Part of 92Y Unterberg Poety Center's Christopher Lightfoot Walker Reading Series, a reading with Joy Harjo in conversation with Rajiv Mohabir.
In her new memoir, Poet Warrior, U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming through stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, and the messengers of a changing earth.
“Joy Harjo has always been able to see with more than her eyes. Her writing is a testament to this gift,” writes Sandra Cisneros. “Her memoir honors her own journey as well as those who fell along the wayside. Her hero’s journey is a gift for all those struggling to make their way.”
Joy Harjo was appointed the new United States poet laureate in June 2019, and is the first Native American Poet Laureate in the history of the position. Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma on May 9, 1951, Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She received a BA from the University of New Mexico before earning an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop in 1978.
Rajiv Mohabir is the author of The Cowherd’s Son (Tupelo Press, 2017), winner of the Kundiman Prize and honorable mention of the Eric Hoffer Book Award; The Taxidermist’s Cut (Four Way Books, 2016) winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry; and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (Kaya Press, 2019) which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award. His memoir won Reckless Books’ 2019 New Immigrant Writing Prize and is forthcoming 2021. He is an Assistant Professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College, translations editor at Waxwing Journal.