{"id":646015,"date":"2013-03-08T11:39:51","date_gmt":"2013-03-08T16:39:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ted.com\/?p=72542"},"modified":"2013-03-08T11:51:15","modified_gmt":"2013-03-08T16:51:15","slug":"8-beautiful-and-heartbreaking-poems-from-shane-koyczan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/646015","title":{"rendered":"8 beautiful and heartbreaking poems from Shane Koyczan"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Shane-Koyczan\"<\/a>Shane Koyczan has a way with words.<\/p>\n

\"ShaneShane Koyczan: "To This Day" … for the bullied and beautiful<\/span><\/a> \u201cI\u2019ve been shot down so many times I get altitude sickness just from standing up for myself,\u201d he says, beginning today\u2019s talk<\/a>. \u201cThat\u2019s what we were told\u2014stand up for yourself. But that\u2019s hard to do if you don\u2019t know who you are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Koyczan appeared on the TED2013 stage just a week after his spoken-word poem, \u201cTo This Day,\u201d went viral as a crowd-animated video<\/a>. Live onstage, mixing poetry and prose, Koyczan explains to the audience what prompted to him to write the poem, an ode to anyone who felt bullied or left out as a child, and have it animated by people around the world. Koyczan says it wasn\u2019t just overt bullying he was reacting to — but the subtle discouragement kids receive along the path to adulthood, as they\u2019re required to define themselves in narrower and narrower ways.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the same time as we were being told who we were, we were being asked, \u2018What do you want to be when you grow up?\u2019\u201d Koyczan\u2019s answers were: a writer, then a professional wrestler. Both ideas were shot down.<\/p>\n

“What made my dreams so easy to dismiss?\u201d he asks. \u201cGranted my dreams are shy, because they’re Canadian. My dreams are self-conscious and overly apologetic\u2014they’re standing alone at the high school dance and they’ve never been kissed. See, my dreams got called names too — silly, foolish, impossible.\u201d<\/p>\n

To hear more of Koyczan\u2019s motivation, and to hear a beautiful live rendition of \u201cTo This Day,\u201d watch this talk<\/a>. For more of Koyczan\u2019s poems, read on.<\/p>\n