In her interview with Laura Coltelli, in the book Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak, Harjo says: “I begin with the seed of an emotion, a place, and then move from there. “ Do you know how to make a peaceful road It doesn’t just belong sitting on a shelf in a university.”Īt the book festival event, wearing turquoise jewelry and impossibly long beaded earrings set against her jet-black hair, she read from her poem “Exile of Memory” about going back to Muscogee lands in the Southeast that were home before the members were forced out to Oklahoma. Harjo hopes to bring her enthusiasm for poetry to others. Most of the world’s poetry, she notes, is part of oral traditions, including music. She plays saxophone and sings and is a member of a band called Arrow Dynamics. She has won awards for her writing and for her music. Harjo herself is not just a poet but a musician, a memoirist and, she proudly notes, a great-grandmother. We’re human beings,” said Harjo, who turns 71 this year. We’re poets, we’re jazz musicians, we’re teachers.

(You can find Harjo under Tulsa, Oklahoma, but dozens of other poets are included as well.) A signature project of hers as poet laureate, “ Living Nations, Living Words,” is an interactive map that allows readers to click on a location and learn about a Native poet from that area. It’s important to her that people know that Native Americans aren’t extinct but still contribute to American culture. Native American musician and poet Joy Harjo, circa 1990. Proud of her heritage, Harjo said she started writing poetry as part of her work advocating for Native rights.

“For me, poetry is a way to speak when you have no words,” she said during a National Book Festival panel about race in America. Poetry helps her deal with the frustrations of lingering disregard for Native American culture. Harjo points out that in many Indigenous cultures, poets are also known as healers. When appointing Harjo, Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said: “To her, poems are ‘carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,’ and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making.”

Poems about change