I was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
AMANDA GORMANPoetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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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.
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I close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.
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What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
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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.
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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
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Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.
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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.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.
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What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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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When they tell you to go back to where you come from, tell them proudly that this is where you come from.
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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.
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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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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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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.
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We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.
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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.
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