Amanda Gorman
Quick answer: A craft guide to Amanda Gorman: sound-driven wordplay, occasional poetry for public moments, and speech rhythm, with tips and where to start reading.
When Amanda Gorman read The Hill We Climb at the 2021 presidential inauguration, she became, at twenty-two, the youngest inaugural poet in American history and the most-watched poet alive that week. Born in Los Angeles in 1998, she had already been named the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States in 2017 while still a teenager.
Set the spectacle aside and there is a distinct craft to study: Gorman is a sound-first poet. Her lines are engineered for the ear, packed with alliteration, internal rhyme and near-puns that make public speech memorable. She also grew up managing a speech impediment, and has described reciting poems as part of how she trained her articulation, which tells you how physically she treats language.
The occasional poet, revived
Gorman works in one of poetry's oldest and hardest jobs: the occasional poem, verse written for a public event. Most occasional poems die on the podium because they aim for dignity and land on blandness. Hers survive because she treats the occasion as an argument to be built, with a problem named early, evidence gathered in the middle, and resolution earned through sound as much as sense.
Her collection Call Us What We Carry (2021) shows the range beyond ceremony: pandemic elegies, historical excavations and visual experiments, including poems shaped on the page. Change Sings, her picture book, carries the public voice to children.
The signature moves
Listen to any recording of her and track these devices.
What you can learn
Draft one poem for the ear alone. Write it to be heard once, by a distracted crowd, and you will discover what redundancy, rhythm and sound-linking are actually for. This is also excellent training for contest work; judges scoring language and structure hear a poem in the head even when reading silently, and Writory entries that sound inevitable tend to score above entries that merely look tidy.
Practise the near-pun deliberately: list five word pairs that share a syllable, then build two lines around the best pair. Use the collective 'we' only after two stanzas of concrete particulars; unearned unity is the fastest way to lose a reader.
Where to start
Watch the inauguration reading of The Hill We Climb first, since the work was built for delivery, then read the published version to study the lineation. Call Us What We Carry is the essential collection. Her Super Bowl poem honouring pandemic-era captains of community shows the occasional mode compressed to broadcast length.
What poets can take from this
- Write at least one poem designed to be heard once by a distracted crowd.
- Chain lines with alliteration and internal rhyme so each phrase tows the next.
- Place sound-twin words near each other and let the echo argue for you.
- Earn a collective 'we' with concrete particulars before making shared claims.
- Break lines where a speaking voice would breathe or punch.
- Read drafts aloud standing up; delivery exposes limp phrases fast.
Try it yourself
Write an occasional poem for a small real event in your street or family, a reopening, a recovery, a first day. Use at least three internal rhymes and end on a line built to be spoken.
Questions
What is Amanda Gorman famous for?
She read The Hill We Climb at the 2021 US presidential inauguration, becoming the youngest inaugural poet in American history. She was also the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017.
What poetry techniques does Amanda Gorman use?
Her work leans on dense alliteration, internal rhyme and wordplay between similar-sounding words, with lines broken to match speech rhythm. It is poetry engineered first for the ear.
What should I read by Amanda Gorman?
Start with The Hill We Climb, ideally watched as well as read, then her full collection Call Us What We Carry (2021).
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated July 2026.
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