Frank Paice reflects on Amanda Gorman’s powerful poem at the ceremony and Geoff Skinner wonders if the UK will also be brave enough to tackle racism. Plus Joan Furtado on why Trump should be happy
In years to come, we may recall Wednesday’s inauguration ceremony by reading again Amanda Gorman’s words, delivered to a spellbound inauguration assembly (Biden offers a message of resilience in America’s ‘winter of peril’, 20 January). The authority of her poem comes from the clarity of its imagery and the uncompromising challenge of its rhetoric.
What it says ensures that, to relief at the end of America’s political nightmare and goodwill towards the two principals in the drama that unfolded, must now be added the assertion that we can “raise this wounded world into a wondrous one”.
Frank Paice
Norwich