It was electrifying, proper shiver-down-the-spine stuff, a reminder how powerful poetry can be. In first year at secondary school, I remember the impact of reading Edwin Morgan, Stevie Smith and Christina Rossetti for the first time (we had a brilliant English teacher, who opened our eyes and ears to a whole world of words beyond the prescribed texts we sat down to in class, and the limitations of the syllabus.) Love of poetry has stayed with me, through university, where I studied everything from Emily Dickinson to the Scottish Ballads, and discovered, via the Edinburgh Fringe, Roger McGough and the genius of John Hegley.
Touched by an Angel: Angels are sent at just the right time
25 Jan, 2021 01:13 AM
3 minutes to read For there is always light, if only we were brave enough to see it, if only we were brave enough to be it. - Amanda Gorman
What a week. One president leaves and a new one comes into power in America. Not sure I can yet call them the United States of America, but it seems we are closer to that this week than in the first week of January. How quickly things can change.
What an amazing young woman Amanda SC Gorman is. I was mesmerised as she delivered her poem The Hill We Climb at the inauguration of US President Joe Biden.
American separationism, as inscribed in the First Amendment and in our political ethos, has several roots. One is a legitimate fear about religious strife and oppression. But another is the conviction that excessive entanglement with the state endangers religion. Roger Williams, to whom we owe the metaphor of the “wall of separation,” sought to protect the “garden” of faith from the dark forces of the state on the other side of the wall. He believed that any semblance of official religion hindered the ability of a genuinely free, unblemished, conscience to direct itself to God. James Madison insisted that before any person “can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe,” and that to allow the government to “employ religion as an engine of Civil policy … is an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation.”
Today, millions of Americans found themselves transfixed by a 22-year-old poet named Amanda Gorman.
Standing on the steps of the Capitol Building Gorman recited an original poem entitled The Hill We Climb, making history as the sixth and the youngest poet to perform at a presidential inauguration and following in the footsteps of poets like Maya Angelou and Robert Frost.
The Los Angeles native and recent Harvard University grad reportedly wasn t given specific instructions regarding her inauguration poem. Gorman told
NPR that she finished writing it on the night of January 6, shortly after rioters took part in a siege on Capitol Hill.