles describes their arrival in New York in the 1970s and the chance encounter with Paul Violi that introduced them to the downtown poetry scene:

    “Suddenly, the rest of my history came out of that accidental moment. I met Allen Ginsberg, and I thought, I must be in the right place.” (07:57)

  • On literary schools and identity:

    "Even the New York School is kind of precious... I want that to be less true." (09:29)

• Translation of Experience & Identity

  • Myles discusses the act of “translating” styles, classes, and identities, especially bringing queer realities into avant-garde poetry:

    "I've operated a lot like a translator of style and realities... bringing a lesbian reality into, you know, the poetry world." (10:02)

• On Allen Ginsberg’s Howl

  • Myles admires the incantatory repetition in Ginsberg’s poetry, highlighting the unspoken associations with Jewish history and the Holocaust:

    "The part that people don't talk about... those boxcars are carrying lots of Jews to the camps." (11:07)

• Publishing & Performing

  • Myles self-published their first book by mimeograph:

    “There was supposed to be 200 copies, but somehow we ran out of paper at 160.” (12:25)

  • On the intensity of their first live reading:

    "I just remember this very intense spotlight and sitting alone on stage and feeling like there was nothing outside of that light and being so scared.” (13:31)

• Autobiography vs. Artifice

  • On memoir and truth:

    "Once you put pen to paper... on some level, you're lying. It isn't the thing. It's a symbol of the thing." (15:04)

• Performance: “For My Rampant Muse, For Her” (from I Must Be Living Twice)

  • A poem about love, memory, and identity.
  • Notable quote:

    “For love I would dream when my schemes fall through man, could that little girl dance for love. I will read it 10,000 times for my tomboy cousin Jean Marie for radio song for love I would not pity me my 28 sneakers, bourbon. The unseen future of my communications in the lamplight her she holds me here so rampantly in her evening beauty.” (16:45)

Elizabeth Alexander: Poetry as Memory, Identity, and History

(Segment begins ~17:33)

• The Discipline of Art

  • Ballet taught her about repetition and expressive discipline:

    "You repeat and you repeat and you repeat... eventually you can put it together and make something beautiful and understand it as an expressive art." (17:33)

  • Translates into writing:

    “Discipline is discipline. And understanding that... you have to resist defaulting to [your strengths].” (19:09)

• Autobiography vs. Poetic Truth

  • On the poem “Tina Green,” about being a Black girl in a mostly-white school:

    "Sometimes I almost remember it like I wrote it, rather than as it happened." (21:04)
    “I believe poems more than any—I believe anything, actually. Or once I've made something, I believe it more than what happened because it's fixed.” (21:11–21:18)

  • Recitation:

    “Small story, Hair story, Afro American story. Only black girl in my class story... The teacher I love, whose name I love, whose hair I love, takes me in the teacher's bathroom and wordlessly fixes my hair into three tight plaits.” (21:18)

• The Universal in the Specific

  • Art’s particularity opens the door to the universal:

    "Art that speaks to any of us always comes from a very particular questioned place, and then we find ourselves in it in some kind of way." (23:01)

  • On experiencing racial identity:

    “I always knew I was a black person, but I did not think about it 24 hours a day... sometimes understanding us as people with races is a relative thing.” (23:01–23:59)

• The Journalist–Poet Divide

  • Moving from journalism to poetry was about wanting to “surrender to that alchemical process that happens when you make something and don't just record something.” (24:07–25:02)
  • With a nudge from her mother—and to study with Derek Walcott—she found the path to her poetic voice.

• Learning Form from Mentors

  • Walcott encouraged her to see her diary as poetry:

    "He wrote it out with line breaks. And he said, see, you're writing poems, but you don't know how to break lines." (26:37)

• Performance: “Boston” (from The Venus Hottentot)

  • About isolation, race, and finding community in Boston:

    “Whenever I saw other colored people in bookshops or museums or cafeterias, I'd gasp, gasp, smile shyly. But they disappear before I spoke. What would I have said to them? Come with me. Take me home. Are you my mother?” (28:51)

Sarah Kay: The Power of Spoken Word and Belonging

(Segment begins ~33:09)

• The Universality of Creation

  • Opener: “The universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing...”

    “Sometimes the poem is so bright your silly language will not stick to it. Sometimes the poem is so true nobody will believe you. I am a bird made of birds, my blue heart a house you can stand up inside of. I am dying here inside this flower. It is okay. It is what I was put here to do.” (33:22–34:59)

• Origin Stories & Originality

  • On seeing the viral photo of a giant blue whale heart:

    "This is just a reminder that the universe has already written the poem you were planning on writing." (35:16)

  • Accepting that “originality” isn’t the only artistic imperative:

    "Maybe it's not my job to invent something new... maybe it just means that it's my turn to hold something to the light for a moment and consider it." (36:36)

  • On pursuing art regardless:

    "Maybe thinking about it too much prevents me from making any art at all." (37:10)

• Poetry as Entry to Belonging

  • Early secret loves: poetry and theater—didn’t see herself represented, so didn’t dare to dream out loud. (38:34)
  • The impact of 9/11 on her adolescence and finding solace in poetry:

    “The only way that I understood [9/11]... was that someone had tried to communicate, There is no room for you here... The reason I think that [slam poetry] captured me so tremendously was that it was the first time as a 14-year-old girl that I felt like a room full of people were listening to me and saw me and I was allowed to talk about these fears... And in some ways it felt like the whole room was communicating. There is room for you here.” (41:14–42:56)

• Encouragement and Finding Voice

  • The significance of early feedback:

    "Someone... tapped me on the shoulder and... said, 'Hey, I really felt that.' And to know that something that I had made had had an effect on another person... was like a lightning bolt." (43:06)

• Performance: “The Places We Are Not”

  • On mourning, connection, and global violence:

    “Are you okay? I text, impotent. Please remind me you are breathing. I am scared is not a good enough reason to not get out of bed. The world is falling apart is not a good enough one either...” (44:13)

Amber Tamblyn: Reconciling Identity, Pain, and Control through Poetry

(Segment begins ~49:53)

• Growing Up in the Spotlight

  • Reflecting on iconic acting roles and shifting focus to writing:

    “I've spent, I think, so much of my now adult life exercising... the pain of those experiences of growing up in the business. But I also have a deep sense of love and pride for those characters...” (50:37)

  • Acting and identity:

    “Show business is voyeuristic... How did you manage to keep your identity?... Poetry really saved me... Poetry was a third parent. Poetry was a guardian.” (54:14)

• Control & Expression

  • Writing as a means of reclaiming creative authority:

    “As an actress, you are creating something that's only really half yours, if that... Writing—for me, at least—if I failed by it, I was failing by 100% of my own self-expression.” (55:47, 58:16)

• Celebrity, Judgment, and Exorcising the Past

  • Facing skepticism as a celebrity-turned-poet, while poetry remained a private outlet until Dark Sparkler:

    “It was a kind of exorcism for me. I was deep in the middle of a real existential crisis, trying to figure out what I wanted to be outside of this idea of... interpreting their work.” (58:30, 59:14)

  • Coming to terms with the lack of agency in a life spent performing others:

    “People always ask me, how old were you when you knew you wanted to act?... It's not really a child's choice—it's the choice of adults. And then the child spends their time trying to please adults by performing... There was an entire part of myself that was dying that was not being given an opportunity to thrive and become more.” (59:25–59:56)

• Recognition as a Poet

  • On having her poetry (“Britney Murphy”) taken seriously and published:

    “It was a moment for me to feel like, oh, I can be taken seriously in the art form that I've done as long as I've acted.” (61:58)

• Performance: “Britney Murphy”

  • A meditation on fame, death, and public perception:

    “The autopsy finds an easy answer. They say good things about the body. How bold her eyes were... The way she could turn into her camera close up like life depended on her.” (62:13)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Eileen Myles:

  • “In the DNA of everything you write is everything else you’re ever gonna write.” (14:14)
  • “You're kind of saying, what's. Here you are. Yeah, yeah. And I think that's like a very ordinary but, like, very necessary and sort of completely surreal and phenomenal job. And yet, I think that is the job of the poet.” (07:14)

• Elizabeth Alexander:

  • “Sometimes I almost remember it like I wrote it, rather than as it happened.” (01:04, 21:04)
  • “I believe poems more than any—I believe anything, actually. Or once I've made something, I believe it more than what happened because it's fixed.” (21:11)

• Sarah Kay:

  • “Sometimes the poem is so bright your silly language will not stick to it. Sometimes the poem is so true nobody will believe you. I am a bird made of birds, my blue heart a house you can stand up inside of...” (34:41)
  • “In some ways it felt like the whole room was communicating. There is room for you here and I don't think I've ever forgotten that.” (42:56)

• Amber Tamblyn:

  • “Poetry really saved me in a way. Poetry was a third parent. Poetry was a guardian. It was a way for me to reflect on those experiences and be able to put on the page the feelings that I had.” (54:14)
  • “Writing—for me...if I failed by it, I was failing by 100% of my own self expression, as opposed to 50% of an expression that was part of me...” (58:16)
  • "There was an entire part of myself that was dying that was not being given an opportunity to thrive and to become more." (59:56)

Timestamps for Key Segments

• 05:08 — Debbie Millman introduces Eileen Myles; what it means to be a poet
• 06:40-10:47 — Myles discusses identity, New York, schools of poetry, and Ginsberg
• 13:31 — Myles recalls first poetry reading
• 14:14 — On looking back at early work
• 15:34 — Myles reads “For My Rampant Muse, For Her”
• 17:33 — Elizabeth Alexander on ballet, discipline, and writing
• 21:18 — Alexander reads “Tina Green”
• 24:07 — Moving from journalism to poetry; influence of Derek Walcott
• 28:51 — Alexander reads “Boston”
• 33:09 — Sarah Kay recites “The Universe Has Already Written the Poem...”
• 38:34-41:14 — Kay on belonging, identity, and poetry after 9/11
• 44:13 — Kay reads “The Places We Are Not”
• 49:53 — Amber Tamblyn on acting, identity, and poetry’s role
• 54:14 — Poetry as a “guardian”
• 58:30-59:56 — The pain and privilege of acting; “Dark Sparkler” and seeking death (metaphorical)
• 62:13 — Tamblyn performs “Britney Murphy”

Final Thoughts

This special episode is a profound celebration of poetry’s personal and cultural resonance. Through the voices of Myles, Alexander, Kay, and Tamblyn, listeners experience poetry as not only a form of self-expression or artistic discipline, but as a necessary act of witnessing, remembering, and transforming the world—both on the page and beyond it.