Grief is a ghost that doesn’t knock. It just walks in. It pulls up a chair next to joy and reminds you that love had a cost. And yet, where most of us fumble for silence, a spoken word poet listens for language. Grief, to the poetic voice, is not just pain—it’s a palette. It’s the ink in the pen, the ache in the breath, the whisper in the wind that says: Speak me into healing.
When the tears have dried but the heart still leaks, poetry becomes the patch. It lets you name the thing you couldn’t define. That knot in your throat? That lump in your chest? Those are verses, waiting to be written. Because poetry doesn’t solve grief—it solves for grief. It allows you to hold your sadness without being swallowed by it. To say, “I miss you,” in metaphors. To say, “I’m still here,” in stanzas.
Spoken word artists like Sekou Andrews don’t just write poems—they write survival guides in syllables. They teach audiences that healing is not linear, and neither is a poem. It curves, it dips, it breaks its own rules. Just like mourning. Just like memory. And in corporate keynotes, in hospital rooms, on streaming platforms and stages across the world, poets are holding space for us to process loss collectively.
In a world rushing to “move on,” poetry says, “hold on.” It doesn’t demand solutions. It invites reflection. It tells us we don’t need to be okay to be heard. And in doing so, it brings us back to life, one verse at a time. So when you find yourself broken, don’t reach for closure—reach for a pen. Because sometimes, the poem you write becomes the healing you didn’t know you needed.
