I close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.
AMANDA GORMANI close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.
AMANDA GORMANI don’t want it to be something that becomes a cage, where to be a successful Black girl, you have to be Amanda Gorman and go to Harvard. I want someone to eventually disrupt the model I have established.
AMANDA GORMANWe know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
AMANDA GORMANTruth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
AMANDA GORMANPoetry 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.
AMANDA GORMANI 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.
AMANDA GORMANI 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.
AMANDA GORMANPoetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.
AMANDA GORMANWhenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
AMANDA GORMANWe’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.
AMANDA GORMANI think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
AMANDA GORMANWhat’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
AMANDA GORMANThat’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.
AMANDA GORMANNo matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
AMANDA GORMANYour daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.
AMANDA GORMANPoetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
AMANDA GORMAN