"The Hill We Climb" is a spoken word poem written by American poet Amanda Gorman and recited by her at the inauguration of Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., on January 20, 2021.

The poem was written to call for "unity and collaboration and togetherness" among the American people and emphasize the opportunity that the future holds.

[9] Gorman wrote several lines a day,[8] and had the poem around half completed when the storming of the United States Capitol occurred on January 6.

and then describes the storming of the Capitol as "a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it" before stating that, "while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated."

[1][23][24] Many critics named the poem as a highlight of the inauguration and praised Gorman's messages of unity, reflections on the past, and hope for the future.

[13][27][23] A critic for The Guardian, Adam Gabbatt, considered the poem a tour-de-force for Gorman,[28] while Julie Bykowicz in The Wall Street Journal described it as a "star turn" and noted that for a time she was gaining followers on Twitter at a faster rate than Joe Biden.

Osterheldt also compared the poem and its delivery to Angelou's "On the Pulse of Morning" that was delivered at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1993, and its message to Langston Hughes's "A Dream Deferred.

"[23] Shayla Harris writes for Ebony that "Her poignant reflections on the country's past and her vision for progress were brought to life through masterful delivery.

[13] Dwight Garner of The New York Times Critic's Notebook wrote that Gorman was "a one-person reminder that if winter is here, then spring cannot be far behind," and "If her performance made you vaguely feel that you’d had a blood transfusion, it was perhaps because you could sense the beginning of a remade connection in America between cultural and political life.

"[30] Liesl Schillinger in The Guardian described the recitation of the poem as the crowning moment of Gorman's rise to become "the voice of a new American era" and called the final lines a "poetic battle cry".

[24] Seth Perlow, an English teacher at Georgetown University, wrote in The Washington Post that, while Gorman makes use of many "generic Americanisms", she distinguished the poem "by performing with remarkable dynamism and grace".

[32] Poet and critic William Logan panned the poem in The New Criterion, describing it as "a sorry affair, composed of stock metaphors and dreary banalities, with the rhymes of a breakfast-cereal jingle and the heart of a stockbroker".

[7][21] Shortly after the inauguration, Penguin Young Readers announced a publication of 150,000 hardcover copies of the poem in spring 2021, set to begin on April 27.

The poem was also included in a Gorman's first published collection of poetry, titled The Hill We Climb, which was released by Viking Books for Young Readers in September 2021.

"[42] The German edition was published by Hoffmann und Campe in a translation by Kübra Gümüşay, Hadija Haruna-Oelker, and Uda Strätling.

[44][45][46] Gorman's poetry collection The Hill We Climb was restricted to an area reserved for middle school students at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, Florida in 2023.

The restriction was based on a complaint to Miami-Dade County Public Schools that the book contains "hate messages" in the following stanzas:[47] We've braved the belly of the beast.