Joy Harjo On When She Realized Poetry Has Power

An award like this causes you to look back and reflect on your own career. Did you do that when you heard the news?

It happens at times. I don’t think about it too much; I just do what I love doing. I spoke at Oxford three months ago, and I do remember being at the Charlotte airport being like, “Oh my god, I just spoke at Oxford.” I remember being a teenage mother in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, and walking around pregnant thinking, “Man, I’ve got myself in a mess.” I was banished from home. But you just listen, and it’s sometimes not easy, but you take those steps. The first time I ever came to New York was in the late ’70s. Ishmael Reed brought me in with a lot of other poets and writers; It was really exciting.

Do you remember the moment where you really clicked with poetry as your artform?

As a little kid, I knew I was going to be an artist. I always loved reading, poetry, and music through my mother. But the idea of being a poet—what poets were in our neighborhood? My dad worked at American Airlines, so it wasn’t really considered a vocation—and it still isn’t. To be an artist—a designer, a poet, or a comedian—it’s a kind of calling. We don’t always understand it, nor do others always understand who we are, and what we do. While I was an undergrad at the University of New Mexico, I was an art major, and I heard contemporary Native poets for the first time. Suddenly, I was in those circles, and I started writing my own. We all have gifts that are almost folded up, and they’re placed in between the heart and where your spirit lives, and then they unfold at different times. They need a way out. That’s where addiction comes in: If you don’t take care of it and allow it to grow, then it damages you, your family, and your community, because those gifts are given to share.

When did you start realizing that poetry can empower Indigenous people?

I started working in local Native communities, working in social justice, human rights. I remember going into a lot of meetings and listening to testimonies of the older Native people, who spoke so eloquently. They were filled with history and a deeply-embedded sense of spirituality. You watch all of these injustices that our peoples have gone through, and you start thinking, “By the time I get to the end of my life, I want Native people to be seen as human beings.” It’s exciting to be at this point in my life, and to watch this flowering.