Poets & Writers Theater

“I’m carrying this for America, but for Indigenous peoples in particular,” says Joy Harjo about what it means to be the first Native American to serve as the poet laureate of the United States in this PBS NewsHour interview with Jeffrey Brown, which takes place in her hometown of Tulsa.

“With all writers, with all artists, with all humans, we all carry ancestors. We carry stories. We carry their songs.” In this video, Joy Harjo, Esther Allen, and Michael Cunningham speak on the impact of receiving creative writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). For more on the NEA’s positive impact on writers, read “Vote of Confidence: The Life-Changing Support of an NEA Fellowship” in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“Remember all is in motion, is growing, is you. / Remember language comes from this.”​ In this video from the Academy of American Poets, Joy Harjo reads the poem “Remember” from her 1983 collection, She Had Some Horses. Harjo is the winner of the 2017 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and is featured in “Vote of Confidence: The Life-Changing Support of an NEA Fellowship” in the May/June 2017 issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

“This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.” In this video that originally aired in 2012, poet Joy Harjo reads “Perhaps the World Ends Here” for PBS NewsHour.