Trailblazer comes to South County
Joy Harjo, a trailblazing
poet, artist, musician and member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, who in 2019
became the first Native American to be appointed U.S. poet laureate, will
deliver a much-anticipated poetry reading
at the University of Rhode Island on Wednesday, Oct. 28, from 5-7 p.m.
The event, sponsored by URI’s Department of English and Creative Writing
and the College of Arts and Sciences, will take place in Edwards Hall, 64 Upper
College Road, on the Kingston Campus. Harjo’s visit to URI coincides with the
250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence
and will take place on the eve of National Native American Heritage Month,
celebrated every November.
Harjo will read and discuss a selection of her poetry from a
career spanning over fifty years, including her most recent book,“Cloud
Runner,” published this month. Harjo’s revelatory poems celebrate and bear
witness to human resilience, and reckon with personal, communal, and national
histories in a voice singularly warm and oracular. Her work expands our sense
of language’s power to express what might seem inexpressible until transformed
into story and song.
This free public event will open with a ceremonial welcome
to the traditional lands of the Narragansett Nation and to URI, and will
include Harjo signing copies of her published work and a question-and-answer
session.
URI students have encountered Harjo’s work this year in several English and Creative Writing courses, including a seminar last spring in Native American Literature co-taught by associate professor Martha Elena Rojas, and Wanda Hopkins ’20 MA ’25, a citizen of the Narragansett Tribal Nation and URI Alum. Rojas began this fall with Harjo’s collection “Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: 50 Poems for 50 Years” to introduce students to the poet’s five-decade arc of work and its impact.
Rojas hopes both the general public and students learn
directly from the poet about what Harjo has called “soul talk” or the art of
poetry—a direct, inventive lyricism that calls us to remember while helping us
reimagine who we are.
“Joy Harjo’s tone within her poetry can be simultaneously
timeless, or ancient and urgent, very much of our present now. Like the poet
Walt Whitman, whose poetry I have paired with hers this semester, with the
250th anniversary in mind, her work always insists we uphold the idea of
justice and aspire to that of equality lauded in the country’s founding
documents,” Rojas said. “Her work provides a different perspective that
requires us to pay attention to the ‘many’ in the United States’ E pluribus
unum. We are looking forward to Joy sharing that perspective here at URI.”
Harjo served as the 23rd U.S. poet laureate from
2019 through 2022 and is just the second poet in the nation’s history to be
appointed to a third term. She has authored several poetry collections,
including “An American Sunrise,” published in 2019, which is included in the
National Endowment for the Arts’ 2026 Big Read program as part of the United
States’ celebration of its founding in 1776.
Harjo also authored three award-winning children’s books.
Her recent children’s work, “Remember,”in 2022 became a national
bestseller, an American Indian Library Association Honor Book, won a Boston
Globe–Horn Book Honor Award, and was named one of the best books of the year by
School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, NPR, and Kirkus Reviews.
As a musician, Harjo produced seven award-winning albums.
Her album of traditional flute, “Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears and Winding
Through the Milky Way,” won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best
Female Artist of the Year in 2009. This year she has released “Insomnia and
Seven Steps to Grace,” her debut album for the Smithsonian Folkways Collection.
For more information about Joy Harjo’s upcoming poetry
reading, visit the event’s
webpage or contact URI Associate Professor Martha Elena Rojas at
401-874-7880 or martharojas@uri.edu.