Griffin Poetry Prize 2016
International Shortlist
Book: Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
Poet: Joy Harjo
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Biography
Joy Harjo is an internationally known performer and writer of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation, the author of ten books of poetry and, most recently, a memoir, Crazy Brave. A critically acclaimed poet, her many honours include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, the William Carlos Williams Award, and the American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
In June 2019, Joy Harjo was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate.
Judges’ Citation
“Joy Harjo has been a crucial figure in American letters for decades, and her latest collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings, presents her at the height of her powers. Intermingling Mvskoke storytelling, rock-and-roll lyrics, cityscapes and personal address, Harjo’s poems are at once sweeping in their concerns and intimate in their tone and approach. Harjo’s is a poetics that is not afraid to speak directly when the moment warrants, nor to refer to traditions – literary traditions, folk traditions, musical traditions – with effortless erudition. Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings is a book of transitions and transformations, inhabiting liminal spaces like hotel rooms and deteriorating natural landscapes. The poems urge engagement, but they also encourage a wider perspective, because for Harjo even ‘the edge between life and death is thinner than a dried animal bladder.’ In the midst of profound change both personal and global, these poems offer guidance and empathy, ceremony and admonishment, wisdom, comfort and song.”
Summary
Joy Harjo’s long-anticipated new collection, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings continues the work we have come to know her for – poems that connect personal experience, nature, the political, the feminist, Native American history and myth, the subconscious. Harjo sees poets as “the workers for justice, / the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, / the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh / meaning.” For Harjo, life, work, and poem cannot really be separated; these poems speak out of the wisdom of all the years of Harjo’s life and poetry, and they speak into the work Harjo sees to be done in the world. These poems are observations and instructions.
Note: Summaries are taken from promotional materials supplied by the publisher, unless otherwise noted.
Joy Harjo reads Equinox
Equinox
I must keep from breaking into the story by force,
If I do I will find a war club in my hand
And the smoke of grief staggering toward the sun,
Your nation dead beside you.I keep walking away though it has been an eternity
And from each drop of blood
Spring up sons and daughters, trees
A mountain of sorrows, of songs.I tell you this from the dusk of a small city in the north
Not far from the birthplace of cars and industry.
Geese are returning to mate and crocuses have
Broken through the frozen earth.Soon they will come for me and I will make my stand
Before the jury of destiny. Yes, I will answer in the clatter
Of the new world, I have broken my addiction to war
And desire.
I have buried the dead, and made songs of the blood,
The marrow.From Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings by Joy Harjo
Copyright © 2015 by Joy Harjo
More about Joy Harjo
The following are links to other Web sites with information about poet Joy Harjo. (Note: All links to external Web sites open in a new browser window.)
- Joy Harjo profile (Poetry Foundation)
- Exclusive: Joy Harjo Speaks on Winning Poetry’s Most Prestigious Award (Indian Country)
- Joy Harjo’s ‘Crazy Brave’ Path To Finding Her Voice (National Public Radio)
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