What inspiration looks like: Amanda Gorman

A 22-year old poet stopped the world in its tracks this week, and demonstrated the power of poetry at the US Inauguration.

While many of Australians were waking, it was not the news of Trump or Biden that caught the imagination of readers, but a 22-year old poet.

Amanda Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in US history to deliver her verse at a Presidential inauguration – and joins a small coterie of poets endowed with this honour, including Robert Frost for John F Kennedy (1961), Maya Angelou (1993) and Miller Williams (1997) for Bill Clinton, and Elizabeth Alexander (2009) and Richard Blanco (2013) for Barack Obama.

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Gina Fairley is ArtsHub's National Visual Arts Editor. For a decade she worked as a freelance writer and curator across Southeast Asia and was previously the Regional Contributing Editor for Hong Kong based magazines Asian Art News and World Sculpture News. Prior to writing she worked as an arts manager in America and Australia for 14 years, including the regional gallery, biennale and commercial sectors. She is based in Mittagong, regional NSW. Twitter: @ginafairley Instagram: fairleygina