Prophetic Imagination in Amanda Gorman's "The Hill We Climb"

The media reaction to Amanda Gorman's performance of the Spoken Word poem "The Hill We Climb" at the Inauguration Day ceremony for President Biden in January 2021 demonstraed the power of this genre to impact public consciousness.While The Washinton Post described Gorman as a "prophet of democracy" the GetReligion forum suggested that biblical references and theological themes had been overlooked.Other platforms suggested that the poem was a work of prophetic imagination.Poetic works throughout history have shared function and form with works of prophetic imagination but, as Abraham Heschel states, while all prophecy is poetry not all poetry is prophecy.This article therefore examines "The Hill We Climb" as a work of prohetic imagination.Referencing the work of Heschel and Walter Brueggeman it will outline the hallmarks of prophetic imagination in poetry and consider how these resonate with the Spoken Word genre.A framework for the analysis of prophetic imagination in poetry will be proposed and applied to Gorman's performance of "The Hill We Climb."