Poet Laureate of the United States Joy Harjo is the first Native American to serve as poet laureate.
WASHINGTON, D.C.-The Library of Congress has recently announced that Joy Harjo is the new United States Poet Laureate. As a member of the Muscogee Creek Nation, she is the first Native American to receive the honor since it was established in 1937. Harjo becomes the 23rd person to hold this annual appointment from the Library of Congress and the first from Oklahoma. Commonly held for two consecutive terms, the position was officially named the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress by a 1985 act of Congress. During his or her term, the poet laureate seeks to raise the national consciousness to a greater appreciation of the reading and writing of poetry.
This honor, adds to the national and international recognition of Joy Harjo's poetry over the past four decades. In a Shenandoah interview this past spring, she was quoted as stating, "poets have a very particular kind of work, which has to do with taking what is beyond language and making word art-the materials are reality, history, dreams, that which we know but cannot yet perceive."
Harjo has said that her Native American voice is an essential part of that work.
Her seven books of poetry, which include such well-known titles as How We Became Human-New and Selected Poems, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and She Had Some Horses have garnered many awards, including the New Mexico Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.
She has released five award-winning CDs of original music and won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year for Winding Through the Milky Way. She performs nationally and internationally with her band and as a one-woman show. Harjo lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
