Amanda Gorman: 'The Hill We Climb' (2021)
Bursting onto the scene today, from the launchpad of the 59th US presidential inauguration, is Amanda Gorman, 22 - America's first National Youth Poet Laureate, and the youngest poet ever to write the inaugural poem. In her bright yellow coat and read headband, full of poise and promise, Gormon - a 2020 graduate of Harvard - embodied the sunrise that was the entire event.
Amanda Gorman performs at the 59th US presidential inauguration, 20 January 2021.
Following the historic swearing in of Kamala Harris as the first woman and woman of colour to the role of Vice President of the United States, Gorman’s poem, entitled ‘The Hill We Climb’, did not gloss over the glaring racial tensions making Democrat Joe Biden’s inauguration so crucial. Instead Gorman tackled the ugliness of racism head on, in a modern lyrical masterpiece that fuses free verse with spoken word, winding the listener through ancient and recent horrors to conclude on a hopeful call to action:
When day comes, we step out of the shade
aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.
For there is always light,
if only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.
The full transcript of Gorman’s poem can be read here, and it’s smashing.
Her performance is being hailed by trailblazing Black women, including Michelle Obama, Stacey Abrams and Oprah Winfrey, who invokes the memory of the great American poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou in praising Gorman, signalling the magnitude of the legacy and torch the young poet is taking up. It’s a landmark literary moment, to be sure - and one infused with a contemporary freshness and colour the world so needs today.