Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and was named the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019.
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Latest posts
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Box
July 30, 2019 Tuesday at dusk. This time I stopped a hurtful comment in time before it could enter my electrical skin. We have different layers of skins. I saw that the comment had a twist, meant to hurt. No, I told it. You cannot enter here. It got confused. It wanted to live.…
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Who is Telling Your Story?
There are challenging moments when you realize that you are no longer in control of the telling of your story, when false rumors, gossip or other tales return to you and are taken as truth. Recently an author came out with a book about the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.In…
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Change
Change rides in on many speeds. Lightning speed and we change worlds of perception overnight. We can suddenly lose everything, or gain what we have always hoped and dreamed. Some changes take centuries to reveal themselves. Islands of trash plastic float in the seas where trash…
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Ahhhh Saxophone
The saxophone is so human. Its tendency is to be rowdy, edgy, talk too loud, bump into people, say the wrong words at the wrong time. But then, you take a breath, all the way from the center of the earth and blow. All that heartache is forgiven. All that love we humans carry…
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Joy Harjo Reads in Albuquerque 1989
Joy Harjo in a full clear reading of her work in the formative place where she first really took up writing, here in New Mexico. Introduction by Gus Blaisdell, proprietor of the Living Batch Bookstore in Albuquerque. I recorded this on my little Sony Professional cassette…
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ROBIN TALKING
My relationship with robins began in childhood, when I used to find the most peace, outside alone. It was when I thought with the trees, with earth, with timelessness that spiritual guidance, knowing and knowledge would speak and move about in beautiful and insightful designs of…
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Moving Forward
Moving back to the Southeast has had a profound effect on me, especially when it comes to erasure. Our tribal names are everywhere. My family history is everywhere. Buildings and streets are named after those who fought and removed tribal people who originally lived here in the…
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Erasure
Erasure Late last night, after a long day of prepping for teaching, and teaching, I went online to check on a younger Native poet. She had decided to stand up and speak her truth when a memoirist ex, popular for her emotional eloquence and ability to embody the forbidden,…
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Transformative Question
We encounter shifts in our lives that assure we transform and are transformed. They might appear as deaths, of family, friends or others, and/or deaths within ourselves of ideas, tightly held beliefs, or some part of the self. There is often pain involved, and/or a vision that…
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When is a Debate Not a Debate
We’ve always been taught that leadership qualities include humility, compassion, a sense of fairness, the ability to listen, preparation and carry-through, a love for the people, and a strong spiritual center which begins with a connection to Earth. So many of our stories are…
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Facebook Break and Sunny Days Per Year
I’m quitting Facebook for awhile. Facebook scatters my thoughts far afield. I’m not reading, thinking, dreaming; I am not paddling beyond the shallows. The frequency of chatter is beguiling. There’s community, catch up, even real news. I’ve followed Standing Rock that way–and…
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Guns, Heavy Winds, and Going with the Story of Life
Last night practiced targets in the garage with a BB gun pistol. It reminded me of focus and intent. This morning up at 6:30AM. Went to hardware store for building supplies for a patio build out. Had to load in heavy north winds. They too are focused with intent to get where…
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The Dynamics of Memory: Letting Go
This morning as I put in a load of laundry, memories emerged from the clothes I’d worn at a conference. All the memories from there were good except for one. The strange attack from this person I did not know haunted me. I had let it go because I didn’t want to carry it, only…
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One of Those Rainy, Dark, Winter Days
It’s five p.m.. My eyes are blurry from the computer screen. I’ve been revising my musical-to-be, cataloguing a song list, considering a drastic, mythical net in the rewrite, and contemplating police brutality. Like many other natives I’ve been witness to massive injustice when…
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RIP Robin Williams
In the late eighties in Denver I got front row seats to a comedy extravaganza, that included many of the best comics in the business, including Louie Anderson and Robin Williams. I was stunned by Robin William’s brilliance. No one could touch him at improv. Improv, whether it be…
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We live in many worlds
Even an individual is a field of many world. A couple makes a world. A whole family is a world, a society, a generation. When I create I enter into a different world and that world sings to me, it teaches me. As many artists, I am often aware of not being understood, or even…
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From my hotel room listened to an alto sax player at dusk.
He played a few jazz standards, but mostly those tunes the people would know who changed buses there. Nice tone. And there’s something about a lone horn player standing at the corner of our lives. I went out walking and talked to him. His name is Leroy. No band, or band in the…
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Muscogee Nation News Column February 2014
Today is Martin Luther King Day. It’s a day to celebrate the fight for justice, to acknowledge Dr. King’s legacy and the struggle for freedom and equality by African Americans in this country. I keep thinking of my cousin John Jacobs, one of my favorite relatives. He was one of…
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Snow Dreary
I am a sun person who, along with half the nation, is living in a cloud cave these days. I’m running toward an end of the month deadline on a huge project and I’ve made the project immense. I need to stop wheeling around in the panic and and pull the project into my heart, and…
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Joy’s Blog Archive
Link to previous Blogspot Blog: http://joyharjo.blogspot.com/