Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States

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Please join us for a stirring evening of poetry by Joy Harjo, Poet Laureate of the United States. This author event supports the year-long theme, “For a more perfect union?” and contributes to campus-wide discussions of wisdom in the world.

Joy Harjo reads her poem, “A Map to the Next World”

Alicia Carroll comments on Joy Harjo’s “A Map to the Next World”

Land acknowledgment by Angela Mooney D’Arcy, founder and executive director of the Sacred Places Institute for Indigenous Peoples
Moderated by Professor Alicia Carroll (Comparative Literature)

About Joy Harjo: In 2019, Joy Harjo was appointed the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs.

Harjo’s poetry collections include An American Sunrise (W.W. Norton, 2019); Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015)—shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize and added to ALA’s 2016 Notable Books List, this book is hailed by Yusef Komunyakaa as “a marvelous instrument that veins through a dark lode of American history”; How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems; and She Had Some Horses.

Her first memoir Crazy Brave (W.W. Norton, 2012) won several awards including the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award. It was called by Ms Magazine, “The best kind of memoir, an unself-conscious mix of autobiography, spiritual rumination, cultural evaluation, history and political analysis told in simple but authoritative and deeply poetic prose.” Harjo’s second memoir Poet Warrior (W. W. Norton, 2021) invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realizations of her “poet-warrior” road.

Co-sponsored by Illuminations, Advisory Council on Campus Climate, Culture and Inclusion, and Office of Inclusive Excellence.

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