Amanda Gorman

Poet

1998-03-07

Amanda Gorman is an American poet and activist known internationally for her inaugural poem The Hill We Climb. Her work focuses on social justice, democracy, and youth civic engagement.

Books by Amanda Gorman

Call Us What We Carry
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The Hill We Climb
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Change Sings
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Quotes by Amanda Gorman

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
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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.
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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.
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