Amanda Gorman is an American poet from Los Angeles, California. In 2017, aged 19, she was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate.[2] On January 14, 2021, the Inaugural Committee, which was organizing the inauguration of Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., announced that Gorman would be giving a poetry reading at the event on January 20.[3] Gorman said that she began to write the poem by reviewing poems written by past inaugural poets, who have included Robert Frost and Maya Angelou. She also studied famous orators such as Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King Jr., and Winston Churchill.[1][4][5] Gorman also spoke with Richard Blanco and Elizabeth Alexander, two previous inaugural poets.[6]
In December 2020, Joe Biden's wife, Jill Biden, asked Gorman to deliver a poem at the inauguration.[7] She was informed of her selection on December 30, 2020,[8] and asked to write a poem that contributed to the inauguration's overall theme of "America United", but without any other direction.[9] Gorman wrote several lines a day,[8] and had the poem around half completed when the storming of the United States Capitol occurred on January 6.[4] Gorman told The New York Times that she had been struggling to complete the poem and worrying about whether it would be adequate.[6] In an interview with CBS News, she said that the storming marked "the day that the poem really came to life" as she worked the events into it.[5] Gorman finished the poem on the night of January 6.[8]
Gorman, who had a speech impediment as a child, was twenty-two years old when she read the poem, making her the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration.[4][10] She practiced the poem repeatedly before delivering it.[6] She said that she sought to use the poem as an opportunity to call for "unity and collaboration and togetherness."[1]
