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Mapping Your Words [1]

Poetry [2]
10.11.22

“Each poem or song has a genealogy of sorts. When I speak with singers from our ceremonial ground about a song, they tell you who taught you the song, where the song came from, who has the authority to sing/speak it,” writes former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo in her Blaney Lecture “Ancestors: A Mapping of Indigenous Poetry and Poets” [3] delivered in 2015 at Poets Forum in New York City. “The meanings make a map that sometimes connect you to a lonely serviceman in Japan, or to the journey over the Trail of Tears, from what is now known as Alabama to Indian Territory, or Oklahoma.” Inspired by Harjo’s words, write a poem that traces the genealogy of your poetry. Try starting with a list or a family tree to uncover the storytellers who have inspired you.


Source URL:https://www.pw.org/content/mapping_your_words

Links
[1] https://www.pw.org/content/mapping_your_words [2] https://www.pw.org/genre/poetry [3] https://poets.org/text/ancestors-mapping-indigenous-poetry-and-poets