"I'm going to write windows, I'm going to write mirrors, I'm going to write books that are going to elevate and empower young people, to help them become more human." -Kwame Alexander

Kwame Alexander on poetry and young people: 

"The power of poetry is that you can take these emotionally heavy moments in our lives, and you can distill them into these palatable, these digestible words and lines and phrases that allow us to be able to deal and cope with the world," he says. "I think it's one of the reasons why young people love reading novels in verse. It's because, on a very concrete level, it's not that many words so it's not that intimidating to me. There's so much white space."