A young Black Poet on the cover of Vogue? Something extraordinary is clearly going on.
This
week Vogue unveiled its cover and
a fashion spread by photographer Annie Leibovitz featuring
young poet Amanda Gorman. It was just the latest media coup for the 23 year old Phenom who was profiled
by Lin-Manuel Miranda for Time magazine’s 100
Next list and who rose to unprecedented
public acclaim for her poem The Hill We Climb at Joe Biden’s inauguration. Although that may have been her introduction
to many Americans she already had
many noteworthy accomplishments
under her chic belt. Michael
Cirelli, executive director of Urban Word NYC said in some awe her “bio goes out of date every two weeks.”
The
media savvy poet knows that in some
circles her appearance as a fashionista
will be attacked as “selling out” her professed themes of Black
pride and empowerment, feminism, and social justice. Gorman could
not care less. She had been interested in fashion and design since her early teen years, self-curated the outfits she
wore at readings as she climbed to
fame, and had signed a modeling contract well before the
inauguration, As for selling, out Gorman
clearly is not in it just for the money. Shortly after the inauguration she said that
she had already turned down $17
million in contract offers and endorsement deals.
Gorman,
influenced by Toni Morrison, Maya Angelou,
and Audre Lorde more than the hip-hop poetry slam poets of her own
generation, still has become the tip of a spear of young female Black bards who are making poetry an important and influential art form again after decades of being over shadowed by other literary forms
and relegated to the margins of the culture. Others in this new
wave include international refugee poet Emi
Mahamoud just a few years older than Gorman and several women who rose to
attention as voices of the Black Lives
Matter Movement. If Gorman seems
less radical than some and less strident, it is only by degrees
and is the logical product of her unique biography.
Gorman
was born in Los Angeles on March 7,
1988 and was raised by Joan Wicks, a single mother, a 6th-grade English teacher in Watts,
She had two siblings including her twin sister, Gabrielle, who is now an activist
and filmmaker She has described her young self as a “weird child” who enjoyed reading
and writing and was encouraged by her mother. She was brought up and remains a Black Catholic which has deeply influenced her social justice passion.
She
an auditory processing disorder and
is hypersensitive to sound and also had a speech impediment during childhood. Gorman had speech therapy during her childhood. Gorman
told The Harvard Gazette in 2018:
I always saw it as a strength because since I
was experiencing these obstacles in terms of my auditory and vocal skills, I
became really good at reading and writing. I realized that at a young age when
I was reciting the Marianne Deborah
Williamson quote that “Our
deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are
powerful beyond measure” to my mom.
She
also practiced singing Lin-Manuel Miranda’s song Aaron Burr, Sir from Hamilton because “it is jam-packed with R's. And I said, 'if I can keep up with Leslie in this track,
then I am on my way to being able to say this R in a poem.”
Gorman
attended New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica, and as senior, she received a Milken Family Foundation college scholarship. She studied sociology at Harvard graduating cum laude in 2020as a member of Phi
Beta Kappa.
She
was still in high school when she began reading her poetry in school and at
community events. She became a youth delegate to the United Nations in 2013 and was inspired
and empowered to hear an address by Nobel
Peace Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai.
The next year she was selected as the first youth poet laureate of Los
Angeles. She published her first poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not
Enough in 2015.
In
2017 she was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate and read her poem In
This Place (An American Lyric) for her performance at the Library
of Congress. Shortly after she
signed a contract to develop a children’s book which became Change
Sings: A Children's Anthem which was released after her inaugural appearance.
Gorman's picture book for children.
While
still at Harvard amid rising recognition she pointed out that her interests
went beyond literary. She wanted to be
an agent for change and several
times noted that she planned to run for President of the United
States in 2036. No one should discount
her. After hearing her inaugural poem Hillary Clinton Tweeted her support.
In
2019, Gorman was chosen as one of The Root magazine’s “Young Futurists”, an annual list of “the 25 best and brightest young African-Americans who excel in the fields of social justice and activism, arts and
culture, enterprise and corporate innovation, science and technology, and green
innovation.” In 2020, Gorman presented Earthrise, an Earth Day poem focused on the climate
crisis. That May she appeared in an episode of the web series
Some
Good News hosted by John Krasinski, where she virtually met
Oprah Winfrey and issued a virtual commencement speech to those who
could not attend graduation ceremonies
due to the Coronavirus pandemic.
Amanda Gorman in spectacular canary yellow with her high hair bound in scarlet wowed the nation with her poem and performance at Joe Biden's and Kamala Harris's inauguration.
After
her inauguration performance The Hill We Climb was issued a
slender stand-alone book and a collection of the same title is slated for
release this fall and has already appeared on Best Seller lists in pre-publication
sales.
She
was quickly tapped to compose and perform an original poem, titled Chorus
of the Captains for Super Bowl LV’s pregame ceremonial coin toss
featuring honorary captains who were
essential workers—James Martin, a U.S. Marine veteran; Trimaine
Davis, an educator; and Suzie Dorner, an ICU nurse manager. It
certainly was something most football
fans had never experienced and
there was some blow back by white fans. Gorman was glad to break down the silos of culture which prevent people
from communicating meaningfully with each other.
But
even triumphs like this can’t prevent the daily
insults African-Americans have to face.
In March Gorman said she was racially profiled by a security guard near her New York City apartment home, and
Tweeted afterwards, “He left, no apology. This is the reality of black girls:
One day you’re called an icon, the next day, a threat.” She later Tweeted, “In a sense, he was right.
I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who
speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the
powers that be. A threat and proud.”
What’s
next for Gorman? Who know except that it will likely be unexpected, surprising, and entirely true
to special vision.
Gorman reading
In This Place (An American Lyric) As the first National Youth Poet Laureate
Her
inaugural poem has been so widely shared that today we will feature that 2017
Youth Poet Laureate verse.
In This Place (An American Lyric)
There’s a poem
in this place—
in the footfalls
in the halls
in the quiet
beat of the seats.
It is here, at
the curtain of day,
where America
writes a lyric
you must whisper
to say.
There’s a poem
in this place—
in the heavy
grace,
the lined face
of this noble building,
collections
burned and reborn twice.
There’s a poem
in Boston’s Copley Square
where protest
chants
tear through the
air
like sheets of
rain,
where love of
the many
swallows hatred
of the few.
There’s a poem
in Charlottesville
where tiki
torches string a ring of flame
tight round the
wrist of night
where men so
white they gleam blue—
seem like
statues
where men heap
that long wax burning
ever higher
where Heather
Heyer
blooms forever
in a meadow of resistance.
There’s a poem
in the great sleeping giant
of Lake
Michigan, defiantly raising
its big blue
head to Milwaukee and Chicago—
a poem begun
long ago, blazed into frozen soil,
strutting upward
and aglow.
There’s a poem
in Florida, in East Texas
where streets
swell into a nexus
of rivers, cows
afloat like mottled buoys in the brown,
where courage is
now so common
that 23-year-old
Jesus Contreras rescues people from floodwaters.
There’s a poem
in Los Angeles
yawning wide as
the Pacific tide
where a single
mother swelters
in a windowless
classroom, teaching
black and brown
students in Watts
to spell out
their thoughts
so her daughter
might write
this poem for
you.
There's a lyric
in California
where thousands
of students march for blocks,
undocumented and
unafraid;
where my friend
Rosa finds the power to blossom
in deadlock, her
spirit the bedrock of her community.
She knows hope
is like a stubborn
ship gripping a
dock,
a truth: that
you can’t stop a dreamer
or knock down a
dream.
How could this
not be her city
su nación
our country
our America,
our American
lyric to write—
a poem by the
people, the poor,
the Protestant,
the Muslim, the Jew,
the native, the
immigrant,
the black, the
brown, the blind, the brave,
the undocumented
and undeterred,
the woman, the
man, the nonbinary,
the white, the
trans,
the ally to all
of the above
and more?
Tyrants fear the
poet.
Now that we know
it
we can’t blow
it.
We owe it
to show it
not slow it
although it
hurts to sew it
when the world
skirts below
it.
Hope—
we must bestow
it
like a wick in
the poet
so it can grow,
lit,
bringing with it
stories to
rewrite—
the story of a
Texas city depleted but not defeated
a history
written that need not be repeated
a nation composed
but not yet completed.
There’s a poem
in this place—
a poem in
America
a poet in every
American
who rewrites
this nation, who tells
a story worthy
of being told on this minnow of an earth
to breathe hope
into a palimpsest of time—
a poet in every
American
who sees that
our poem penned
doesn’t mean our
poem’s end.
There’s a place
where this poem dwells—
it is here, it
is now, in the yellow song of dawn’s bell
where we write
an American lyric
we are just
beginning to tell.
—Amanda
Gorman
Just
a year ago Gorman addressed the pandemic engulfing the world.
The Miracle of
Morning
I thought I’d
awaken to a world in mourning.
Heavy clouds
crowding, a society storming.
But there’s
something different on this golden morning.
Something
magical in the sunlight, wide and warming.
I see a dad with
a stroller taking a jog.
Across the
street, a bright-eyed girl chases her dog.
A grandma on a
porch fingers her rosaries.
She grins as her
young neighbor brings her groceries.
While we might
feel small, separate, and all alone,
Our people have
never been more closely tethered.
The question
isn’t if we can weather this unknown,
But how we will
weather this unknown together.
So on this
meaningful morn, we mourn and we mend.
Like light, we
can’t be broken, even when we bend.
As one, we will
defeat both despair and disease.
We stand with
healthcare heroes and all employees;
With families,
libraries, waiters, schools, artists;
Businesses,
restaurants, and hospitals hit hardest.
We ignite not in
the light, but in lack thereof,
For it is in
loss that we truly learn to love.
In this chaos,
we will discover clarity.
In suffering, we
must find solidarity.
For it’s our
grief that gives us our gratitude,
Shows us how to
find hope, if we ever lose it.
So ensure that
this ache wasn’t endured in vain:
Do not ignore
the pain. Give it purpose. Use it.
Read children’s
books, dance alone to DJ music.
Know that this
distance will make our hearts grow fonder.
From these waves
of woes our world will emerge stronger.
We’ll observe
how the burdens braved by humankind
Are also the
moments that make us humans kind;
Let each morning
find us courageous, brought closer;
Heeding the
light before the fight is over.
When this ends,
we’ll smile sweetly, finally seeing
In testing
times, we became the best of beings.
—Amanda
Gorman
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