Joy Harjo celebrates Muscogee creativity

Joy Harjo will be at the Middle Georgia State University School of Arts and Letters April 24 for “Ocmulgee Rising: A Celebration of Muscogee Creativity.”

Harjo, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen, was the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and the first Native American to hold the honor.

Among many creative pursuits, Harjo is also an educator, writer and musician. While at MGA, she will read from her works and conduct a question-and-answer session. The session is at 11 a.m. in the Macon campus’s volleyball gym on the north side of its eastern parking lot.

It’s free, but registration is requested and can be done at eventbrite.com. 

The Georgia Humanities Council is bringing Harjo to Macon in partnership with MGA, the Georgia Council for the Arts, the Ocmulgee Mounds Association and the National Center for the Humanities.

“Georgia Humanities is so proud to have worked with local, state and national partners to bring Joy Harjo back to Macon,” said Mary McCartin Wearn, president of Georgia Humanities and former dean of MGA’s School of Arts and Letters. “’Ocmulgee Rising’ will shine a powerful light on Georgia’s rich Indigenous history as well as the legacy and living culture that has emerged from the sacred lands of Ocmulgee. As part of the U.S. edition of the International Being Human Festival, this program will bring broad attention to the resilience and creativity of the Muscogee people, honoring their enduring presence and contributions to the arts and humanities.”

Five decades and accolades as a poet

I know displaying long lists of accomplishments can be tedious, but Harjo’s are formidable. Allow me to present a few mingled with very human sketches.

— Her first published work of poetry was in 1985.

— Before this, there were decades of listening to elders’ stories and the ambition to be a painter, a creative bent that ran strong among relatives.

— As a teacher/professor, Harjo taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts where she attended high school, Arizona State University, the University of Colorado, the University of Arizona, the University of New Mexico, UCLA, the University of Southern Maine, the University of Illinois and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville.  

— Harjo credits her mother as her first teacher. She recalls she loved words, wrote songs and inspired her as a child by reciting poems to her as part of daily life. The first poem Harjo memorized came in this way and was William Blake’s “The Lamb.”

She writes in “Poet Warrior: A Memoir,” “It was more than the words. It was how the words locked into a pleasing rhythm and we would move to them, and how like a lamb frolicking in spring, the words danced across the tongue. I didn’t know what the words
‘frolicking’ or ‘mead’ meant, but it didn’t matter as the sound and rhythm made something new that I wanted to engage in. It was about my mother speaking in a manner that was beyond ordinary. It was about my mother passing love to me as she spoke music into my ears.”

— Those accolades and awards mentioned include the 2024 Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, a Class of 2022 National Humanities Medal, a Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts, a lifetime achievement award from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, a PEN USA Literary Award, the Poets & Writ­ers Jackson Poetry Prize, two NEA fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellow­ship and a National Book Critics Circle lifetime achievement award — to name a few. And, of course, being selected U.S. Poet Laureate for two terms. She’s served as a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and as a founding board member and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

— As tied to nature and the earth as much of her work is, and spiritually to the human soul and the cosmos, her work has physically ventured toward the stars inscribed on a plaque of NASA’s LUCY mission to perform reconnaissance of the Jupiter
Trojan asteroids. 

— She’s published award-winning children’s books, including “Remember,” which my granddaughter and daughter particularly delight in. (OK, I like reading it with my granddaughter, too.)

— Being at the forefront as a Native poet, Harjo has not been willing to stand alone. She served as executive editor of “When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry,” and was editor of “Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry,” a companion anthology to her Poet Laureate project featuring work by 47 Native Nations poets through an interactive story map and Library of Congress audio collection.

— Accounts are Harjo wrote her first poem in the eighth grade but only began seriously writing at age 22. She’s now published 10 volumes of poetry plus memoirs, screenplays, created music and other works.

— What should you read? “She Had Some Horses” is often cited as her most popular poem and work, so maybe there’s a reason for that, but anywhere is a good place to start. Her latest work is “Washing My Mother’s Body – A Ceremony for Grief,” which she’ll likely be reading from while here. She’ll likely have a good selection of books on hand to sell, so browse. Or poke around her website, they’re there. At this point, I understand there won’t be a book signing following Harjo’s reading and Q&A.

— Also, I strongly, strongly suggest reading “Crazy Brave,” Harjo’s first memoir, and “Warrior Poet,” her second.

Revealing joy and heartache

For what it’s worth – and writing more as enthusiast than reviewer – I admit to being a great admirer of Harjo and her work. It’s been quite a while since I first read her poetry, and it was about 2019 or so that I read “Crazy Brave.”

I found her poetry enlightening in content and endearing in the beauty of words and movement and “Crazy Brave” heart-gripping. 

Some of her poems baffle me but even then, as she said of her mother’s recitations to her as a child, though I may not get a precise meaning I’m captivated by the sound and rhythm.

There’s beauty and brutal honesty in her work. If Harjo can be honest in her writing, I’ll try to be in assessing its impact on me. To continue the sentiment of her earlier quote, reading her poetry and poetic-prose memoirs, I found someone speaking in a manner that was beyond ordinary. It was about another person passing humanness, a sameness to me. Even love of a sort?

Too much? 

But isn’t that what art is largely about? Connecting us as humans? Showing the way? A way? Sharing the pain and a good laugh now and then? Saying, “I’m human, too. I know how it feels though we’re worlds different.”

Plus, its role of glaring us down and sometimes putting us in our place.

And yes, it’s a bit embarrassing saying all this but at certain times such things need acknowledgment.

And of her work, I think of the cost in painstaking wordsmithing and emotional commitment to openness about herself, anger,
forgiveness, heartbreak and such.

How hard it must be for a creator as herself to be as open as she is. In “Crazy Brave” and elsewhere, she refers to herself as having been a shy child very much unable to speak out due largely to horrible things she suffered. Yet now, she has a powerful voice as a strong woman, a strong Native American woman.

The book title “Crazy Brave,” reminiscent of the name Crazy Horse, is fitting and telling. Despite conjuring up an irrational, unrestrained bravery – or horse – to western minds, which is accurate to some of Harjo’s early-life situations, I think the actual truth lies in its original Native perception of meaning
powerful and untamable.

I encourage you to hear Harjo. And buy a book to take home.

Find more on Harjo and her books at joyharjo.com. For a Facebook event page on her visit, including registration information, search Joy Harjo Reading and Q&A at MGA.

Contact writer Michael W. Pannell at mwpannell@gmail.com Find him on Instagram at michael_w_pannell.