Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poetaster ever in the United States of America. Amanda, 22 years old, recited her poetry at President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday. She is among the small group of artists called up to help mark a presidential inauguration. Among the shortlist, the others are Robert Frost, Miller Williams and Maya Angelou.
Ms Amanda Gorman had a love for poetry since quite a young age. So, she distinguished herself as a rising talent. Nurtured in Los Angeles, she would pen her words down in journals at the playground where her mother is a middle school teacher. At a young age of 16, she was titled as the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles. Moreover, while studying sociology at Harvard University, she became the National Youth Poet Laureate. Amanda is the first person to hold the position.
Though Ms Gorman has been in the spotlight quite a few times, it was her first time performing her work on a televised audience where the people were likely to be in tens of millions.
Additionally, for Ms Amanda, this presidential inauguration was changeling than her other forerunners. She set off to write a poetry that would hearten hope and uphold a spirit of collective purpose for the citizens of the States. This is a moment when Americans are reeling from a deadly outbreak, civic violence and unjust division.
About two weeks ago, Amanda Gorman was having a hard time to finish her work titled “The Hill We Climb.” The task was exhausting her, and she felt the result wasn’t up to the monumental standard: composing her artwork about national integration and quote to a ceremony eyed by millions.
The Hill We Climb
Amanda was halfway through the poem when on January the 6th, the pro-Trump rebels charged into the halls of Congress, bearing weapons and a few holding Confederate flags. On the same day, she stayed up all night and completed the remaining of her art. Adding quatrains of the apocalyptic scene that the Capitol witnessed that day.
“We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated. “
