On Wednesday, January 20th, at the inauguration of Joe Biden, 22-year-old Amanda Gorman surpassed all other inaugural performances when she delivered her show-stopping poem, The Hill We Climb. Using her exceptional skill with words, the young writer crafted a poem combining unison, hope, and justice with current events. She even managed to weave in a couple of Hamilton references.
When Amanda Gorman found out that she would be the inaugural poet, she began researching ideas right away. In an interview with Anderson Cooper of CNN, Gorman explained that she was only about halfway through the process of creating her poem when the insurrection happened at the Capitol on January 6. She explained that, as she was watching the violence happening, she was also looking at the tweets and articles that began to pop up. When she saw and read about what was happening, she knew she had to include some of it in her poem. The line “We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it,” was inspired by several tweets she saw. She said, about the event, “it energized me even more to believe that much more firmly in the message of hope and unity and healing. I felt like that was the type of poem that I needed to write, and it was the type of poem that the country and the world needed to hear.”
In 2017, Gorman received the honor of becoming the very first National Youth Poet Laureate. When she performed her piece at the 2021 presidential inauguration, she became the youngest of the now six total inaugural poets, the first of which was Robert Frost. Joe Biden is the fourth U.S. President to continue the tradition of inaugural poets. The other three presidents were Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and John F. Kennedy.
At the ceremony, Gorman wore a bright yellow coat and red satin hair accessory, which made her stand out against the crowd like a beacon of light. According to an article from CNN, her gold hoop earrings and ring were gifts from Oprah Winfrey. The ring was in the shape of a caged bird to symbolize Maya Angelou, the poet who performed at Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993.
In the interview, Gorman also talked about the speech impediment she had been struggling with her whole life, which caused her to drop letters from her words as she spoke. She shared that her love of poetry and writing helped her express herself, and reciting her poems out loud pushed her to challenge her voice and eventually move past her impediment. Even up until college, she struggled to pronounce the letter R. She explained that she practiced pronouncing the letter by rapping along to the well-known Hamilton song, ‘Aaron Burr, Sir.’
Gorman’s love of Hamilton inspired her to include a couple of references to the musical in her poem. The lines, “For while we have our eyes on the future, / history has its eyes on us,” allude to the song, ‘History Has Its Eyes On You.’ Gorman admitted, “I’m really proud that I was able to incorporate that [the references] in there.”
Additionally, Gorman revealed that, before her big performance, she closed her eyes and recited her mantra, “I’m the daughter of black writers / We’re descended from freedom-fighters / who broke their chains and changed the world / They call me.”
The final line of Gorman’s beautiful poem sparked peace and hope for all Americans: “For there is always light, / if only we’re brave enough to see it / If only we’re brave enough to be it.”
The Lighthouse 