Isabel Fontoura - Implementing Public Policy Blog
Public policy and the act of poetry: a path to togetherness in a healing world: IPP Community of Practice
Isabel Fontoura
One week ago, today, I met, with delight, the words of the youngest inaugural poet in American history, Amanda Gorman, as President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris took office. With a voice filled with warmth and courage, which resembled the vividness of the ipê trees of my native land, she reminded the world that "If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children's birthright." I wrote this passage of her inaugural poem "The Hill We Climb" on a piece of paper, in a quest to, somehow, hold to the emotion I first felt that day. Later, Ms. Gorman shared her view that poetry "is an instrument of social change and one of the most political arts out there because it demands rupture and destabilizing the current language." It is, thus, a path to togetherness.