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It's my pleasure to
welcome Pam Uschuk, who

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will introduce Joy Harjo.

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Pam's a poet, an
editor, a professor,

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and one of our great friends
here at the Poetry Center.

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Please help me
welcome Pam Uschuk.

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Thank you.

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I bet Joy didn't think she was
going to come to the Arctic.

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Carrying a saxophone
on her back,

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a beautiful wind blew in
from the east yesterday.

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The saguaros raised
their thorny paws,

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palms slapped fronds,
languorous in welcome songs.

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Finches stitched air between
palo verdes and chollas

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as I drove Joy Harjo to
the University of Arizona,

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where she once taught poetry.

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I am happy she has returned
to read at the Poetry Center

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because, in many ways,
she is the Poetry

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Center for many of us.

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I met Joy when she held the
Richard Hugo Visiting Poet

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Chair at the University
of Montana, in 1986.

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I was a graduate student
and had met her poems

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on the recommendation of our
friend, the Blackfeet writer

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Jim Welch.

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You should check her out,
Jim said, in his understated,

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soft-spoken way.

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She's really something.

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Of course, Jim was right.

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I was lucky to study with Joy.

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Upon meeting her, I realized
I'd known her for centuries.

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We became friends,
and that friendship

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has lasted for over 30 years.

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Her graduate poetry class was
seminal for me, teaching me

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that poetry needs to speak
urgently through the heart

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as well as through the mind,
that we must turn slaughter

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into food.

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She taught us metaphors,
limitless shapeshifting,

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the mountain lion roar and leafy
shush of its powerful tides,

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and how our ancestors inform us.

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To introduce Joy in a short
time is really difficult.

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Her vitae stretches
centuries and light years

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with accolades such as the
prestigious Wallace Stevens

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Prize from the Poetry Society
of America, the PEN Creative

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Nonfiction Award, an American
Book Award, a Lifetime

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Achievement Award
from Native Writers'

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Circle of the Americas.

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Thousands of people have
heard her read her poems

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and been transformed.

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Thousands more
have heard her play

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her music that
mended their hearts

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and wiped away their tears
with its sweet hands.

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Tonight we're lucky.

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We'll hear both, if the cold
allows the horn to play.

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Joy Harjo is the author of
the memoir, Crazy Brave,

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a children's book, The Good Luck
Cat, and a young adult book,

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To a Girl Becoming.

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Seven books of poetry,
including She Had Some Horses,

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The Woman Who Fell from the
Sky, In Mad Love and War,

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How We Became Human,
and her most recent,

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Conflict Resolution
for Holy Beings.

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She wrote the one-woman
play, Wings of Night Sky,

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Wings of Morning Light.

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She also edited with
Gloria Bird the anthology

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of Indigenous women's
poetry, Reinventing

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the Enemy's Language.

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She is an enrolled member
of the Muskogee Creek Nation

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and holds the
Chair of Excellence

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at the University of
Tennessee, Knoxville,

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where she teaches poetry.

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As far as I know, there
is no one in America

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who writes like Joy.

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Magician of metaphor
who often explodes

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the heart of a poem into
the universe and back,

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she understands poetry
speaks from the earth,

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from the clouds, from
crows laughing and eating

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roadkill from the
pavement's edge,

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from a young Indigenous
woman running

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from an abusive relationship,
terrified and making her way

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across murderous traffic.

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In her poems, we listen to the
wisdom of ylang ylang flowers

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in a Hawaiian
backyard, to the ghosts

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of animals nearly
eradicated from the Earth,

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to rivers flowing above,
through, and under the ground.

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We sit at the kitchen
table and feast.

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Hers is the terrible knowledge
of centuries of wars,

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of ancestors who walked
the Trail of Tears

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to Oklahoma after
their homelands were

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stolen by whites.

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In her poems, she
confronts fear,

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releases it for all of us,
as she conjures grace, honor,

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and courage.

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She takes it on for
all of us as she

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writes, "For any
spark to make a song,

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it must be transformed
by pressure.

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There must be unspeakable
need, muscle of belief,

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and wild, unknowable elements.

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I am singing a song
that can only be

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born after losing a country."

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In these times, when we enter
this century's dark winter,

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Joy's poems are
utterly necessary.

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Please welcome Joy Harjo.

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