Get to Know Amanda Gorman, the Young Poet Who Stunned at the 2021 Inauguration

Gorman was chosen as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014, when she was 16 years old. The following year, she published her first book, The One For Whom Food Is Not Enough.

It was in 2017, however, that she made major history. That’s when Urban Word NYC and the Library of Congress held a competition to name the first-ever National Youth Poet Laureate. Gorman was chosen from among five finalists to take the title. Since then, she’s been followed by Patricia Frazier in 2018, Kara Jackson in 2019, and Meera Dasgupta in 2020.

Gorman has something in common with the man whose inauguration she performed at: like Biden, she has dealt with a speech impediment.

“I couldn’t use my voice, then I would author my voice on the page. So it’s really been a godsend and a lifeline for me,” she told CBS News ahead of the inauguration. “And so once I arrived at the point in my life in high school, where I said, ‘you know what? Writing my poems on the page isn’t enough for me. I have to give them breath, and life, I have to perform them as I am.’ That was the moment that I was able to grow past my speech impediment.”

Gorman is, like so many of us, a huge fan of the musical Hamilton! You might have noticed a couple of references to Lin-Manuel Miranda‘s musical in her inaugural poem, and Miranda certainly did, too. After tweeting his congrats to her, Gorman replied back, “Thanks @Lin_Manuel! Did you catch the 2 @HamiltonMusical references in the inaugural poem? I couldn’t help myself!” Miranda answered, “You were perfect. Perfectly written, perfectly delivered. Every bit of it. Brava!”

Hamilton actually has particular significance to Gorman: as she told CBS News, she practiced enunciating her “R”s by mastering the show’s raps. “My favorite thing to practice was the song ‘Aaron Burr, Sir,’ from Hamilton because it is jam-packed with R’s. And I said, ‘if I can keep up with Leslie in this track, then I am on my way to being able to say this R in a poem.'”

At age 22, Gorman is the youngest poet to ever speak at an inauguration. She’s in extraordinary company, though, with other inaugural poets who are some of the most famous names in literary history. Robert Frost read at the John F. Kennedy inauguration in 1961, while Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration. Biden is only the fourth president who has had a poetry reading at his inauguration (the others are Kennedy, Clinton, and Obama).

Gorman founded and ran the nonprofit organization One Pen One Page, which focused on a youth writing and leadership program. She’s often said that social justice is integral to her writing, and that, in turn, her writing is oriented at social justice.

“Poetry exists as a unique tool that can interrogate and communicate issues of inequality and injustice in a manner that is inherently rebellious,” Gorman told Mashable in 2017. “Poetry as an art form in itself cuts against the grain . . . Poetry, and art in general, is humankind’s creative mechanism for social change. There’s a reason tyrants fear the poet.”

She was just a performer at the most recent inauguration, but Gorman already has her eyes on a bigger prize: being sworn in as president herself! “This is a long, long, faraway goal, but 2036 I am running for office to be president of the United States,” she told The New York Times in 2017. “So you can put that in your iCloud calendar.”

As of 2021, it looks like she’s still planning on that goal! She posed with the Clintons at the inauguration, and Hillary Clinton tweeted the photo, captioning it, “Wasn’t @TheAmandaGorman’s poem just stunning? She’s promised to run for president in 2036 and I for one can’t wait.”