The quote above is from Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems (1986).
“I used to speak in poetry. I would read poems, and I would memorize them. People would say, well what do you think, Audre. What happened to you yesterday? And I would recite a poem and somewhere in that poem would be a line or a feeling I would be sharing. In other words, I literally communicated through poetry. And when I couldn’t find the poems to express the things I was feeling, that’s what started me writing poetry, and that was when I was twelve or thirteen.” Read more on the Audre Lorde page at the Poetry Foundation.
Here's an interview with poet, essayist and civil rights activist Audre Lorde. Lorde also reads some selections from her book Chosen Poems: Old and New.