Amanda Gorman made history Super Bowl night
Amanda Gorman made history at Super Bowl night as she became the first person ever to recite poetry at the event. The 22-year-old delivered her powerful poem ahead of Sunday’s event, paying tribute to educator Trimaine Davis, nurse Suzie Dorner, and veteran James Martin, whose work has been paramount to the Covid-19 effort in the US. Gorman emerged as a globally recognized talent during last month’s US presidential inauguration, but her work has been enjoyed by thousands since she was a teenager. Gorman became the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles at just 16, and last month became the youngest artist to write and recite a piece of work at a presidential inauguration.
“Wow, we’re about to see poetry at the Super Bowl for the first-time people,” she wrote on Instagram before her performance last night. “It’s a turning page for poetry, for art, and for our country, because it means we’re thinking more imaginatively about the power of human stories, more expansively about the ways to connect us even when we feel more siloed than ever,” she went on. “What’s more, I can’t tell you how many people I’ve heard say they are excited to watch the Super Bowl because there will be poetry at it. What a thrilling moment we live in, when we are so eager to celebrate art, hope and each other.”
Gorman, like the incredible Maya Angelou before her, has grappled with a speech impediment for most of her life. Once making it difficult for her to share her poetry aloud, she now sees her anxiety as part of her performance. “I don’t look at my disability as a weakness,” she said. “It’s made me the performer that I am and the storyteller that I strive to be. “When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds, when you have to be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.”
MICHELLE OBAMA INTERVIEWS AMANDA GORMAN
Amanda has met Michelle Obama only three times, most recently on Inauguration Day. She left a lasting impression on the former first lady, so much so that Obama interviewed Gorman, the first National Youth Poet Laureate, for her cover story in the issue of Time magazine. Gorman and Obama spoke remotely for the magazine’s “Black renaissance” issue, which included work from anti-racism scholar Ibra X. Kendi, authors Brit Bennett and Jesmyn Ward and filmmaker Ava DuVernay. In a wide-ranging conversation, the two discussed how to make poetry “cool,” experiencing impostor syndrome as Black women at the peak of their powers and the sudden spotlight both fell into — Obama in 2007, when her husband announced his presidential campaign, and Gorman in January, when millions of Americans watched her assuredly deliver her poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
Obama gushed to Gorman about how “proud” the poet’s Inauguration Day performance made her. “You’ve always had so much poise and grace, but seeing you address the whole country like that, I couldn’t help thinking to myself: Well, this girl has grown all the way up,” Obama said. “It made me so happy.” In another nod to “Hamilton” scribe Lin-Manuel Miranda, whom she referenced in an interview with Anderson Cooper, Gorman said the mantra she recites ahead of her performances was inspired by Miranda’s lyrics from the film “Moana.”
“I really wanted something that I could repeat because I get so terrified whenever I perform,” she said. “So, my mantra is: ‘I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.'”
When Obama asked Gorman if she had advice for young Black girls to “earn their way into the spotlight,” the poet said that while she is still learning how to navigate fame and media scrutiny, she is focusing on the “big picture.”
“You really have to crown yourself with the belief that what I’m about and what I’m here for is way beyond this moment,” Gorman said. “I’m learning that I am not lightning that strikes once. I am the hurricane that comes every single year, and you can expect to see me again soon.”
