| Details | Reflecting on a difficult year, Indigenous poets offer inspiration as they recite poems about resilience. The National Museum of the American Indian celebrates National Poetry Month with poetry readings from U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee/Creek), Kealoha (Native Hawaiian), Natalie Diaz (Mojave/Akimel O’otham) and Jamaica Osorio (Native Hawaiian). The event is followed by a discussion with the poets. Available on demand April 9th - April 30th. About the poets:
Joy Harjo
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Joy is the 23rd United States Poet Laureate and the author of nine books of poetry and a memoir. Joy is the recipient of the 2019 Jackson Prize from the Poetry Society of America, the Ruth Lilly Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the 2015 Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She was also the recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Rasmuson United States Artist Fellowship and in 2014 she was inducted into the Oklahoma Writers Hall of Fame. Kealoha
Born and raised in Honolulu, Hawai’i, Kealoha is the first Poet Laureate of Hawai’i. He was selected as a master artist for a National Endowment for the Arts program and received a community inspiration program grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. He is also the founder of HawaiiSlam and has represented Hawaii in the National Poetry Slam competition seven times, performing in the finals four times. Natalie Diaz
Born and raised on the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California, Natalie is a 2018 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, a Lannan Literary Fellow and a Native Arts Council Foundation Artist Fellow. She was awarded a Bread Loaf Fellowship, the Holmes National Poetry Prize, a Hodder Fellowship, and a PEN/Civitella Ranieri Foundation Residency, as well as being awarded a US Artists Ford Fellowship. Diaz teaches at the Arizona State University Creative Writing MFA program. She has published two books of poetry: When My Brother Was an Aztec (Copper Canyon 2014) and Postcolonial Love Poem (Grey Wolf Press 2020). Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist, activist, and scholar born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Heoli earned her PhD in English (Hawaiian literature) in 2018 from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Currently, Heoli is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Heoli is a three-time national poetry champion, poetry mentor and a published author. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA) and New York University (MA). Her book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea is forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press in Fall 2021. |
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