Past U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo Visits HVCC on Nov. 6

October 17, 2024

World-renowned poet, author and performer of the Muscogee Nation

Joy Harjo, an award-winning poet and author who served three terms as the U.S. Poet Laureate, will visit Hudson Valley Community College on Wednesday, Nov. 6, for an event to commemorate National Native American Heritage Month. The 11 a.m. talk in the BTC Auditorium on the Troy campus will include Q&A and a book signing. The event is free and open to the public.

The author of 10 books of poetry, several plays, children’s books and two memoirs, Harjo is a recipient of Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Prize and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, honorary past chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation and the inaugural artist-in-residence for the Bob Dylan Center that opened in 2022 in Harjo’s hometown of Tulsa, OK.

Harjo’s poems are described as musical, intimate, political and wise, intertwining ancestral memory and tribal histories with resilience and love. “Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years” was published in 2022. As a musician and performer, she has produced several award-winning albums. The latest release is “I Pray for My Enemies” (2021).

This event is co-sponsored by the Cultural Affairs Program and the English, Foreign Languages and English as a Second Language Department. Reservations are requested; please visit www.hvcc.edu/culture.

Contact Debby Gardner at d.gardner@hvcc.edu or (518) 629-8071 for more information. If you require reasonable accommodation or an interpreter, please contact the Center for Access and Assistive Technology at caat@hvcc.edu, (518) 629-7154, TDD (518) 629-7596.