Amanda Gorman made history as the youngest inaugural poet in the presidential election Joe BidenThe 2021 celebration saw the then-22-year-old perform “The Hill We Climb.” She will return to the national political stage on Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, where she will recite a brand new poem in support of Biden’s running mate, the Democratic nominee. Kamala Harris.
In conversation with Vanity Fair Arriving for rehearsal at the United Center in Chicago, Gorman spoke exclusively about her nervousness before the premiere of the poem “This Sacred Scene.”
“It’s such a big convention,” she said. “I’m used to speaking at one-off, one-day events. This is a four-day, magical gathering with so many other speakers that I really want to do the occasion justice.”
And this occasion, Harris’ historic and rushed campaign, is a particularly joyous one for Gorman as a Californian and a woman of color. She had been thinking about a poem related to Biden’s candidacy for the incumbent in case she was invited to a second appearance, but then she scrapped the poem and started over, using Harris and the atmosphere of change and unity as her inspiration. A few days ago, she said, DNC officials confirmed her invitation to speak.
“I’m still so proud that they remembered and got involved and that even after the change of administration, they wanted poetry to be represented at the DNC,” she said.
“The only way I can describe it is that when a poem is first born, so to speak, I can recognize in my mind its colors and flavors a little bit. So I may not have words or phrases, but I know the tonology. I know the aura, so to speak, of what I want to express,” she said of her process. “I had that in the back of my mind, and then when the presidential race suddenly changed, the colors and narrative of the poem changed in my mind because it became something that represented what I was seeing in real time. For my part, I was not surprised but pleasantly impressed by the amount of support and donations that Kamala Harris was able to garner so quickly. And so the poem changed its methodology a little bit, from celebrating an incumbent to expressing hope for what could be, especially given the idea of an Afro-Indian woman becoming president.”
“The title is ‘This Sacred Scene,’ and that’s what will come up in the poem,” she said. “It’s not something I’d thought about before. I didn’t sit down and say, ‘Let me write about this sacred scene,’ but I think I tried to think for a while about what the Democratic National Convention means, and in particular, more importantly, what it means when people gather around shared values and principles. I think there’s something sacred about that. I think there’s something special and also ancient about that that goes to the roots of who we are as people. I wanted to talk about the importance of unity, which for me goes beyond party.”
“The scene is the moment, it is the story, it is the precedent, the future, it is where we come from and what we build. And when I wrote that line, I was thinking more about what it means to pause in a moment, to look into the future, and to dare to believe in something different.”
She was also inspired by something beyond this world: A few weeks ago, Gorman said, she had the opportunity to speak with the astronaut via Zoom Mike Barrattwho conducts medical research on the International Space Station.
“He showed me the view of the planet through the porthole and how they were watching Earth as they flew by in their shuttle. That was so inspiring because in that moment I had started my poem all over again and had no idea what to write, especially in a time that feels so divisive,” she said. “But that moment of him literally watching planet Earth from space struck me so powerfully, and I think in the language of the poem you’ll see that shine through.”
