Amanda Gorman
Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.Collection: History
Poetry is - it's an art form, but, to me, it's also a weapon, it's also an instrument. It's the ability to make ideas that have been known, felt and said. And that's a real, I think, type of duty for the poet.Collection: Poetry
Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.Collection: Poetry
One: whose shoulders do you stand on? And two: what do you stand for? These are two questions that I always begin my poetry workshops with students because at times, poetry can seem like this dead art form for old white men who just seem like they were born to be old, like, you know, Benjamin Button or something.Collection: Men
Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it's always been the language of bridges.Collection: Poetry
You don't have to be a poet, you don't have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.Collection: Future
My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.Collection: Mom
I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.Collection: Freedom
What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.Collection: Mom
But as for the future, I foresee a world which is more creative, more open, more loving, more ecologically friendly, more honest about its history and progress, and I think a lot of those contributions will be made by young people.Collection: Future
When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.Collection: Poetry
I have to interweave my poetry with purpose. For me, that purpose is to help people, and to shed a light on issues that have far too long been in the darkness.Collection: Poetry
We've learned that quiet isn't always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn't always justice.Collection: Peace
Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it's this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.Collection: Poetry
Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.
I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
I think that's the challenge of our generation: if we are all technology natives, how do we live with influence both online and off, and how do we make sure that both of those aren't lacking in some type of deeper human connection and substance?
I did a lot of sitting back and thinking about what I wanted for myself and what I wanted for my country: more unity, more support for the arts and more opportunities for young writers from marginalized groups.
When you're someone who's lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
This is a long, long, faraway goal, but 2036 I am running for office to be president of the United States. So you can put that in your iCloud calendar.
As a public poet, people often don't see the reality of my life.
Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
Writing wasn't just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.
I don't want it to be something that becomes a cage, where to be a successful Black girl, you have to be Amanda Gorman and go to Harvard. I want someone to eventually disrupt the model I have established.
It's this weird binary where I'm getting media images and narratives thrown at me all the time through something I hold in my hand, and that's never happened to other generations. But also with this little object in my hand, I have the ability to document police brutality, or post about the Syrian conflict on Twitter.
That's kind of the challenging thing about writing an inaugural poem. You're speaking to everyone, but you don't also want to speak for everyone.
I was obsessed with everything and anything; I wanted to learn everything, to read everything, to do everything. I was constantly on sensory overload. I'd hoard dozens of books in my second-grade cubby, and literally try to read two at a time, side by side.
My Instagram doesn't cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying... there's a question of whether I should be sharing that online.
I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black 'hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.
Most of my life I was particularly terrified of speaking up, because I had a speech impediment, which made it difficult to pronounce certain letters, sounds, and I felt like I was fine writing on the page, but once I got on stage, I was worried my words might jumble and stumble.
I'm a student at Harvard University, and currently work as the United States Youth Poet Laureate, a community organizer, and an activist.
I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody's living room.
I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that's Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley.
One of the most rewarding moments of my career is when I'm speaking to a child who tells me they have the same speech impediment that I had to overcome and that they're going to keep writing or sharing their voice after hearing my story.
I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.
One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.
The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
My speech impediment wasn't a stutter but it was dropping several letters that I just could not say for several years, most specifically the 'r' sound.
It was so incredible meeting Lady Gaga. I mean I'm gaga for Gaga, literally. We kind of just each flew to each other like magnets after the ceremony ended and we were both just crying and hugging.
To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.
What's really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.
I think we run into issues when our online brands are not rooted in who we are, and I think we need to have explicit discussions with ourselves about who we want to be, what we want to represent, and how we want to express that.
As a young black woman, I notice at times in the mainstream media framing of the 'me too' movement you see a white female face or a white male face, and that type of questioning and interrogation needs to happen.
I was writing since I can remember - I just didn't know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
It wasn't until I was named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. in high school though that I officially began calling myself a poet. I just always loved writing, period.