“I am still listening”: A conversation with Joy Harjo
At 15, my godmother, a professor of English and friend of Joy Harjo’s, gifted me with a copy of She Had Some Horses. On the title page I found an inscription along with Harjo’s signature: “Katy — May you always have horses.”
I flipped through that thin gray book and dog-eared all the pages with poems that explicitly mentioned horses (yes, I was a horse girl back in the day). I read those poems before anybody taught me how to read a poem — how to give each word its due, ask the right questions, unearth answers from between the lines. I read them with a young reader’s unquestioning favor for the literal. And yet, I was instantly mystified.
In hindsight, I believe that may have been the last time I read poetry without the questions of the “educated” rattling in my head, without judgment or expectation. I read the title poem again and again as a child so I could return, five years later, and read it as a student of writing and literature. As Harjo writes in her memoir Crazy Brave, “The door to the mind should open only from the heart.”
Reading Harjo’s work with my heart first and my head second showed me what it means to be intimate with a piece of writing, how to hear it out before drawing conclusions. It showed me that poetry deserves to be absorbed through the collective efforts of the senses. Joy Harjo and her horses taught me what it means, truly, to listen.
Interview date: Feb. 24, 2019
KC: Imagine you’re a senior in college again, seeing yourself and your life today. What would surprise you most about your life and career now?
JH: I was involved in quite the balancing act then. I was a single mother with two children. I was working and attending college full time. And I had changed my major from studio art to poetry. I was advised by everyone, friends and family, that I was foolish. How was I going to make a living? I had a family to support. I was advised to take education classes so I could teach in public schools because I would always have a job. I trusted what my spirit told me. It doesn’t mean that it made it any easier. And at times I thought maybe I was foolish as it was a struggle to write, publish, and find my place, to make a living. I was not entrenched in a particular school of poetry, and that made it difficult to see me, to identify me. As Mark Strand pronounced from the stage at the University of New Mexico when he lectured there, in response to a question from the audience, “There are no Native American poets.” This was what we Natives who were writing poetry in the late seventies, early eighties were dealing with, a certain dismissal or invisibility. I also found a community with feminist writers. We had the experience of being female in a culture and traditions in which women and women’s contributions were less valued. Often though I was the only Native, or one of few. The movement was primarily Euro-American women and their social realities were often very, very different from that of indigenous women. In the best moments, we educated each other. In the worst, Natives were disappeared. I was mentored by the poets Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, Leslie Silko, and Meridel LeSueur. What a circle of teachers!
KC: How does the feminism you imagined in the 1970s compare to the feminism you see now?
JH: We were and are about the empowerment of women. There have been many changes, and yet, at moments, it seems that nothing has changed at all. Yet to see Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland, the first Native women elected to Congress, tells me that all of our collective work made a difference. It did matter.
KC: You once told Contemporary Authors that we are “co-creators” on Earth. What do you hope to help “co-create” in the world?
JH: We are essentially Earth. If you look from the moon, you see that the earth is a person. Each of us creates or destroys. And sometimes destruction is needed to make room for creation — in natural and social systems. We are all essentially co-creating. In my time left I have more poetry, a musical, music albums, paintings, and a cultural regeneration for the Mvskoke people.
KC: Do you have any advice for young poets?
JH: The art of poetry, any art discipline, any scientific or social discipline relies on listening. Even repairing vehicles. It’s all about listening. Take those earbuds, earphones out of your ears, move away from the screen, and practice listening. And trust in yourself. The best advice ever given to me was from a wise soul from Isleta Pueblo. She said, “Be yourself.” It sounds simple. It was profound. I am still listening.
Joy Harjo is a Native American poet, author, musician, and recipient of numerous fellowships and literary awards, such as the prestigious Ruth Lilly Prize and Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Her works include How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems 1975–2002 (2004), Crazy Brave: A Memoir (2012), and most recently, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015).
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, Harjo earned her B.A. from the University of New Mexico and her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Harjo’s work draws on indigenous myths, histories, symbols, and values and often incorporates themes of feminism and social justice. Above all, Harjo is a storyteller, emphasizing the limitations of language and the necessity of remembrance.
Harjo visited Yale for a reading and performance hosted by the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program (YIPAP) at the Center for British Art on Mar. 5, 2019.
