Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo is an internationally known poet, writer and musician. She is the author of seven books of poetry, including “She Had Some Horses,” “In Mad Love and War,” and “The Woman Who Fell From the Sky.” Her most recent collection is “How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems.”

Inspired to create new poetic forms, Harjo combines her words with music, both vocally and through her saxophone. Her CDs include “Letter from the End of the 20th Century,” “Native Joy for Real” and “She Had Some Horses.”

Harjo is also the recipient of numerous awards such as the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award; the 1998 Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Award; the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas; and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America.

Born into the Muscogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma in 1951, Harjo lives in Honolulu, Hawaii. She is currently the Joseph M. Russo endowed professor at the University of New Mexico in creative writing through the fall of 2007.

Transcript: Joy Harjo

Joy Harjo reads and performs her poetry in this web exclusive clip: