Amanda Gorman is the current United States Poet Laureate. In 2017, she became the United States of America’s first National Youth Poet Laureate. She is also an activist from Los Angeles, California. Gorman’s work focuses on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora.
Born in LA in 1998, Gorman had a speech impediment as a child – which is something she shares with Biden.
“It’s made me the performer that I am and the storyteller that I strive to be,” she told the Los Angeles Times.
“When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds [and] be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.”
She became LA’s youth poet laureate at age 16. Three years later, when studying at Harvard, she became the first national youth poet laureate. Her first book, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough, was published in 2015 and she is set to publish a picture book, Change Sings, later this year.
Maya Angelou, Richard Blanco and Robert Frost, were among the five poets to have performed at previous presidential inaugurations. #AmandaGorman #Biden #Inauguration #Trump
