Watch Amanda Gorman Perform a Powerful New Year's Poem
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Watch Amanda Gorman Perform a Powerful New Year's Poem

To welcome the New Year, its possibilities and reflect on the collective challenge that’s been 2021, acclaimed poet Amanda Gorman has shared a new poem, “New Day’s Lyric,” that ties it all together.

Gorman posted the poem reading on Instagram this week, alongside its wording. Wearing a striking white Cong Tri dress, she delivered the necessary message that we all need — that after a year of mourning, being weathered, torn or battered, "We must always pave a way forward.”

She zeroed in on 2022 being the glimmer of light in the dark tunnel that was 2021. "This hope is our door, our portal,” she said. “Even if we never get back to normal, Someday we can venture beyond it, To leave the known and take the first steps.”

But hope for the future wasn’t her only focus. “Where we tend to argue, we will try to agree," Gorman said, preaching a message of unity, which would be perfect since we’re all going through this pandemic together. “These moments we meet, And our hearts, once all together beaten, Now all together beat," she continued.

Gorman’s poem comes as a part of a project she’s working on with the International Rescue Committee to aid individuals impacted by the pandemic. In addition to her organization, Meta is also set to donate $50,000 to the organization.

Speaking to Vanity Fair ahead of the poem’s release, Gorman detailed what it felt like to create it. “I’m looking forward to working with Instagram because part of what inspired me to write this New Year’s poem was thinking about the narratives and the stories that I’ve seen shared throughout the past two years, whether it’s reconciling with grief, loss, social change, climate change,” she said. “And so many of those narratives, I feel, we interact or meet with on social media.”

Gorman — who performed her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and became the first national youth poet laureate back in 2017 — published a poetry collection, Call Us What We Carry, earlier this month.

Photo courtesy of Instagram

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