Interviews Photo © Matika Wilbur For the 44th Annual Writers Week, the University of California, Riverside Department of Creative Writing, in partnership with the LA Review of Books, honored three US Poets Laureate with Lifetime Achievement Awards: Rita Dove (1993–95), Juan Felipe Herrera (2015–16), and Joy Harjo (2019–present). As part of honoring these poetry luminaries—three visionaries representing barrier breakage in their page, stage, and community work—Crystal AC Salas, third-year MFA student at UCR, interviewed each laureate over phone and Zoom in commemoration of the occasion. To celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of National Poetry Month, in this last of the series of conversations with three US Poets Laureate, Joy Harjo discusses her digital map project, how Native people have been disappeared, and answers the question, What can poetry do? Crystal AC Salas: Who would you say are your ancestors in your legacy of poet as ambassador, community organizer, and activist? How are these ancestors present in your work with the public? Joy Harjo: June Jordan is a poet whose scope and presence encompasses all those terms. She’s not quite an ancestor, but she is almost a generation ahead of me. I met her first through her book of poetry Things That I Do in the Dark. Her activism was always the bedrock of any utterance from her, whether it was poetry or personal essay—her essays are wonderful. I remember when she... Continue reading at 'World Literature Today'
[ World Literature Today | 2021-04-21 15:11:24 UTC ]
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