When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.
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.
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 was writing since I can remember – I just didn’t know it was poetry yet, or that writing could be a career.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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I am my own best mirror.
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Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.
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It was so incredible meeting Lady Gaga. I mean I’m gaga for Gaga, literally. We kind of just each flew to each other like magnets after the ceremony ended and we were both just crying and hugging.
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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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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
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When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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Writing wasn’t just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.
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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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My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
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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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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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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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Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.
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The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
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My Instagram doesn’t cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying, there’s a question of whether I should be sharing that online.
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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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Poetry is the lens we use to interrogate the history we stand on and the future we stand for.
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What a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
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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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What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
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