Amanda Gorman, 22, became the youngest inaugural poet in America's history when she recited her poem "The Hill We Climb" for President Biden's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021.
She adds that distinction on top of becoming America's first National Youth Poet Laureate while she was studying sociology at Harvard, and she joins a very small group of inaugural poets, which includes Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.
Gorman finished writing the poem on the night of Jan. 6, after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. She included a reference to Micah 4:4, saying:
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time
then victory won’t lie in the blade
but in all the bridges we’ve made,
that is the promise to glade
During Biden's inauguration, her delivery of the poem added to the power of the words she wrote. Watch it again below:
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