Using your voice is a political choice - Amanda Gorman

I have two questions for you.

One: whose shoulders
do you stand on,

and two: what do
you stand for?

These are two questions
that I always begin my

poetry workshops
with students because

at times, poetry can
seem like this dead

art form for old white men who just
seem like they were born to be old,

like, you know, Benjamin
Button or something.

And I ask my students
these two questions,

and then I share how
I answer them, which is

in these three
sentences that go:

I am the daughter of
Black writers,

who are descended
from Freedom Fighters

who broke their chains
and changed the world.

They call me.

And these are words I
repeat in a mantra before

every single poetry performance,
in fact, I was doing it in the corner

over there. I was
making faces.

And so I repeat them to myself,
as a way to gather myself,

because I'm not sure if you know,
but public speaking is pretty terrifying.

I know I'm on stage, and I have
my heels, and I look all glam,

but I'm horrified.

And the way in which I kind
of strengthen myself,

is by having this mantra.

Most of my life I was particularly
terrified of speaking up,

because I had a speech
impediment, which made it

difficult to pronounce certain letters,
sounds, and I felt like I was fine

writing on the page,
but once I got on stage,

I was worried my words
might jumble and stumble.

What was the point in trying not to
mumble these thoughts in my head,

if everything's already
been said before?

But finally I had a moment of
realization, where I thought,

if I choose not to speak out
of fear, then there's no one

that my silence is standing for.

And so I came to realize that I
cannot stand standing to the side,

standing silent.

I must find the strength
to speak up,

and one of the ways I do that is
through this mantra where I call back

to what I call
honorary ancestors.

These are people who might
not be related to you by blood,

or by birth,

but who are more than worth
saying their names,

because you stand on their
shoulders all the same.

And it's only from the height
of these shoulders

that we might have the sight
to see the mighty power of poetry,

the power of language made
accessible, expressible.

Poetry is interesting because not
everyone is going to become

a great poet,

but anyone can be, and
anyone can enjoy poetry,

and it's this openness,

this accessibility of
poetry that makes it

the language
of the people.

Poetry has never been
the language of barriers,

it's always been
the language of bridges.

And it's this connection-
making that makes poetry,

yes, powerful, but
also makes it political.

One of the things that
irritates me to no end,

is when I get that phone call,
and it's usually from a white man,

and he's like, "Man, Amanda,
we love your poetry,

we'd love to get you to write
a poem about this subject,

but don't make it political."

Which to me sounds like,

I have to draw a square,
but not make it a rectangle,

or build a car and
not make it a vehicle,

it doesn't make
much sense,

because all art
is political.

The decision to create, the
artistic choice to have a voice,

the choice to be heard is
the most political act of all.

And by "political" I mean poetry
is political in at least three ways:

One: what stories we tell,
when we're telling them,

how we're telling them,
if we're telling them,

why we're telling them,
says so much about

the political
beliefs we have,

about what types
of stories matter.

Secondly, who gets to
have their stories told,

I'm talking, who is legally
allowed to read,

who has the resources
to be able to write,

who are we reading
in our classrooms,

says a lot about the political
and educational systems,

that all these stories and
storytellers exist in.

Lastly, poetry is political
because it's preoccupied

with people.

If you look at history,
notice that tyrants often go

after the poets and
the creatives first.

They burn books, they try to get rid
of poetry and the language arts,

because they're
terrified of them.

Poets have this phenomenal
potential to connect the

beliefs of the private individual
with the cause of change

of the public, the population,
the polity, the political movement.

And when you leave here,
I really want you to try to hear

the ways in which poetry
is actually at the center

of our most political questions
about what it means

to be a democracy.

Maybe later you're going
to be at a protest,

and someone's going to
have a poster that says,

"They buried us, but they
didn't know we were seeds."

That's poetry.

You might be in your U.S. History class,
and your teacher may play a video

of Martin Luther King Jr. saying,
"We will be able to hew out of this

mountain of despair
a stone of hope."

That's poetry.

Or maybe even here,
in New York City,

you're going to go visit
the Statue of Liberty

where there's a sonnet
that declares, as Americans,

"Give us your tired,
your poor,

your huddled masses
yearning to be free."

So you see, when someone
asks me to write a poem

that's not political,

what they're really asking me
is to not ask charged

and challenging questions
in my poetic work,

and that does not work, because
poetry is always at the pulse

of the most dangerous
and most daring questions

that a nation
or a world might face.

What path do we
stand on as a people,

and what future as a
people do we stand for?

And the thing about poetry
is that it's not really about

having the right answers,

it's about asking these right questions
about what it means to be

a writer doing right by your
words and your actions,

and my reaction is to pay honor
to those shoulders of people

who used their pens to
roll over boulders

so I might have a mountain
of hope on which to stand,

so that I might understand
the power of telling stories

that matter no matter what.

So that I might realize that
if I choose, not out of fear,

but out of courage,
to speak,

then there's something unique
that my words can become.

And all of a sudden that fear that
my words might jumble and stumble

go away as I'm humbled
by the thoughts

of thousands of stories
a long time coming

that I know are strumming
inside me as I celebrate

those people in their time
who stood up so this little

Black girl could rhyme

as I celebrate and call their names
all the same, these people

who seem like they
were just born to be bold:

Maya Angelou,
Ntozake Shange,

Phillis Wheatley,
Lucille Clifton,

Gwendolyn Brooks,
Joan Wicks,

Audre Lorde,
and so many more.

It might feel like every story
has been told before,

but the truth is, no one's
ever told my story

in the way I
would tell it

as the daughter of black writers,
who are descended from freedom fighters

who broke their chains
and changed the world.

They call me.

I call them.

And one day I'll
write a story right,

by writing it into a tomorrow
on this earth more than worth

standing for.

Thank you.