Inaugural poet Amanda Gorman is now a best-selling author. “I AM ON THE FLOOR MY BOOKS ARE #1 & #2 ON AMAZON AFTER 1 DAY!,” the 22-year-old National Youth Poet Laureate wrote on Twitter after reading her poem “The Hill We Climb” at President Joe Biden’s swearing-in ceremony.
“Thank you so much to everyone for supporting me and my words. As Yeats put it: “For words alone are certain good: Sing, then,” she concluded.
The Los Angeles poet continued to tweet her excitement with a link to where fans can pre-order her forthcoming poetry collection, also titled The Hill We Climb.
“If you’d like to read more of my words, you can pre-order my first-ever poetry collection, The Hill We Climb, here!”
Gorman’s other forthcoming title, Change Sings: A Children’s Anthem, is also now a best-seller on Amazon.
Both books are due to come out on 21 September, 2021, via Viking Books.
Many high-profile politicians and celebrities praised Gorman’s reading at the inauguration ceremony. Hillary Clinton joined in the chorus, tweeting, “Wasn’t @TheAmandaGorman’s poem just stunning? She’s promised to run for president in 2036 and I for one can’t wait.”
“I had this huge thing, probably one of the most important things I’ll ever do in my career,” she said about composing the poem in an interview with The New York Times. “It was like, if I try to climb this mountain all at once, I’m just going to pass out.”
Gorman finished writing «The Hill We Climb” shortly after watching the 6 January insurrection by pro-Trump supporters at the Capitol.
«In my poem, I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen over the past few weeks and, dare I say, the past few years. But what I really aspire to do in the poem is to be able to use my words to envision a way in which our country can still come together and can still heal,” she said. “It’s doing that in a way that is not erasing or neglecting the harsh truths I think America needs to reconcile with.”
