Poet Amanda Gorman after becoming breakout star of inauguration: ‘I feel so overjoyed’
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Amanda Gorman, the breakout star of Wednesday’s presidential inauguration, said she feels “overjoyed” following an outpouring of love and support for her poetry performance.
Interviewed on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” Wednesday night, the poet and activist said she is “so grateful and so humbled.”
Gorman, 22, became the youngest inaugural poet in American history when she recited her composition, “The Hill We Climb,” at the swearing in of President Joe Biden, the country’s 46th commander-in-chief. The Harvard graduate received praise from Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Hillary Clinton and Lin-Manuel Miranda, among many others.
Since captivating a countrywide audience, two of her books have climbed the Amazon best-sellers chart. “The Hill We Climb: Poems” and “Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem” are the No. 1 and No. 2 books on Amazon as of Thursday morning.
“I came here to do the best with the poem that I could and to just see the support that has been pouring out, I literally can’t exhort it all so I will be processing it for a while,” Gorman told Cooper.
Gorman said she found out in late December she would be the poet for the inauguration. She researched previous inaugural poems and watched and read speeches from leaders in divided countries.
But when the insurrection on the Capitol occurred Jan. 6, she adjusted her poem to further reflect the country.
“It energized me even more to believe that much more firmly in a message of hope, unity and healing,” she told Cooper. “I felt that was the type of poem I needed to write and the type of poem the nation and country needed to hear.”
The transcript of Gorman’s poem can be found here.
Like Brayden Harrington, who spoke during the “Celebrating America” primetime special Wednesday night, Gorman said she grew up with a speech impediment.
Writing helped Gorman break free from her impediment, she said, and onto the grand stage.
“I used writing as a form of self expression to get my voice on the page and also metamorphasize into its own speech pathology, so that the more I recite it out loud (and) the more I practice spoken word and that tradition, the more i was able to teach myself how to pronounce these letters which for so long had been my greatest impediment,” she said Wednesday night.
Thank you! I would be nowhere without the women whose footsteps I dance in. While reciting my poem, I wore a ring with a caged bird—a gift from @Oprah for the occasion , to symbolize Maya Angelou, a previous inaugural poet. Here’s to the women who have climbed my hills before. https://t.co/5Tegd20sko
— Amanda Gorman (@TheAmandaGorman) January 20, 2021
Gorman had 121,000 Twitter followers at the end of the inauguration, according to The Associated Press, a number that ballooned to 1.1 million by Thursday morning.
She said she hopes poetry and the power of words can bring a positive change.
“Words matter and I think that’s kind of what made this inauguration so much more sentimental and special,” she said. “We have seen over the past few years the way in which the power of words has been violated and misappropriated. What i wanted to do was to reclaim poetry as that site in which we can re-purify, re-sanctify.”
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