But as for the future, I foresee a world which is more creative, more open, more loving, more ecologically friendly, more honest about its history and progress, and I think a lot of those contributions will be made by young people.
AMANDA GORMANWhat’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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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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I 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.
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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The fight isn’t over – it’s just begun. It’s time to suit up for a battle that might determine the war.
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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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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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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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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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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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My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
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Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.
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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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I am my own best mirror.
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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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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.
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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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Through poetry we shall catch the conscience of a nation.
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The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
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I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.
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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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Let each dawn find us courageous, brought closer, heeding the lights before the fight is over.
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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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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 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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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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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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