English: Poetry

“Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry—‘soul talk’ as she calls it—for over four decades,” Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden said. “To her, poems are ‘carriers of dreams, knowledge and wisdom,’ and through them she tells an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making. Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are.”

Harjo currently lives in her hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and is the nation’s first Poet Laureate from Oklahoma. She is the first Native American Poet Laureate of the USA.

Tracy K. Smith, a writer and teacher, took on a very public role as the nation's poet laureate. Jeffrey Brown sat down with Smith to discuss how language can be a tool of revelation, her reflections on race in America, her teaching philosophy, and why we still need poetry.

“Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.”

            —Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel