I love poetry, and I've spent too many years not letting myself enjoy it, shoving it aside for insignificant trifles like, oh, I don't know, survival. But everything she says about it resonates powerfully with me.

“Joy Harjo has championed the art of poetry—‘soul talk’ as she calls it—for over four decades,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden in a press release. “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.”

“I share this honor with ancestors and teachers who inspired in me a love of poetry, who taught that words are powerful and can make change when understanding appears impossible, and how time and timelessness can live together within a poem,” said Harjo of her appointment. 

"Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite." Congrats to Joy Harjo our first Native American Poet Laureate!

See full article here at Poets&Writers .