Interview with AManda Gorman

“So often when justice seeking and freedom are at the horizon, the ways that we get there have to do with the words we’re using,” Amanda Gorman says in this interview with The Napkin Review. The Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, Amanda gave us the incredible honor of speaking with her about the power of narratives in political movements, empowerment through language, and how poetry helped her overcome a speech impediment, closing the interview with a beautiful reading of her concrete poem “Black Daughter’s Pointillism.” We’re so thankful to Amanda for her voice championing democracy and identity, pioneering the way for future Youth Poet Laureates. To watch the interview, visit our Instagram IGTV, https://www.instagram.com/napkinpoetry_review/channel/.

How do you see poetry at the center of democracy and change?

When I’m thinking about poetry, I have a specific view of it as at the core of democracy. Language and literacy, that is the terms and the rhetoric that we use to describe ourselves and to describe to values of our nation, have repercussions not just politically but also legally and judicially. They have rampant effects in the lives of people. So, what does it mean when you have a Declaration that says all men are created one? Who is that leaving out and what is the subversive inequality going on where by ‘people,’ men, you actually mean white land owning elite. I also look to the social movements that we’ve seen, and more specifically the social movements that we’ve seen succeed, and often they are very excellent at having core narratives in storytelling that reaches across dividing lines. I think about the Civil Rights Movement, and how important song and chant and the culture of the church were in unifying people—you have thousands of people from across the country coming together at the Lincoln Memorial and saying, “We shall overcome.” Or even thinking about how poetry was used to hide messages in the antebellum south when the slaves were looking to flee, that is to say, so often when justice and freedom are at the horizon, the ways that we get there have to do with the words that we’re using.

When you get asked to write a poem, what’s your starting point? You’re often commissioned to write about topics—climate change, racism, inequality—that many people are charged about. Though your poems are always honest, they’re also hopeful. Do they tend to start out with that hope in your writing process?

Knowledge is power, so I always like to start with knowledge: what do I know and what do I not know and what do I not even know I don’t know. That mean that whatever topic it’s on, I start with a lot of research and I try to be a sponge and soak in as much information in detail as possible which might not manifest itself superficially in the poem but it really informs how I go about finding hope in the poem. How can you paint a vision of the future, especially if it’s hopeful, if you’re not rooted in the past? A concrete example of that is the 4th of July Poem [“Believer’s Hymn for the Republic”]. I wrote that over a year ago but I didn’t really start writing it about Independence Day, rather I started reading books by my favorite historians about what they had to say about our founding fathers and their flaws. I did a lot of research about where are the gaps in the Declaration, what are the gaps in the Constitution that led to my ancestors being slaves—one of them actually shared my name, Amanda. So how can I take that same structure and same rhetoric that I saw being used by a slave-owning man like Thomas Jefferson and emulate that literary prowess to create something that speaks to a more expansive and welcoming view of America, and that’s how I think you get from knowledge to hope.

One of our goals is to promote poetry as a tool for mental health, business, and connection. Your story speaks to this goal, and we’re wondering if you could talk more about how poetry helped you to develop your voice.

I had a speech impediment growing up, so several letters in the alphabet were very difficult for me to say such as “st” and “th,” and especially the “r” sound—in any way shape or form, beginning or middle, “ar,” “er,” “or,” I just could not do it. It was challenging especially if you want to express yourself, so I turned to written word for a while as an alternative to speaking up: I could not say these words but I could write them down. As I began then to be challenged by the idea of spoken word, suddenly writing these words down wasn’t enough: I wanted to feel them in my mouth, I wanted to feel how they were formed which was challenging when you have a speech impediment. But the most fascinating thing that I found was that the spoken word, the performance tradition of poetry actually became a very helpful tool in speech pathology. An example of this I give is that I would listen to the soundtrack of Hamilton and the ways in which these incredible actors would rap. I would listen to songs like “Aaron Burr, Sir” which repeats the “r” sound over and over again and I would match their intonation, I would match their speed, and over time I became able to match their sounds. If I was doing a poem, especially when I was younger, if it had an “r” sound like “girl” or “earth,” I would try to find synonyms for those words which was actually quite painful—I don’t want to say “planet,” I want to say “earth” because there’s something so guttural about that. I don’t want to say “young women,” I want to say “girls,” so sometimes I would have to navigate my own self-erasure. As I became bolder with my poetry, I began saying the words anyway even if I wasn’t saying them correctly. That type of practice, that type of focus on the words sonically helped me become not only a better speaker but a better poet. 

I feel like there was both the urgency of self-expression in the abstract and also the urgency that I have needs and desires that need to be met and they will not be if I cannot say them. I do not exist if I cannot speak of my own existence. So how it went from an idea in the abstract into something that I can live and I can breathe: that was the moment when I learned that what I had to say was more important than my fears. That type of liberation then led me to write my poetry and not only feel uninhibited by my speech impediment, but to lean into it. A lot of times, I used rhymed and mnemonic devices in my poetry: one, because I think rhyme can be very useful in poetry, but also because when you have a speech impediment, knowing that a sound is coming and preparing for it is a huge asset in terms of speech pathology. I would have these poems with heavy alliteration, heavy rhyme because it would be easier for me to gear up for that “r” if I had plenty of letters that I could say prior to it. So that’s one of the ways in which I took something abstract like a speech impediment and found ways it could become part of my strength as a spoken word poet.

How do you understand the role of poets as educators? 

My mom is a sixth grade English teacher so education and English and language have always been at the forefront of my life. Similar to looking at poetry and democracy is looking at youth and that upcoming generation. What does it mean to have a voting body that is illiterate, what does it mean to have a voting body that is well-read? But even beyond that, my goal in life isn’t to convert every young student into a poet laureate. If you become one, great, fantastic, I want to buy your book, but if you are a scientist, if you are a philosopher, if you are an actor, I want to make sure you’re weaponized with the language that is necessitated by your voice and your ideas. They can be inhibited by a speech impediment, they can be inhibited by insecurities, by race, by inequalities, but I want you to be stronger than those barriers and one of the way I think you can access that power is through language.

To hear Amanda read her poem “Black Daughter’s Pointillism,” visit https://www.instagram.com/tv/CCvAOYJD99y/