Dec 30, 2021
By Jane Brown
Amanda Gorman is ending her extraordinary year on a hopeful note.
The 23 year old poet became an international sensation after she read her own The Hill We Climb at U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration.
Now she’s posted on Instagram a new work and accompanying video to mark the end of 2021.
New Day’s Lyric is a five stanza, 48-line resolution with themes of struggle and healing.
Poets rarely enjoy the kind of attention Gorman received in 2021, but in an email to The Associated Press she reflected less on her own success than on the state of the country. Gorman wrote that the “chaos and instability” of the past year had made her reject the idea of going “back to normal” and instead fight to “move beyond it.” She mentioned Maya Angelou’s poem Human Family and added, “To be a family, a country, doesn’t necessitate that we be the same or agree on everything, only that we continue to try to see the best in each other and move forward into a shared future. Whether we like it or not, we are in this together.”
When asked what inspired New Day’s Lyric, Gorman said she wanted to write a lyric to honour the hardships, hurt, hope and healing of 2021, while also harkening the potential of 2022.
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