One whose shoulders do you stand on and to What do you stand for?

These were two questions that I always begin my poetry workshops with students because at times poetry can seem like this dead art form for like, old white men who just seemed like they were born to be old, like, you know, Benjamin Button or something.

And I ask my students these two questions, and then I share how I answer them, which is in these three sentences that go.

I am the daughter of black fighters were descended from freedom fighters who broke the chains and change the world they call me.

And these are words I repeat in a mantra before every single poetry performance.

In fact, I was like doing it in the corner over there.

I was like making faces on DSO.

I repeat them to myself as a way to gather myself because I'm not sure if you know, but public speaking is pretty terrifying.

Um, I know I'm on stage and I have my heels and I look all glam, but I'm horrified.

Um um and the way in which I kind of strength in myself is by having this mantra most of my life.

I was particularly terrified of speaking up because I had a speech impediment which made it difficult to pronounce certain letters sounds.

And I felt like I was fine writing on the page.

Once I got on stage, I was worried my words like jumble and stumble.

What was the point and trying not to mumble these thoughts in my head if everything's already been said before?

But finally I had a moment of realization What I thought.

If I choose not to speak out of fear, then there's no one that my silence is standing for.

And so I came to realize that I cannot stand standing to the side, standing silent.

I must find the strength to speak up, and one of the ways I do that is through this mantra, what I call back to what I call Honore ancestors.

These were people who might not be related to you by blood or by birth, but who are more than worth saying their names because you stand on the shoulders all the same, and it's on Lee from the height of these shoulders that we might have sight to see the mighty power of poetry, the power of language made accessible express.

Herbal poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet.

But anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry.

And it's this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.

Poetry has never been the language barriers.

It's always been the language of bridges.

It's this connection making that makes poetry yes, powerful, but also makes it political.

One of the things that irritates me to no end is when I get that phone call and it's usually from a white man, and he's like, Man, Amanda, we love your poetry.

We love to get you to buy a poem about this subject, but don't make it political, Which to me, sounds like I have to draw a square but not making a rectangle or, like build a car, not make it a vehicle.

It doesn't make much sense because all art is political.

The decision to create three artistic choice toe have a voice.

The choice to be heard is the most political act of all, and by political, I mean poetry's political at least three ways.

One.

What stories?

We tell one.

We're telling them how we're telling them if we're telling them why we're telling them so So much about the political beliefs we have about what types of stories matter.

Secondly, who gets toe?

Have the stories told I'm talking?

Who was legally allowed to read?

Who has the resource is to be able to write Who will be reading in our classrooms?

Says a lot about the political and educational systems that all these stories and storytellers existent.

Lastly, poetry is political because it's preoccupied with people.

If you look in history, notice that tyrants often go after the poets and the creatives.

First they burn books.

They try to get rid of poetry in the language arts because so terrified of them, poets have this phenomenal potential to connect the beliefs of the private individual with the cause of change of the public, the population, the polity, the political movement And when you leave here, I really want you to try to hear the ways in which poetry is actually at the center, on our most political questions about what it means to be a democracy.

Maybe later we're gonna be in a protest and someone's gonna have a poster that says they buried us, but they didn't know we were seeds.

That's poetry.

You might be in your U.

S.

History class and your teacher may play a video of modern with the King Jr saying We will be able to hew out of this mountain of despair, a stone of hope that's poetry.

Or maybe even here in New York City, you're gonna go visit the Statue of Liberty.

Or there's a sonnet that declares, as Americans give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free.

So you see, when someone asked me to write a poem that's not political, what they're really asking me is to not ask, charged and challenging questions in my poetic work.

And that does not work because poetry is always at the pulse of the most dangerous and the most daring questions that a nation or a world might face.

What path do we stand on as a people on what future as a people do we stand for?

And the thing about poetry is that it's not really about having the right answers.

It's about asking these right questions about what it means to be a vital doing rights by your words and your actions in my reaction is to pay honor to those shoulders of people who used the pens to roll over Boulder so I might have a mountain of hope on what's to stand so that I might understand the power of telling stories that matter no matter what, so that I might realize that if I choose not out of fear but out of courage, to speak the most something unique that my words can become and all of a sudden that fear that my words, my jumble and stumble go away as I am humbled by the thoughts of thousands of stories, a long time coming that I know are strumming inside me as I celebrate those people in their time who stood up So this little black girl could vine as I celebrate and call their names All the same, these people who seemed like they were just born to be bold.

Maya Angelou and Ozaki's song Gay Phillis Wheatley, We still Clifton Gwendolyn Books, Joan Wicks, Audrey Lorde and so many more.

It might feel like every story has been told before.

But the truth is, no one's ever told my story in the way I would tell it, as the daughter of black writers who were descended from freedom fighters who broke the chains and change the world.

They call me, I call them and one day I'll write a story right by writing it into tomorrow on this earth more than worth standing for.

Thank you.