Poetry for 100m football fans? Amanda Gorman's Super Bowl poem proves it's possible

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How do you write a poem that will appeal to 100 million American Football fans? It’s a question that would make many poets break out in a cold sweat – but also one that none of them had to consider, until now. Amanda Gorman, the 22-year-old former National Youth Poet Laureate, this Sunday became the first poet ever to give a recital at the Super Bowl. As gigs go, it made the performance that brought her fame – Joe Biden’s presidential inauguration last month – seem like a small, cosy, low-stakes affair. Almost 34 million Americans may have watched the inauguration, but that was barely a third of the domestic audience who tuned in to last year’s Super Bowl. The inauguration was also an easier commission, in one respect: it had a precedent. It was possible to turn – as Gorman did – to the words of Maya Angelou, and other poets who appeared at that podium before her. There is a public idea of what an inaugural poem is: an uplifting message of unity, a few images evoking a journey out of dark times towards a brighter future, a nod towards the question of what it means to be an American. What it means to be an American footballer, meanwhile, is a topic that lends itself less readily to poetical musing. Thankfully, Gorman ignored it entirely, instead writing about the lives of the three people chosen by the NFL as honorary captains for the match, as a tribute to their work (in Gorman’s words) “uplifting their communities and neighbours”.

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