Poetry Friday: Celebrating our Newest US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo

 Linda at A Word Edgewise is hosting

this week's round-up of poetic goodness.

I've been absent from this group for a few weeks, but I had to show up today to celebrate our newest US Poet Laureate, Joy Harjo, a member of the Mvskoke Creek Nation and our first Native American poet laureate. As a fellow Oklahoman, I feel a connection to her since I have roots in Oklahoma too. 

"In an interview with Laura Coltelli in Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak, Harjo shared the creative process behind her poetry: 'I begin with the seed of an emotion, a place, and then move from there… I no longer see the poem as an ending point, perhaps more the end of a journey, an often long journey that can begin years earlier, say with the blur of the memory of the sun on someone’s cheek, a certain smell, an ache, and will culminate years later in a poem, sifted through a point, a lake in my heart through which language must come.'" I love the idea that a poem can be the end of a long journey that may have begun years earlier.

"Perhaps the World Ends Here," one of several favorites by Joy Harjo, speaks of the importance of the kitchen table:
"At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We 
       pray of suffering and remorse. We give 
       thanks."
It makes me think of the hours I've spent around a kitchen table. You can explore more poems by Joy Harjo here. I look forward to her time as our US Poet Laureate and seeing what she will do as she serves in this position.