Amanda Gorman Couldn't Say the Letter R
Quick answer: Amanda Gorman could not pronounce the letter R for most of her youth. How a speech impediment shaped the youngest inaugural poet in American history.
For most of her childhood and adolescence, Amanda Gorman could not reliably pronounce the letter R. Her own surname resisted her. Words with R in them had to be swapped, written around, rehearsed or abandoned, and a girl who wanted more than anything to be heard learned early exactly how it feels when your mouth will not cooperate with your mind. She grew up with an auditory processing disorder as well, so listening took deliberate work too.
On 20 January 2021, at twenty two, she stood at the United States Capitol and delivered 'The Hill We Climb' at a presidential inauguration, the youngest poet ever to do so. The distance between those two facts is not a miracle. It is a documented sequence of practice, page work and performance, and for any writer who feels disqualified by something in themselves, the sequence matters far more than the fairy tale.
A Name She Could Not Say
Gorman was born in Los Angeles in 1998 and raised, with her twin sister Gabrielle, by their mother Joan Wicks, a middle school English teacher. It was a home with little television and a great deal of reading and writing. The speech difficulties ran through her school years: sounds that would not form, the R most stubborn of all, and she has said she could not pronounce it properly until she was about twenty.
For a child who loved words, the impediment could have been a wall. It became, instead, a workshop. Writing was the one place where her voice worked without resistance, where nothing between brain and page could garble the sentence. She wrote constantly, and she has described the page in exactly those terms: the place her voice was whole.
Editing for Her Own Mouth
Here is the craft detail that makes her story useful rather than merely touching. When Gorman performed as a young poet, she edited for her own mouth. If a word carried a sound she could not land, she hunted for a synonym she could, or rebuilt the line around the problem. That is a brutal apprenticeship in exactly the skills poets spend years trying to acquire: an obsessive ear, a wide synonym reflex, and the understanding that every word choice is also a sound choice.
She has repeatedly described the impediment as one of her greatest teachers, a strength disguised as a deficit, because it forced her to think about sound with an attention most speakers never need. There was a symmetry waiting for her at the Capitol, too: the president who invited her had grown up managing a stutter, something both of them acknowledged.
Laureate at Sixteen, Then at Nineteen
The public record of her rise is unusually tidy. At sixteen she became the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles in 2014, and the following year she published a small collection, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough. In April 2017 she was named the first National Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, at nineteen. That role brought a reading at the Library of Congress, and in the audience that evening was Jill Biden.
Gorman went on to study sociology at Harvard, graduating in 2020. When the incoming administration wanted a poet for the 2021 inauguration, Jill Biden remembered the young woman from the Library of Congress and recommended her. Years of unglamorous laureate readings had put her in the one room that mattered.
Practising With a Show Tune
The rehearsal method is the part of the story everyone remembers, because it is so unheroic. To drill the R sound, Gorman practised by performing 'Aaron Burr, Sir' from the musical Hamilton, a track deliberately crammed with R sounds, over and over. Not therapy in a clinic, in this telling, but repetition with a cast recording, done privately and stubbornly for years.
The writing of the inaugural poem had its own pressure test. She was partway through drafting 'The Hill We Climb' when the Capitol, the very building she would read in front of, was attacked on 6 January 2021. She stayed up that night and finished the poem, folding the day's events into its argument. Two weeks later she recited it from the same steps.
Twenty Two at the Podium
Only a handful of poets have read at a US presidential inauguration, a line running from Robert Frost in 1961 through Maya Angelou in 1993. At twenty two, Gorman was the youngest of them all. Her performance made her internationally famous in roughly six minutes; the published edition of the poem topped bestseller lists, and weeks later she became the first poet to perform at a Super Bowl.
The poem itself, being recent work, is best experienced rather than quoted. Listen for what her whole story predicts: dense internal rhyme, wordplay that rewards the ear before the eye, plain diction under formal pressure, and a delivery in which every consonant is deliberate. It is the sound of someone who has had to earn each letter.
What a Doubting Writer Can Take From Her
The obvious lesson is that the thing you believe disqualifies you may be your training. Gorman's impediment forced habits, sound obsession, synonym agility, relentless rehearsal, that most writers have to fake their way toward. Whatever your version is, a stammer, a second language, a late start, an unliterary family, it has probably already taught you something about language that fluent people never had to learn. The work is noticing what.
The quieter lesson is the pipeline. Youth laureate at sixteen, national laureate at nineteen, inauguration at twenty two: each stage was an application, a submission, a reading she showed up for. Nothing was owed and nothing was random. Writers grow in front of audiences and judges, which is why putting poems where they will actually be read and answered, as every entrant to Writory's monthly contest is (entries the 1st to the 25th, results on the 30th), beats waiting until you feel ready. Gorman never waited for the R.
What poets can take from this
- Inventory what your obstacle has already taught you about language; that knowledge is capital, not damage.
- Edit for the mouth, not just the eye; read every draft aloud and rework the lines you stumble on.
- Build a synonym reflex; when one word fails you, three others are always standing by.
- Apply for the small honours; local laureateships and youth prizes put Gorman in the rooms that led to the Capitol.
- Rehearse performance like a musician, with repeatable drills, not vague run-throughs.
- Finish poems under pressure; Gorman completed her most famous poem the night its subject was attacked.
Try it yourself
Write a poem about a word you could not say, literally or emotionally, for years. Somewhere in the poem, finally say it, and let the form change in that moment: the line lengths, the rhyme, the speed.
Questions
What speech impediment did Amanda Gorman have?
She grew up with an auditory processing disorder and a speech articulation difficulty that made the letter R especially hard; she has said she could not pronounce it properly until she was about twenty. She practised the sound partly by performing an R-heavy song from the musical Hamilton.
How old was Amanda Gorman at the 2021 inauguration?
Twenty two, which made her the youngest poet ever to read at a US presidential inauguration when she delivered 'The Hill We Climb' on 20 January 2021.
How was Amanda Gorman chosen for the inauguration?
Jill Biden had heard her read at the Library of Congress in 2017, when Gorman was the first National Youth Poet Laureate, and recommended her for the ceremony. The invitation followed years of youth laureate roles and public readings.
By the Writory editorial team, reviewed by working poets. Updated September 2026.
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