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20 January 2021 will go down in history as an Inauguration Day like no other, which saw new US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris sworn in without the throngs of crowds that typically look on at such an occasion. Yet the downscaled, socially-distanced celebrations felt all the more emotional considering the extraordinary circumstances in which they took place, amid the raging of a global pandemic and at a moment of strife and division within the US.
Among the celebrity performances, prayers and speeches broadcast to viewers at home, the appearance of young poet Amanda Gorman left an impression that will not easily be forgotten. For all the star power lent to proceedings by the likes of Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez, Gorman’s reading of her own work, ‘The Hill We Climb’, has been widely hailed as a moment that stole the show. So just who is the 22-year-old poet who so deftly captured the mood of a nation on that all important day?