A Conversation with US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo

NATIONAL POETRY MONTH: US POET LAUREATE JOY HARJO IN CONVERSATION WITH PLAYWRIGHT MADELINE SAYET AT INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF ARTS & IDEAS

Event part of broader suite of NEA Big Read Programming

The International Festival of Arts & Ideas is honored to feature United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo in conversation with playwright and director Madeline Sayet. Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate and a member of the Muscogee Nation, will reflect on her award-winning body of work, which includes nine books of poetry, two memoirs, and six music albums. With Sayet, a member of the Mohegan Tribe, she will focus on her acclaimed poetry collection An American Sunrise: Poems, the Festival’s selection for the 2021 NEA Big Read. The conversation will be presented on May 20, 2021 at 5pm, and streamed on Facebook Live, Youtube, and Twitch.

Harjo’s poems sing of beauty and survival, illuminating a spirituality that connects her to her ancestors and thrums with the quiet anger of living amid the ruins of injustice. A descendant of storytellers and “one of our finest—and most complicated—poets” (Los Angeles Review of Books), Harjo continues her legacy with An American Sunrise: Poems. 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, Harjo returns to her family’s lands and opens a dialogue with history, confronting the site where her people, and other indigenous families, essentially disappeared. She interweaves her personal life with tribal histories to create a space for renewed beginnings.

“Joy Harjo reminds us that creative voice is both sustenance and a means to liberation,” says Festival Executive Director Shelley Quiala. “In An American Sunrise, she offers a complex and beautiful intersection of despair, abundance and renewal. In this intense time of change and reckoning, her voice provides a clear reminder that the interconnectedness of our past, present and future nourish our imaginations.”

Every year, the Festival partners with NEA Big Read to host a series of events focused on a single book as a point of departure for conversations throughout New Haven. An initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest, the NEA Big Read broadens our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book.

This summer, the Festival will partner with the New Haven community to offer free events highlighting the book’s themes; past events have included book club discussions, panel discussions, lectures, exhibitions, and poetry readings. This year’s programming will include Native Writers in Conversation, a panel discussion on New England’s rich Indigenous literary traditions, an Indigenous food workshop, and programming in partnership with the New Haven Museum New Haven Free Public Library, and New Haven Pride Center.

More info on the Joy Harjo event, NEA Big Read programming, and Festival 2021 can be found at artidea.org.