Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry

Joy Harjo, the first Native poet to serve as U.S. Poet Laureate, has championed the voices of Native peoples past and present. Her signature laureate project gathers the work of contemporary Native 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--including Natalie Diaz, Ray Young Bear, Craig Santos Perez, Sherwin Bitsui, and Layli Long Soldier, among others--to offer readers a chance to hold the wealth of poems in their hands. The chosen poems reflect on the theme of place and displacement and circle the touchpoints of visibility, persistence, resistance, and acknowledgment. Each poem showcases, as Joy Harjo writes in her stirring introduction, "that heritage is a living thing, and there can be no heritage without land and the relationships that outline our kinship." In this country, poetry is rooted in the more than five hundred living indigenous nations. Living Nations, Living Words is a representative offering.

Author: Joy Harjo
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 05/04/2021
Pages: 240
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.6lbs
Size: 8.30h x 6.20w x 0.60d
ISBN: 9780393867916


Review Citation(s):
Booklist 04/15/2021 pg. 13

About the Author
Harjo, Joy: - Joy Harjo is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She is the author of nine poetry collections and one previous memoir, Crazy Brave. Named Poet Laureate of the United States in 2019, she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow.