Most of my reading of late has been during long flights between Honolulu and the Mainland, beneath a swelling moon.
Read more . . .
ABOUT.com/2005
Native Joy For Real CD
This is the work of a poet at the top of her powers. Read more . . .
Evening of Native American
Women Writers
Joy Harjo is a multi-talented artist of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is an internationally known poet, performer, writer and musician.
Interview/2005
Explore her writing and youll soon find it rich in the auditory imagery of dogs barking, the ground speaking and the moon playing the horn. And yet, sounds do much more than play to the senses in Harjos poetry. We recently had the privilege of catching up with Joy where we discussed the fusion of oral and written poetry, the responsibility of the poet, and the way music penetrates us all. Read more . . .
Coyote Press Online
Her Pueblo Round Place —
A Remembrance of
Paula Gunn Allen by Joy Harjo
2008
It was the summer of 1973 when I first met Paula Gunn Allen, the teacher and poet who was destined to create on her own terms a scholarly framework for native women’s culture. Read more . . .
Joy Harjo is a multi-talented artist of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is an internationally known poet, performer, writer and musician.
Read more . . .
This I Believe: A Sacred Connection To The Sun
2007
Joy Harjo is a multi-talented artist of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is an internationally known poet, performer, writer and musician. Read more . . .
Originating in the Music
2008
Joy Harjo is a poet and musician with roots in the Creek Indian culture and the American South. She visited Sweden to participate in the International Poetry Festival and Free Newspapers took the opportunity to meet her for a conversation on the origins and global awareness.
Creativity Radio
What Makes It Native?
2009
Brent Michael Davids (Mohican) maintains that there is no such thing as generic Indian music. "Hollywood might lead you to believe that the sound is of a pentatonic scale. That's from the Plains tribes, as are the headdresses, moccasins, horses that Hollywood depicts, but there are over 500 different tribes in the country," Davids explains, and the fact is that most Native music is very sophisticated and complex.
Read more . .
VIDEO Interviews
Artist’s on The Cutting Edge Poetry Reading
Nearly Unbearable Grace
Native American poet and performance artist Joy Harjo reads a selection of her work, and discusses the variety of influences (including music) on her artistic development.
Joy Harjo is a multi-talented artist of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation. She is an internationally known poet, performer, writer and musician.
Brings Contemporary Voices to History Channel Series
Hear an excerpt from Joy’s Interview
Modern Day People from We Shall Remain
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M.
2009
It was only 20 years ago when poet, professor and musician Joy Harjo went to a gathering to discuss the Columbus quincentenary and heard an indigenous Bolivian woman say she was stunned to discover indigenous people still existed in the U.S. and Canada. It’s this portrait across the globe that Hollywood producers and the mainstream media have painted and romanticized—from the long-haired, bare-chested Indian riding horse back to the beautiful buckskin wearing maiden—even in modern times.
As the series We Shall Remain using such imagery debuted on PBS’ American Experience April 13, 2009, a companion radio piece also rolls out, which Native people say works to balance the historic visuals with sounds and conversation from contemporary people and culture—the remain part in We Shall Remain.
“It was really important to us to show the authentic Native voice from a contemporary prospective,” said Peggy Berryhill (Muscogee Creek), producer of the companion We Shall Remain radio project. “…And we felt that it was vitally important that tribes and Native communities are not left in the past, but seen as the dynamic sovereign nations that they are today.” More Information
PBS Series: We Shall Remain
Brent Michael Davids (Mohican) maintains that there is no such thing as generic Indian music. "Hollywood might lead you to believe that the sound is of a pentatonic scale. That's from the Plains tribes, as are the headdresses, moccasins, horses that Hollywood depicts, but there are over 500 different tribes in the country," Davids explains, and the fact is that most Native music is very sophisticated and complex.
The New Mexican *Click to download Jpeg
Featured Book/2000
http://articles.latimes.com/keyword/joy-harjo
Yesterday in the flare of smoke and temper-- we were brilliant warriors weary from battling each other-- the illuminations of family ghosts bright red in the storm. The century is swept toward an inevitable end-- as summer trees sway beneath thunderclouds, the wind flattening our faces-- Our teeth make refuge for our tongues, skins pulled tight in the vertigo of fear under unbearable pressure. We go on. * From "A Map To the Next World" by Joy Harjo
(W.W. Norton: 142 pp., $22.95)
Publishers Weekly/1994
The Woman Who Fell From The Sky
“The leap between the sacred
and profane.” Download.jpg
Chicago Booklist/1994
A Map To The Next World
“One of the most significant American Indian Poets ...”
Progressive/
Good Books Lately/1995
The Woman Who Fell From The Sky
“Harjo is a believer in stories,
and a believer in miracles. She
finds redemption in words, dreams, kindness, beauty and love.”
Chicago Booklist/2000
A Map To The Next World
“Harjo continues to examine the place of Indian people and Indian spirituality today.” Download.jpg
Miami Herald
The Woman Who Fell From The Sky/1995
“Harjo’s poetry has a mythic sweep that allows her to embrace the primal energies of creation and being.” Download.jpg
Coyote Press Online/2001
Interview: On The Corner
Book: For A Girl Becoming
The Milwakee Journal/1995
“Harjo/Poetry is a part of culture that flourishes.” Download.jpg
The Hindu/1997
The Honolulu Weekly
The Indian Express/1997
Native Peoples/2000
2011
As the most well-known Native (Mvskoke-Creek) woman poet of her generation, and the 2009 Nammy winner for best female artist, Joy Harjo has been offering us her words and music for three decades now. In her late 50s, she is still at the height of her creative powers, still one of only a handful of Native musicians and poets who have been able to get their own stories out to a wide audience– thus insuring that those stories will not be ignored, twisted, distorted or maligned by others. Read More
JLW: “Did music grow in you before poetry, or was it simultaneous?”
Joy: “I see them growing together, though the poetry was practiced and public long before music. Music was stolen from me when I was about fourteen and it took me until I was forty to be able to reclaim it again. The saxophone was my first musicial helper. I picked it up when I was about forty. It all comes together on Winding Through the Milky Way.”
Native Digest Interview
Joy Harjo brings play to Merrimack College
Interview
Interview with Cassie Steal
Music: Red Dreams
Festival Di Poesia/2002
Molossus
August 2011
http://www.molossus.co/worldpoetryportfolio/world-poetry-portfolio-36-joy-harjo/
At sunrise each morning, the sound of rhythmic slapping awakens me. Beyond the open window lies the nameless lake—mirroring huts and laundry—where bed linens are struck across the water until they are thought to be clean. A prayerful singing accompanies the work, rising from the voices of invisible washer-women.
When I close my eyes even now,
I can hear this singing.
Journey to Kolkata
January 2008
- by Carolyn Forché
Mondo/1997
The New York Times
Joy Harjo — Trail of Tears
Read Review
Crazy Brave — Radio Interviews
*Click image to hear audio
Crazy Brave Review
Readers familiar with Joy Harjo's poetry, or, better, who have experienced her live performances, will recognize a familiar cadence and overarching mythic quality in the voice she creates for her newest work, "Crazy Brave." In a memoir steeped in her Mvskoke (also known as Muscogee) worldview, Harjo relates narratives of abuse, persistence and reclamation that tap into universal human emotions. Harjo's text resonates for and with readers, whether longtime fans or not; as she asserts, "A story matrix connects all of us." Read More
July 29, 2012
Link: http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Crazy-Brave-by-Joy-Harjo-3742022.php
Download .pdf: JoyHarjo_SFChronicle2012.pdf
Crazy Brave Review
Crazy Brave Featured
http://www.cowboysindians.com/Blog/July-2012/Western-Words-July-10-2012/
Crazy Brave Featured Excerpt
August 8, 2012
Link: http://wewantedtobewriters.com/2012/08/excerpt-from-joy-harjos-new-memoir/
Crazy Brave Review
Part autobiography, part prose poem and part mythology, this memoir begs to be read aloud. Harjo traces the origin of her poetic musical
and theatrical careers, but she offers much more than reminiscences. Her story is an account of the forging of a woman's soul, the hammer blows striking only to reshape her into a sharp and powerful blade of words and music. Slim of spine but lush with Harjo's trademark singing imagery, this raw and radiant coming-of-age story invites readers to "breathe the light in" and discover their own hidden capabilities. —Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger, Infinite Reads
Crazy Brave Review
Hungarian Publication Review
Crazy Brave Review
Los Angeles Review of Books
Crazy Brave Review
All Things Literary. All Things Natural
Crazy Brave Review
Book Browse
FIRST PERSON RADIO
Joy’s Interview at 10:15 in the recording. *Click to LISTEN
Native Peoples Review of Crazy Brave
One of Native America's strongest voices, poet and musician Joy Harjo has finally told her own story in this poetic memoir. Like her rich poetry, this book brims with lyrical word pictures, glimpses of Harjo's childhood and time in Indian boarding school; her marriages, lovers and children; her struggles with alcohol and her Native identity; and coming to grips with the panic attacks that plagued much of her adult years. In between the swirls of the whirlwind, Harjo gifts the reader with a sense of her inspiration, her terrors, and the events great and small that shaped her talent.
Crazy Brave Review
Click to Download
Crazy Brave Review
Alabama Writers Forum
Crazy Brave Review
Click to Download
I just published a review of *Crazy Brave* on my blog "WanderLit" where I cover world literature and travel writing for Wanderlust and Lipstick. (a women's travel website with over 90,000 page views a month.) It can be found at: http://wanderlustandlipstick.com/blogs/wanderlit/ It was a privilege to read your work and I am ever grateful for your abandon in sharing your good heart so freely with readers and listeners.
Thank you, ~Angie Hilbert
AKA "WanderLit"
