Amanda Gorman on Her New MasterClass and the Story Behind Her Powerful Uvalde Poem

It may feel like a lifetime ago, but it was only last year that Amanda Gorman was catapulted to global fame after a poignant recital of her poem “The Hill We Climb” emerged as one of the undeniable standouts of President Biden’s inauguration. In the wake of the event, Gorman’s books shot to the top of bestseller lists, her poems were translated into dozens of languages, and she herself was quickly signed by WME and IMG Models, becoming a “global changemaker” for Estée Lauder and appearing on the cover of Vogue. “I mean, a lot has happened,” says Gorman, laughing. “But to be honest, it still feels like yesterday.”

Now, the 24-year-old poet is adding a new string to her bow. Launching today, Gorman will teach her very own MasterClass in writing and performing poetry, lending her voice to a streaming platform that features figures at the very top of their fields providing structured courses to help anyone with an interest learn more about their craft. 

For Gorman, the priority was to balance the technical side of writing poetry with her own, more personal views on what poetry can bring to the world through performance and activism. “It all began with the question: How do you create or come up with ideas for poetry?” Gorman explains. “What are the tools and instruments of rhetoric that you can use to make a poem stronger? And then how can you bring that poem to life on the stage or in front of an audience? And last but not least, how can that lyricism change and impact the world? I think the class follows the structure that I try to follow in my own life.”

In keeping with Gorman’s twin career as an activist, the course has deeper resonances for her too. Not only is it an intentional means of democratizing the process of learning about poetry, but her Writing Change initiative with Estée Lauder will sponsor a significant number of MasterClass memberships for nonprofits encouraging young women to write, including WriteGirl, the Los Angeles-based organization where Gorman got her start. “It’s a huge full-circle moment for me,” she notes.

Here, Gorman talks to Vogue exclusively about the lessons she’s learned about teaching from her mom, how she plans to make poetry more accessible, and the story behind the powerful poem she wrote recently in the aftermath of the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings.

Vogue: What about the idea of doing a MasterClass appealed to you when they first reached out?

Amanda Gorman: I think a few reasons sprang to mind. One, I’m the daughter of an English teacher, and so making language, the arts, and creative writing accessible has always been something that I’ve tried to keep at the forefront of my mind throughout my career. With the pandemic, and schools being closed or lessons held remotely, I wanted to find a way in which I could continue giving people access to poetry. Even if I wasn’t able to be in a classroom or in their living room physically, I wanted to find a way that kind of equalized the opportunities that people might have to engage with my work and the work of other poets I admire. MasterClass definitely came to my mind, in part because I’m a MasterClass student as well, and I’ve taken a few of their other classes before. And so I started brainstorming: What would it look like to make poetry visible in this learning space?

Did you take any tips from your mom, or did she offer you any advice?

[Laughs.] That’s so funny. I’m mostly laughing because my mom is such a strong, smart woman, so you definitely would think that she gave me advice, but I also think she likes to mostly just let me do my thing. Really, most of the advice I’ve gotten from my mom about teaching I’ve learned over the course of my lifetime, watching my mom while she was getting her EdD, and so everything I’ve learned from her has kind of been absorbed through osmosis. But I was really honored that after all the experience she has, she kind of trusted me to do my own thing and was so excited to see how I navigated this class in particular. Because although my mom’s an English teacher, she’s not a poet and has never really written poetry. So I think she’s excited to see her daughter teach this art form that she herself is still learning about.

For a lot of people, the idea of writing poetry can feel quite intimidating. What were some of the ways in which you wanted to make it feel approachable?

It was really interesting, honestly. A lot of the discussions I was having with MasterClass were about how we could take this platform and make it make sense for poetry, which can so often seem confusing and remote and abstract even to people who want to learn it. I tried as much as possible when I was outlining the class to provide tools that have been useful for my own craft, and try to give actual, finite, manageable tasks that people could practice to hone their craft. What I hope adds to the accessibility of the class is the fact that a lot of the poetry instruments I learned, I taught myself, as I didn’t study poetry really formally until recently. So I try to spend a lot of time in the class giving students insight not just into how I write, but how I learned the things that I know now, so they don’t have to meet those same challenges.

A big aspect of your MasterClass is about performing poetry, which is obviously very important to you personally. Do you think it’s important to remind people that poetry doesn’t only have to live on the page?

Oh, absolutely. I think such a critical piece of understanding poetry is that it’s not only something that lives on the page—it has this really rich, vibrant life as an oral, spoken art form. And that has been so important for me in my life, as someone who grew up with a speech impediment, because I felt like I was always kind of playing double-dutch between those two worlds…until I understood, hey, poetry is all of the above and more. It can be in a book, it can be in a coffee house, it can be performed on a stage, and it can be interwoven with visual arts. There’s no real limit to what any one poet can do. I wanted my students in this MasterClass to understand that on a gut level.

How has that ability to express yourself in a live setting shaped your own approach to writing poetry over the years?

I think the way I approach poetry is to think about, How many on-ramps can I create here? How many doors can I create that people can walk through to access the meaning of this poem? And yes, that often begins with the text and the content of what I’m saying. But that can also be: What am I doing with my body? What am I doing with my voice and with my face? Because studies have proven that when we’re communicating with people, more often than not, it’s our body language and our tone of voice and our expressions that people are listening to first and foremost, even prior to processing the content of what we’re saying. And so if I can marshal or utilize all of what makes me me, from my hair to my gestures to my clothes to my voice, then we can start taking poetry beyond those boundaries.

Were there any mentors or heroes of yours whose approach to teaching informed how you wanted to conduct the course?

I was thinking a lot about how I learned poetry through this nonprofit organization in Los Angeles called WriteGirl. What they essentially do is match young girls with mentors who meet with them and do workshops with them around writing. It was absolutely electrifying for me when I was in high school to have that opportunity. And so I think I tried to mimic that same sense of it being a safe space for the student when I was on screen, to create a place that felt encouraging and open and creative, and also to make sure I was also giving the mic to other people along the way. 

Another part of the class that I’m excited about is that we’re working in connection with an initiative that I have with Estée Lauder called Writing Change, and distributing free annual MasterClass memberships to WriteGirl. That’s a huge full-circle moment for me as an alumna of that organization, and other great nonprofits that are working to advance literacy. So my hope is that through this class, I can kind of pay my own opportunities forward. Because if it hadn’t been for so many teaching organizations like that, I wouldn’t have these instruments of literacy that I’m able to teach in my MasterClass in the first place.

What do you think writing, and writing poetry specifically, can offer people even if they’re not looking to pursue it professionally? Do you think it can have therapeutic value?

I think that’s something I really try to remind myself of all the time. For me, doing this work isn’t about transforming every person on the face of the planet into a professional poet, but it’s about making sure every person who wants to has access to the tools of poetry and can use them, even if just to make them stronger communicators, or more effective speakers, or more empathetic leaders, as well as more tuned-in global citizens. And so I’d say that anyone who maybe has felt poetry doesn’t relate to or resonate with them, or who doesn’t think poetry is the career for them: None of those things are requirements for engaging with poetry. All you need to engage with poetry is curiosity and courage, and that can take you lightyears beyond any kind of formal training.

You also talk in the MasterClass about the importance of being a change-maker. Was it your intention that the skills you’d be sharing in the course extended beyond the technical skills of writing poetry, and also touched on the role it can play in wider social or political conversations?

I think the activist instinct comes quite naturally to me, because that’s what got me interested in language in the first place. And so while I do look at the technicalities of the craft in the class, it’s even more so about how those technicalities inform the importance and magic of words, and how language can spearhead movements and change. And so my hope is that by understanding the mechanics of poetry, you can then begin to better conceptualize the way in which words bring thoughts into action, and action into transformation.

You recently wrote a powerful poem in the wake of the Uvalde shooting. What prompted you to both write and publish that?

Obviously, I wrote that poem a million years after filming the MasterClass, but it does still originate from that same place inside of me that doesn’t just want to write but to do right as well. I don’t want my words to just be pretty flashy things, but words that build momentum on themselves. And like so many people, I was horrified by what happened in Texas, by what happened in Buffalo, by what’s been happening, quite frankly, all over our country, in terms of gun violence against the innocent. At first, I told myself I wasn’t going to write a new poem, mostly because I felt like I couldn’t. This pain of losing so many innocent people to gun violence isn’t new in the United States, of course, and I felt like I was incapable of personally writing anything new about it. But late at night, a day or two after the Texas tragedy, some ideas were formulating in my brain, new and old. And as I began tweeting them out, I saw a huge influx of responses to them, to the point that in a few days, those verses I had posted online had helped raise over a million dollars [for Everytown for Gun Safety]. That was just so incredible to me, and I knew then that I had to keep writing, because that was at least one of the ways in which I could continue to participate in changing our country to where we need to be. And so I wrote “Hymn for the Hurting” in the hope that those words could continue to make people’s pain feel seen and heard, as well as most importantly, acted upon.

Clearly, you enjoyed doing the MasterClass. Is teaching something you see in your future?

Oh, 100%. I love teaching so much, and I think that’s something I missed the most out of many things during the pandemic. There’s nothing quite as magical as being in a classroom of students and seeing them discover poetry or find their own voice for the first time. I just think that’s the most thrilling thing. And doing the MasterClass, I think I was able to get a piece of that back during a time when that wasn't accessible for everybody. So I definitely see teaching in my future. Also, my mom would be incredibly disappointed and surprised if I said no to that question. [Laughs.] It’s in my veins.

All products featured on Vogue are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.