fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

Joy Harjo (/ˈhɑːrdʒoʊ/ HAR-joh; born May 9, 1951) is an American poet, musician, playwright, and author. She served as the 23rd United States Poet Laureate, the first Native American to hold that honor. She was also only the second Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to have served three terms (after Robert Pinsky). Harjo is a member of the Muscogee Nation (Este Mvskokvlke) and belongs to Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground).[1] She is an important figure in the second wave of the literary Native American Renaissance of the late 20th century. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts, completed her undergraduate degree at University of New Mexico in 1976, and earned an MFA degree at the University of Iowa in its creative writing program.

Joy Harjo
Born	Joy Foster (1951-05-09) May 9, 1951 (age 71) Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.
Pen name	Joy Harjo-Sapulpa
Occupation	Author, poet, performer, educator, United States Poet Laureate
Nationality	Muscogee, American
Education	University of New Mexico (BA) University of Iowa (MFA)
Genre	Poetry, non-fiction, fiction
Literary movement	Native American Renaissance
United States Poet Laureate
In office 2019–2022
Preceded by	Tracy K. Smith
Succeeded by	Ada Limón

In addition to writing books and other publications, Harjo has taught in numerous United States universities, performed internationally at poetry readings and music events, and released seven albums of her original music. Harjo is the author of nine books of poetry, and two award-winning children's books, The Good Luck Cat and For a Girl Becoming. Her books include Poet Warrior (2021), An American Sunrise (2019), Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), Crazy Brave (2012), and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2002 (2004). She was a recipient of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship, among other honors. In 2019, she was elected a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. Harjo founded For Girls Becoming, an art mentorship program for young Mvskoke women and is a Founding Board Member and Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation.

Her signature project as U.S. Poet Laureate was called "Living Nations, Living Words: A Map of First Peoples Poetry", which focused on "mapping the U.S. with Native Nations poets and poems".[2]

Early life and education

Harjo was born on May 9, 1951, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.[1] Her father, Allen W. Foster, was Muscogee, and her mother, Wynema Baker Foster, was Cherokee and European-American from Arkansas.[3] As a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, Harjo adopted her paternal grandmother's surname.[4]

At the age of 16, Harjo attended the Institute of American Indian Arts, which at the time was a BIA boarding school, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for high school.[5][6] Harjo loved painting and found that it gave her a way to express herself.[7] Harjo was inspired by her great-aunt, Lois Harjo Ball, who was a painter.[8]

Harjo enrolled as a pre-med student the University of New Mexico. She changed her major to art after her first year. During her last year, she switched to creative writing, as she was inspired by different Native American writers. She graduated in 1976.[9][10] Harjo earned her master of fine arts degree in creative writing from the University of Iowa in 1978.[11] She also took filmmaking classes at the Anthropology Film Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.[12]

Career

Harjo taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1978 to 1979 and 1983 to 1984. She taught at Arizona State University from 1980 to 1981, the University of Colorado from 1985 to 1988, the University of Arizona from 1988 to 1990, and the University of New Mexico from 1991 to 1995.[12] Her students at the University of New Mexico included future Congresswoman and Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland.[13]

Harjo has played alto saxophone with the band Poetic Justice, edited literary journals, and written screenplays.[14]

In 1995, Harjo received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of the Americas.[15]

In 2002, Harjo received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award for A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales[16]. In 2008, she served as a founding member of the board of directors for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation,[17] for which she serves as a member of its National Advisory Council.[18]

Harjo joined the faculty of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in January 2013.[19]

In 2016, Harjo was appointed to the Chair of Excellence in the Department of English at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.[20]

In 2019, Harjo was named the United States Poet Laureate. She was the first Native American to be so appointed.[21] She was also the second United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to serve three terms.[22]

Literature and performance

Harjo has written numerous works in the genres of poetry, books, and plays. Harjo's works often include themes such as defining self, the arts, and social justice.[23]

Harjo uses Native American oral history as a mechanism for portraying these issues, and believes that "written text is, for [her], fixed orality".[24] Her use of the oral tradition is prevalent through various literature readings and musical performances conducted by Harjo. Her methods of continuing oral tradition include story-telling, singing, and voice inflection in order to captivate the attention of her audiences. While reading poetry, she claims that "[she] starts not even with an image but a sound," which is indicative of her oral traditions expressed in performance.[25]

Harjo published her first volume in 1975, titled The Last Song, which consisted of nine of her poems.[26] Harjo has since authored nine books of poet­ry, including her most recent, the highly acclaimed An American Sun­rise (2019), which was a 2020 Oklahoma Book Award Winner; Conflict Res­o­lution for Holy Beings (2015), which was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize and named a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Associ­a­tion; and In Mad Love and War (1990), which received an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memo­r­i­al Award. Her first mem­oir, Crazy Brave, was awarded the PEN USA Liter­ary Award in Cre­ative Non Fiction and the American Book Award, and her second, Poet Warrior, was released from W.W. Norton in Fall 2021.[27][28]

She has published two award-winning children's books, The Good Luck Cat and For a Girl Becoming; a collab­o­ration with photographer/​astronomer Stephen Strom; an anthol­o­gy of North American Native women's writing; sever­al screenplays and collections of prose interviews; and three plays, including Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, A Play, which she toured as a one-woman show and was recently published by Wesleyan Press.[27]

Harjo is Executive Editor of the anthol­o­gy When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthol­o­gy of Native Nations Poet­ry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project featuring a sampling of work by 47 Native Nations poets through an interactive ArcGIS Story Map and a newly developed Library of Congress audio collection.[2][27]

Harjo's awards for poetry include the Ruth Lily Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, a PEN USA Literary Award, Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Writers’ Award, the Poets & Writers Jackson Poet­ry Prize, a Rasmuson US Artist Fellowship, two NEA fellowships, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her poetry is included on a plaque on LUCY, a NASA spacecraft launched in Fall 2021 and the first reconnaissance of the Jupiter Trojans.[27]

Poetry

In the early stages of adolescence is when Joy Harjo's hardships started fairly quickly. Her family was challenged by her father's struggle with alcohol as well as an abusive stepfather. From this started her journey into the arts.[29] She started painting as a way to express herself. After getting kicked out by her stepfather at the young age of 16, She attended school at the institute of Native American Arts in New Mexico where she worked to change the light in which Native American art was presented. From there, she became a creative writing major in college and focused on her passion of poetry after listening to Native American poets. She began writing poetry at twenty-two, and released her first book of poems called The Last Song, which started her career in writing.[30]

Music

As a musician, Harjo has released seven CDs. These feature both her original music and that of other Native American artists.[31]

Since her first album, a spoken word classic Letter From the End of the Twentieth Century (2003) and her 1998 solo album Native Joy for Real, Harjo has received numerous awards and recognitions for her music, including a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the year for her 2008 album, Winding Through the Milky Way. I Pray for My Enemies is Joy Harjo's seventh and newest album, released in 2021.[32]

Harjo performs with her saxophone and flutes, solo and with pulled-together players she often calls the Arrow Dynamics Band. She has performed in Europe, South America, India, and Africa, as well as for a range of North American stages, including the Vancouver Folk Music Festival, the Cultural Olympiad at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, DEF Poetry Jam, and the U.S. Library of Congress in Washington D.C.[27]

She began to play the saxophone at the age of 40. Harjo believes that when reading her poems, she can add music by playing the sax and reach the heart of the listener in a different way. When reading her poems, she speaks with a musical tone in her voice, creating a song in every poem.[33]

Activism

In addition to her creative writing, Harjo has written and spoken about US political and Native American affairs. She is also an active member of the Muscogee Nation and writes poetry as "a voice of the Indigenous people".[34]

Harjo's poetry explores imperialism and colonization, and their effects on violence against women. Scholar Mishuana Goeman writes, "The rich intertextuality of Harjo's poems and her intense connections with other and awareness of Native issues- such as sovereignty, racial formation, and social conditions- provide the foundation for unpacking and linking the function of settler colonial structures within newly arranged global spaces".[35]

In her poems, Harjo often explores her Muskogee/Creek background and spirituality in opposition to popular mainstream culture. In a thesis at Iowa University, Eloisa Valenzuela-Mendoza writes about Harjo, "Native American continuation in the face of colonization is the undercurrent of Harjo’s poetics through poetry, music, and performance."[36] Harjo's work touches upon land rights for Native Americans and the gravity of the disappearance of "her people", while rejecting former narratives that erased Native American histories.[36]

Much of Harjo's work reflects Creek values, myths, and beliefs.[36][37] Harjo reaches readers and audiences to bring realization of the wrongs of the past, not only for Native American communities but for oppressed communities in general. Her activism for Native American rights and feminism stem from her belief in unity and the lack of separation among human, animal, plant, sky, and earth.[38] Harjo believes that we become most human when we understand the connection among all living things. She believes that colonialism led to Native American women being oppressed within their own communities, and she works to encourage more political equality between the sexes.[39]

Of contemporary American poetry, Harjo said, "I see and hear the presence of generations making poetry through the many cultures that express America. They range from ceremonial orality which might occur from spoken word to European fixed forms; to the many classic traditions that occur in all cultures, including theoretical abstract forms that find resonance on the page or in image. Poetry always directly or inadvertently mirrors the state of the state either directly or sideways. Terrance Hayes’s American sonnets make a stand as post-election love poems. Layli Long Soldier’s poems emerge from fields of Lakota history where centuries stack and bleed through making new songs. The sacred and profane tangle and are threaded into the lands guarded by the four sacred mountains in the poetry of Sherwin Bitsui. America has always been multicultural, before the term became ubiquitous, before colonization, and it will be after."[40]

Personal life

In 1969 at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Harjo met fellow student Phil Wilmon, with whom she had a son, Phil Dayn (born 1969). Their relationship ended by 1971. In 1972, she met poet Simon Ortiz of the Acoma Pueblo tribe, with whom she had a daughter, Rainy Dawn (born 1973).[41] She raised both her children as a single mother.[42]

Harjo is married to Owen Chopoksa Sapulpa, and is stepmother to his children.[43][44][45]

Awards

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. (May 2015)

1970s

• 1st and 2nd Place Awards in Drawing, University of New Mexico Kiva Club Nizhoni Days Art Show (1976)
• Writers Forum at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, Colorado (1977)
• Outstanding Young Women of America (1978)
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1978)

1980s

• 1st Place in Poetry in the Santa Fe Festival of the Arts (1980)
• Outstanding Young Women of America (1984)
• New Mexico Music Awards (1987)
• NEH Summer Stipend in American Indian Literature and Verbal Arts, University of Arizona (1987)
• Arizona Commission on the Arts Poetry Fellowship (1989)

1990s

• The American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award (1990)
• Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award, New York University: In Mad Love and War (1991)
• Oakland PEN, Josephine Miles Poetry Award (1991)
• William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America (1991)
• American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation: In Mad Love and War (1991)
• Honorary Doctorate from Benedictine College (1992)
• Woodrow Wilson Fellowship at Green Mountain College in Poultney, Vermont (1993)
• Witter Bynner Poetry Fellowship (1994)
• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of The Americas (1995)[15]
• Oklahoma Book Award: The Woman Who Fell from the Sky (1995)
• Bravo Award from the Albuquerque Arts Alliance (1996)
• Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers Musical Artist of the Year: Poetic Justice (1997)
• New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts (1997)
• St. Mary-in-the-Woods College Honorary Doctoral Degree (1998)
• Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund Writer's Award for work with nonprofit group Atlatl in bringing literary resources to Native American communities (1998)
• Finalist for the Oklahoma Book Award: Reinventing the Enemy's Language (1998)
• National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships (1998)

2000s

• Writer of the Year/children's books by the Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers for The Good Luck Cat (2001)
• Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry for How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2001 (2003)
• Arrell Gibson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Oklahoma Center for the Book for How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2001 (2003)
• Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award[46]
• Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, Writer of the Year for A Love Supreme (2003-2004)
• Storyteller of the Year, Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers (2004)
• Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers, Writer of the Year for the script A Thousand Roads (2005)
• Native American Music Award, Native Contemporary Song (2008)
• Native American Music Award, Native Contemporary Song and Best World Music Song (2009)
• United States Artists Rasmuson Fellows Award (2009)
• Eagle Spirit Achievement Award (2009)

2010s

• Indian Summer Music Award for Best Contemporary Instrumental, for “Rainbow Gratitude” from the album Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2011)
• Mvskoke Women's Leadership Award (2011)
• 2011Aboriginal Music Awards, Finalist for Best Flute Album (2011)
• Mvskoke Creek Nation Hall of Fame Induction (2012)[47]
• American Book Award, Before Columbus Foundation for Crazy Brave (2013)[48]
• PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Nonfiction for Crazy Brave (2013)[46]
• Black Earth Institute Award (2014)[49]
• John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2014)[50]
• Wallace Stevens Award in Poetry by the Academy of American Poets Board of Chancellors (2015)[51]
• Shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize[52]
• Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2017)[53]
• The 2019 Jackson Prize, Poets & Writers (2019)[54]
• Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (ATALM) Literary Award, 2019[55]
• Tulsan of the Year, 2019, TulsaWorld
• United States Poet Laureate (2019)[5][56]
• Oklahoma Book Award for An American Sunrise (2020)[57]
• Institute of American Indian Arts Honorary Doctoral Degree (2020)
• Association for Women in Communication International Matrix Award (2021)
• Association for Women in Communication, Tulsa Professional Chapter - Saidie Award for Lifetime Achievement Newsmaker Award (2021)
• SUNY Buffalo Honorary Doctoral Degree (2021)
• UNC Asheville Honorary Doctoral Degree (2021)
• University of Pennsylvania Honorary Doctoral Degree (2021)
• Smith College Honorary Doctoral Degree (2021)
• PEN Oakland 2021 Josephine Miles Award for When the Light of the World WasSubdued Our Songs Came Through (2021)[58]
• 31st Annual Reading the West Book Award for Poetry, When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through (2021)[59]
• Inductee, National Women's Hall of Fame (2021)[60]
• Inductee, Native American Hall of Fame (2021)[61]
• Designation as the 14th Oklahoma Cultural Treasure at the 44th Oklahoma Governor's Arts Awards (2021)[62]

Others

• American Academy of Arts and Letters, Elected Member, Department of Literature (2021)[63]
• American Philosophical Society, Elected Member (2021)[64]
• American Academy of Art and Sciences, Member Appointment (2020)[65]
• Chancellor, Academy of American Poets, Member Appointment (2019)[66]
• Poetry included on plaque of LUCY, a NASA spacecraft launched in Fall 2021 and the first reconnaissance of the Jupiter Trojans[67]
• Joy Harjo has received honorary doctorates from the following:
  • SUNY Buffalo Honorary Doctoral Degree, 2021
  • UNC Asheville Honorary Doctoral Degree, 2021
  • University of Pennsylvania Honorary Doctoral Degree, 2021
  • Smith College Honorary Doctoral Degree, 2021
  • Institute of American Indian Arts Honorary Doctoral Degree, 2020
  • St. Mary-in-the-Woods College Honorary Doctoral Degree, 1998
  • Benedictine College, Kansas Honorary Doctoral Degree, 1992

Works

Bibliography

Poetic works

• The Last Song, Puerto Del Sol, 1975.
• What Moon Drove Me to This?, I. Reed Books, 1979, ISBN 978-0-918408-16-7.
• Remember, Strawberry Press, 1981.
• She Had Some Horses, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1983, ISBN 978-1-56025-119-4; W. W. Norton & Company, 2008, ISBN 978-0-393-33421-0.
• Secrets from the Center of the World, University of Arizona Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-8165-1113-6.
• In Mad Love and War, Wesleyan University Press, 1990, ISBN 978-0-8195-1182-9.
• Fishing, Ox Head Press, 1992.
• The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, W. W. Norton & Company, 1994, ISBN 978-0-393-03715-9.
• A Map to the Next World, W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 978-0-393-04790-5.
• How We Became Human New and Selected Poems: 1975–2001, W. W. Norton & Company, 2004, ISBN 978-0-393-32534-8.
• Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company, 2015, ISBN 978-0-393-24850-0. (shortlisted for the 2016 Griffin Poetry Prize)
• An American Sunrise: Poems, W. W. Norton & Company, 2019, ISBN 978-1-324-00386-1.
• Perhaps the World Ends Here, Kalliope, 1999.[68]
• "Tobacco Origin Story, Because Tobacco Was a Gift Intended to Walk Alongside Us to the Stars". Poetry. September 1997. Retrieved 2022-11-13.

As editor

• Reinventing the Enemy's Language: Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America, W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, ISBN 978-0-393-31828-9.
• When the Light of the World Was Subdued Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry, W.W. Norton, 2020, ISBN 978-0393356809
• Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, W.W. Norton, 2021, ISBN 978-0393867916

In anthology

• Ghost Fishing: An Eco-Justice Poetry Anthology, University of Georgia Press, 2018, ISBN 978-0820353159.

Plays

• Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and a Circle of Responses, Wesleyan University Press (published 2019), 25 January 2019, ISBN 978-0819578655

Non-fiction

• Soul Talk, Song Language: Conversations with Joy Harjo, Wesleyan University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-0-8195-7151-9.
• The Spiral of Memory: Interviews, Poets on Poetry, University of Michigan Press (published 1995), 8 December 1995, ISBN 978-0472065813
• Crazy Brave: A Memoir, W. W. Norton & Company, 2012, ISBN 978-0-393-07346-1.
• Poet Warrior, W.W. Norton, 2021, ISBN 978-0393248524

Children's literature

• The Good Luck Cat, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2000, ISBN 978-0-15-232197-0.
• For a Girl Becoming, University of Arizona Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-8165-2797-7.

Discography

Solo albums

• Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (2003)[69]
• Native Joy for Real (2004)[70]
• She Had Some Horses (2006)[71]
• Winding Through the Milky Way (2008)[72]
• Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears (2010)[73]
• This America (2011)[74]
• I Pray For My Enemies (2021)[75]

Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice

• Letter from the End of the Twentieth Century (1997)

See also

• List of writers from peoples indigenous to the Americas
• Native American Studies

Notes

References

• Bochynski, Pegge (2002). "She Had Some Horses". In Jason, Philip K. (ed.). Masterplots II: Poetry (revised ed.). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 3369–3371. ISBN 978-1-58765-037-6.
• Bochynski, Pegge (2003a). "Joy Harjo". In Parini, Jay (ed.). American Writers: A Collection of Literary Biographies, Supplement XII. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. pp. 215–234. ISBN 978-0-684-19785-2.
• Bochynski, Pegge (2003b). "Review of How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems: 1975–2001 by Joy Harjo". In Wilson, John D.; Kellman, Steven G. (eds.). Magill's Literary Annual 2003: Books of 2002. Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 379–383. ISBN 978-1-58765-129-8.
• Stone, Louise M.; Bochynski, Pegge (2006). "Joy Harjo". In Kellman, Steven G. (ed.). Magill Survey of American Literature (revised ed.). Pasadena, CA: Salem Press. pp. 980–988. ISBN 978-1-58765-285-1.
• Azfar Hussain. "Joy Harjo and Her Poetics as Praxis: A 'Postcolonial' Political Economy of the Body, Land, Labor, and Language." Wíčazo Ša Review: A Journal of Native American Studies 15.2 (2000) 27-61 https://muse.jhu.edu/article/36264

External links

• Official website
• Joy Harjo, U.S. Poet Laureate: A Resource Guide from the Library of Congress
• Joy Harjo: Academy of American Poet s
• Works by or about Joy Harjo in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture – Harjo, Joy
• Joy Harjo at Library of Congress Authorities, with 21 catalog records
• Interview with Joe Harjo on BBC Outlook (starting at 26.30)
• Voices of Oklahoma interview. First person interview conducted on November 5, 2020, with Joy Harjo.
• Interview with Joy Harjo on WHYY Fresh Air

На других языках

---

- [en] Joy Harjo

---

[es] Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo (9 de mayo de 1951, Tulsa) es una poeta, música, dramaturga y autora estadounidense; y la actual Poeta Laureada de los Estados Unidos, la primera nativa americana en tener ese honor. También es la segunda Poeta Laureada Consultora en Poesía en cumplir tres mandatos. Harjo es miembro de Nación Muscogee (Este Mvskokvlke) y pertenece a Oce Vpofv (Hickory Ground ).[1] [2]

---

[fr] Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo, née Joy Foster le 9 mai 1951 à Tulsa, dans l'Oklahoma (États-Unis), est une poète, auteure pour enfant, scénariste, dramaturge, anthologiste, saxophoniste, chanteuse, compositrice et professeure d'université américaine, d'ascendance amérindienne et de culture creek. En 2019, elle est élue chancelière de l'Academy of American Poets et la même année, nommée 23e poète lauréat des États-Unis, mandat qui est renouvelé deux fois pour se terminer en 2022.

---

---