19-year-old, Amanda Gorman, has placed the United States in the map poetry. Amanda became the very first youth poet laureate from the U.S. An award she earned for her literary talent in addition to her breaking the record of community engagement and leadership skills.
Gorman has been on national tour across the U.S. since her inaugural role. Gorman says she hopes to make more poetry accessible to the youths in America, and she is always seeking them out during her performances and speaks. Gorman is also looking towards sitting down and also listening to them. She believes the youths in the US deserve a say in what she is doing.
“Being the first young poet to have this title means a lot of pressure but also a lot of freedom,” said Gorman. “I vacillate between anxiety about the precedent I am setting and the excitement that I’m starting fresh on a blank canvas. No pattern, no forerunners, just me defining what matters most to me as laureate. That has been the most thrilling part.”
Gorman is also a sophomore at the Harvard University, and her ambitions and talents were shown at last Sunday’s 2017 Social Good Summit in New York City. During which she performed the poem, ‘The Gathering Place.’
She performed in front of a global crowd at the 92nd Street Y, and her performance was also being live-streamed. The poem was inspired by the summit itself, and she spoke of themes touching on the community, hope, and innovation.
Gorman ended her performance by calling out to the crowd to use the conference as the jump-off point to start impacting real change in their communities. She wanted to talk about complex global issues and “write a multilayered poem that at the same time could touch the different cultures and ideals of the people gathered at this event.”