Amanda Gorman's Moment

When 22-year-old Amanda Gorman performed "The Hill We Climb" at President Biden's 2021 inauguration, she brought spoken word poetry to the largest audience in the form's history. Her yellow coat and red headband became instantly iconic, and the poem went on to sell millions of copies in print — ironic for a form that insists it lives in performance, not on paper. Gorman showed that a young Black woman could command the same platform as the president, and that the ancient art of public declamation still had the power to unite and inspire.