Poet Warrior - A Memoir

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realisations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave (ISBN 978 0 393 34543 8), Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice.

Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child and the messengers of a changing earth-owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife and community member.

Moving fluidly between prose, song and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

About the author

Joy Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She is the author of several poetry collections, memoirs, children’s books, and music albums. She is the recipient of many awards for her creative work, including a National Humanities Medal. She lives in Oklahoma.

Product details

• Authors: Joy Harjo, Harjo Joy
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 11.11.2022
• EAN: 9781324022015
• ISBN: 978-1-324-02201-5
• Dimensions: 140 mm x 211 mm x 18 mm
• Weight: 209 g
• Illustrations: 10 photographs
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature > Letters, diaries; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Literary Figures, Autobiography: general, Memoirs, Indigenous Peoples, Autobiography: literary, Autobiography: writers, Relating to Native American people, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Memoirs, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Native American Studies, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Cultural & Regional, BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Indigenous, Relating to Native American people / First Americans