African-American poet Amanda Gorman, who became a star after her reading at President Joe Biden's inauguration, has said a security guard claimed she looked "suspicious" and followed her as she walked home. 

"This is the reality of black girls: One day you're called an icon, the next day, a threat," she tweeted Friday.

"He demanded if I lived there because 'you look suspicious.' I showed my keys & buzzed myself into my building. He left, no apology," she wrote.

In another tweet on Friday, Gorman wrote: "In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be."

Gorman, whose Twitter account says she lives in Los Angeles, did not immediately reply to an AFP request for more information.

Gorman, the 22-year-old Harvard University graduate, became an international sensation after reciting her original work "The Hill We Climb" at the inaugural, a poem inspired by the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.