Joy Harjo, the first Native American poet to serve as US Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native American peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary poets into a national, fully digital map of story, sound and space, celebrating their vital and unequivocal contributions to American poetry. This companion anthology features each poem and poet from the project to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. With work from Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, Layli Long Soldier, among others, Living Nations, Living Words showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "poetry [that] emerges from the soul of a community, the heart and lands of the people. In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than 500 living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering."

United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo gathers the work of more than 160 poets, representing nearly 100 indigenous nations, into one momentous volume. This landmark anthology celebrates the indigenous peoples of North America, the first poets of this country, whose literary traditions stretch back centuries. Opening with a blessing from Pulitzer Prize winner N. Scott Momaday, the book contains powerful introductions from contributing editors who represent the five geographically organised sections. Each section begins with a poem from the massive libraries of oral literatures and closes with emerging poets, ranging from Eleazar, a seventeenth-century Native student at Harvard, to Jake Skeets, a young Dineh poet born in 1991, and including renowned writers such as Natalie Diaz, Tommy Pico, Layli Long Soldier and Ray Young Bear. In When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through, Harjo offers the extraordinary sweep of Native literature.

A groundbreaking survey of contemporary Indigenous art and its enduring connections to the land The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans brings together works by many of today’s most boldly innovative Native American artists. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, one of the leading artists and curators of her generation, has carefully chosen some fifty works across a diversity of practices—including weaving, beadwork, sculpture, painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, performance, and video—that share the common thread of the land. This beautifully illustrated book features both well-known and emerging artists, from G. Peter Jemison (Seneca Nation of Indians, Heron Clan) and Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma/European descent) to Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) and Rose B. Simpson (Pueblo of Santa Clara, New Mexico). Smith brings her personal perspective to the Native American experience and Indigenous connections to the land. In her essay, heather ahtone examines the history and practices of landscape art, shedding light on how it is both a tool for self-expression and a means to understanding the natural world. Celebrated poet and memoirist Joy Harjo pays homage to the land in her poem “Once the World Was Perfect.� Shana Bushyhead Condill discusses the themes and practices that distinguish these artworks. The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans shares new perspectives on these visionary and provocative artists while offering a timely celebration of contemporary Indigenous art. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC Exhibition Schedule National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC September 22, 2023–January 15, 2024 New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut April 18–September 15, 2024

"Revelatory and sublime...Her work remains conceptually open enough for viewers to draw their own conclusions, insert their own meaning and feel transported to other glorious worlds." -The New York Times One of the most inventive artists of the twentieth century, Hilma af Klint was a pioneer of abstraction. Her first forays into her imaginative non-objective painting long preceded the work of Kandinsky and Mondrian and radically mined the fields of science and religion. Deeply interested in spiritualism and philosophy, af Klint developed an iconography that explores esoteric concepts in metaphysics, as demonstrated in Tree of Knowledge. This rarely seen series of watercolors renders orbital, enigmatic forms, visual allegories of unification and separateness, darkness and light, beginning and end, life and death, and spirit and matter. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Hilma af Klint: Tree of Knowledge at David Zwirner New York in 2021 and David Zwirner London in 2022, this catalogue features a text by the art historian Susan Aberth examining af Klint's spiritual and anthroposophical influences. With a conversation between the curator Helen Molesworth and the US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo discussing connections between Tree of Knowledge and native theories about plant knowledge, the publication broadens the scope of philosophical interpretations of af Klint's timeless work. Also included is a newly commissioned essay by the celebrated af Klint scholar Julia Voss, a contribution by the artist Suzan Frecon, and a text by art historian Max Rosenberg that further develops the conversation around why af Klint's work was not recognized in its time.

An anthology edited by acclaimed poets Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis. In 1997, Sarabande published Last Call, a poetry anthology that became a formative text on the lived experiences of addiction. Now, more than twenty-five years later, editors Kaveh Akbar and Paige Lewis offer this companion volume for a new generation. Another Last Call: Poems on Addiction & Deliverance showcases work from poets like Joy Harjo, Afaa M. Weaver, Diane Seuss, Layli Long Soldier, Sharon Olds, Jericho Brown, Ada Limón, and Ocean Vuong, as well as many new and powerful voices. Contributors: Samuel Ace, Chase Berggrun, Sherwin Bitsui, Sophie Cabot Black, Jericho Brown, Anthony Ceballos, Marianne Chan, Jos Charles, Brendan Constantine, Cynthia Cruz, Steven Espada Dawson, Megan Denton Ray, Martín Espada, Megan Fernandes, Sarah Gorham, Joy Harjo, Mary Karr, Sophie Klahr, Michael Klein, Dana Levin, Ada Limón, Zach Linge, Layli Long Soldier, Sharon Olds, Airea Dee Matthews, Joshua Mehigan, Tomás Q. Morín, Erin Noehrem, Joy Priest, Dana Roeser, sam sax, Diane Seuss, Natalie Shapero, Katie Jean Shinkle, Jeffrey Skinner, Bernardo Wade, Afaa M. Weaver, The Cyborg Jillian Weise, Phillip B. Williams, Ocean Vuong

The author of Fool's Crow and Indian Lawyer presents an extraordinary, evocative novel about a young Native American coming to terms with his heritage--and his dreams. "A nearly flawless novel about human life".--Reynolds Price, New York Times Book Review.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and "one of our finest-and most complicated-poets" (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

In this transcendent memoir, grounded in tribal myth and ancestry, music and poetry, Joy Harjo, one of our leading Native American voices, details her journey to becoming a poet. Born in Oklahoma, the end place of the Trail of Tears, Harjo grew up learning to dodge an abusive stepfather by finding shelter in her imagination, a deep spiritual life, and connection with the natural world. She attended an Indian arts boarding school, where she nourished an appreciation for painting, music, and poetry; gave birth while still a teenager; and struggled on her own as a single mother, eventually finding her poetic voice. Narrating the complexities of betrayal and love, Crazy Brave is a memoir about family and the breaking apart necessary in finding a voice. Harjo s tale of a hardscrabble youth, young adulthood, and transformation into an award-winning poet and musician is haunting, unique, and visionary."

This collection gathers poems from throughout Joy Harjo's twenty-eight-year career, beginning in 1973 in the age marked by the takeover at Wounded Knee and the rejuvenation of indigenous cultures in the world through poetry and music. How We Became Human explores its title question in poems of sustaining grace.

First published in 1983 and now considered a classic, She Had Some Horses is a powerful exploration of womanhood's most intimate moments. Joy Harjo's poems speak of women's despair, of their imprisonment and ruin at the hands of men and society, but also of their awakenings, power, and love.

In these poems, the joys and struggles of the everyday are played against the grinding politics of being human. Beginning in a hotel room in the dark of a distant city, we travel through history and follow the memory of the Trail of Tears from the bend in the Tallapoosa River to a place near the Arkansas River. Stomp dance songs, blues and jazz ballads echo throughout. Lost ancestors are recalled. Resilient songs are born, even as they grieve the loss of their country. Called a "magician and a master" (San Francisco Chronicle), Joy Harjo is at the top of her form in Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings.

In the second memoir from the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, Joy Harjo invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses and humble realisations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic meditation, Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Weaving together the voices that shaped her, Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child, the teachings of a changing earth and the poets who paved her way. She explores her grief at the loss of her mother and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife and community member. Moving fluidly among prose, song and poetry, Poet Warrior is a luminous journey of becoming that sings with all the jazz, blues, tenderness and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

In the early 1800s, the Mvskoke people were forcibly removed from their original lands east of the Mississippi to Indian Territory, which is now part of Oklahoma. Two hundred years later, Joy Harjo returns to her family's lands and opens a dialogue with history. In An American Sunrise, Harjo finds blessings in the abundance of her homeland and confronts the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. From her memory of her mother's death, to her beginnings in the native rights movement, to the fresh road with her beloved, Harjo's personal life intertwines with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings. Her poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living in the ruins of injustice. A descendent of storytellers and "one of our finest-and most complicated-poets" (Los Angeles Review of Books), Joy Harjo continues her legacy with this latest powerful collection.

U.S. Poet Laureate and winner of the 2022 Academy of American Poets Leadership Award Joy Harjo examines the power of words and how poetry summons us toward justice and healing   “Her enduring message—that writing can be redemptive—resonates: ‘To write is to make a mark in the world, to assert “I am.�’ The result is a rousing testament to the power of storytelling.�—Publishers Weekly   “Harjo writes as if the creative journey has been the destination all along.�—Kirkus Reviews   In this lyrical meditation about the why of writing poetry, Joy Harjo reflects on significant points of illumination, experience, and questioning from her fifty years as a poet. Composed of intimate vignettes that take us through the author’s life journey as a youth in the late 1960s, a single mother, and a champion of Native nations, this book offers a fresh understanding of how poetry functions as an expression of purpose, spirit, community, and memory—in both the private, individual journey and as a vehicle for prophetic, public witness.   Harjo insists that the most meaningful poetry is birthed through cracks in history from what is broken and unseen. At the crossroads of this brokenness, she calls us to watch and listen for the songs of justice for all those America has denied. This is an homage to the power of words to defy erasure—to inscribe the story, again and again, of who we have been, who we are, and who we can be.

"I fell in love with these poems, with their clarity and light, their wisdom born somewhere between sky and earth."—Sandra Cisneros

Joy Harjo, one of this country's foremost Native American voices, combines elements of storytelling, prayer, and song, informed by her interest in jazz and by her North American tribal background, in this, her fourth volume of poetry. She draws from the Native American tradition of praising the land and the spirit, the realities of American culture, and the concept of feminine individuality.

"I turn and return to Harjo's poetry for her breathtaking, complex witness and for her world-remaking language: precise, unsentimental, miraculous."—Adrienne Rich

Over a long, influential career in poetry, Joy Harjo has been praised for her "warm, oracular voice" (John Freeman, Boston Globe) that speaks "from a deep and timeless source of compassion for all" (Craig Morgan Teicher, NPR). Her poems are musical, intimate, political, and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo's inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo's "poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times" (Sandra Cisneros, Millions).

Joy Harjo, the first Native American to serve as US poet laureate, invites us to travel along the heartaches, losses, and humble realisations of her "poet-warrior" road. A musical, kaleidoscopic and wise follow-up to Crazy Brave (ISBN 978 0 393 34543 8), Poet Warrior reveals how Harjo came to write poetry of compassion and healing, poetry with the power to unearth the truth and demand justice. Harjo listens to stories of ancestors and family, the poetry and music that she first encountered as a child and the messengers of a changing earth-owls heralding grief, resilient desert plants and a smooth green snake curled up in surprise. She celebrates the influences that shaped her poetry, among them Audre Lorde, N. Scott Momaday, Walt Whitman, Muscogee stomp dance call-and-response, Navajo horse songs, rain and sunrise. In absorbing, incantatory prose, Harjo grieves at the loss of her mother, reckons with the theft of her ancestral homeland and sheds light on the rituals that nourish her as an artist, mother, wife and community member. Moving fluidly between prose, song and poetry, Harjo recounts a luminous journey of becoming, a spiritual map that will help us all find home. Poet Warrior sings with the jazz, blues, tenderness and bravery that we know as distinctly Joy Harjo.

Joy Harjo is a powerful voice for her Creek (Muscogee) tribe ("a stolen people in a stolen land"), for other oppressed people, and for herself. Her poems, both sacred ad secular, are written with the passions of anger, grief, and love, at once tender and furious. They are rooted in the land; they are one with the deer and the fox, the hawk and the eagle, the sun, moon, and wind, and the seasons - "spring/ was lean and hungry with he hope of children and corn." There are enemies here, also lovers; there are ghost dancers, ancestors old and new, who rise again "to walk in shoes of fire."
Indeed, fire and its aftermath is a constant image in the burning book. Skies are "incendiary"; the "smoke of dawn" turns enemies into ashes: "I am fire eaten by wind." "Your fire scorched/ my lips." "I am lighting the fire that crawls from my spine/ to the gods with a coal from my sister's flame."
But the spirit of this book is not consumed. It is not limited by mad love or war, and "there is something larger than the memory/ of a dispossessed people." That something larger is, for example, revolution, freedom, birth.

"My house is the red earth; it could be the center of the world." This is Navajo country, a land of mysterious and delicate beauty. "Stephen Strom's photographs lead you to that place," writes Joy Harjo. "The camera eye becomes a space you can move through into the powerful landscapes that he photographs. The horizon may shift and change all around you, but underneath it is the heart with which we move." Harjo's prose poems accompany these images, interpreting each photograph as a story that evokes the spirit of the Earth. Images and words harmonize to evoke the mysteries of what the Navajo call the center of the world.

With the recently-published The Woman Who Fell from the Sky , Joy Harjo has emerged as one of the most powerful Native American voices of her generation. Over the past two decades, Harjo has refined and perfected a unique poetic voice that speaks her multifaceted experience as Native American, woman and Westerner in twentieth-century society. The Spiral of Memory gathers the conversations in which Harjo has articulated her singular yet universal perspective on the world and her poetry. She reflects upon the nuances and development of her art, the importance of her origins, the arduous reconstruction of the tribal past, the dramatic confrontation between Native American and Anglo civilizations, the existential and artistic itinerary through present-day America, and other provocative and profoundly human themes. Joy Harjo is the author of several volumes of poetry. She received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Before Columbus Foundation, and the Poetry Society of America. She is Professor of English, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque. Laura Coltelli is Associate Professor of American Literature, University of Pisa.