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POEM "BLESS THIS LAND" BY NATIVE AMERICAN POET LAUREATE JOY HARJO



JOY HARJO, born in 1951 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. In June 2019, the poet, musician, playwright, and author was the first Native American to be named United States Poet Laureate.


After attending high school at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Harjo earned her BA at the University of New Mexico in 1976 where she began writing poetry as a member of the university’s Native student organization. She completed her MFA at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1978.


While performing music and poetry nationally and internationally, Harjo has taught English, Creative Writing, and American Indian Studies at the University of California-Los Angeles, University of New Mexico, University of Arizona, Arizona State University, University of Illinois, University of Colorado, University of Hawai'i, Institute of American Indian Arts, and University of Tennessee.


Harjo is the author of ten books of poetry which include:

• Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years (2022)

• An American Sunrise (2019), winner of the 2020 Oklahoma Book Award

• Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), shortlisted for the Griffin Prize and named Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association, and

• In Mad Love and War (1990), winner of an American Book Award and the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Award.


Her 2013 memoir, Crazy Brave, was awarded the PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Non-Fiction and the American Book Award.


She is Executive Editor of the 2020 anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and the Editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry.


As a critically acclaimed poet, Harjo has received several honors and awards. These include:

• Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry

• Lifetime Achievement Award from Americans for the Arts (2022)

• United States Poet Laureate 2019-2022

• Ruth Lilly Prize for Lifetime Achievement from the Poetry Foundation (2017)

• Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets (2015) • American Indian Distinguished Achievement in the Arts Award, and

• Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers' Circle of Americas (1995).


Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and is a founding board member and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She has recently been inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the American Philosophical Society, the National Native American Hall of Fame, and the National Woman’s Hall of Fame.


She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence of the Bob Dylan Center.



Photo Credit: Shawn Miller

Source: Poet's Website at www.joyharjo.com



BLESS THIS LAND BY JOY HARJO



Bless this land from the top of its head to the bottom of its feet


From the arctic old white head to the brown feet of tropical rain


Bless the eyes of this land, for they witness cruelty and kindness in this land


From sunrise light upright to falling down on your knees night


Bless the ears of this land, for they hear cries of heartbreak and shouts of celebration in this land


Once we heard no gunshot on these lands the trees and stones can be heard singing


Bless the mouth, lips and speech of this land, for the land is a speaker, a singer, a keeper of all that happens here, on this land


Luminous forests, oceans, and rock cliff sold for the trash glut of gold, uranium, or oil bust rush yet there are new stories to be made, little ones coming up over the horizon


Bless the arms and hands of this land, for they remake and restore beauty in this land


We were held in the circle around these lands by song, and reminded by the knowers that not one is over the other, no human above the bird, no bird above the insect, no wind above the grass


Bless the heart of this land on its knees planting food beneath the eternal circle of breathing, swimming and walking this land


The heart is a poetry maker. There is one heart, said the poetry maker, one body and all poems make one poem and we do not use words to make war on this land


Bless the gut labyrinth of this land, for it is the center of unknowing in this land



BLESS THIS LAND continued



Bless the femaleness and maleness of this land, for each holds the fluent power of becoming in this land


When it was decided to be in this manner here in this place, this land, all the birds made a birdly racket from indigo sky holds


Bless the two legs and two feet of this land, for the sacred always walks beside the profane in this land


These words walk the backbone of this land, massaging the tissue around the cord of life, which is the tree of life, upon which this land stands


Bless the destruction of this land, for new shoots will rise up from fire, floods, earthquakes and fierce winds to make new this land


We are land on turtle's back—when the weight of greed overturns us, who will recall the upright song of this land


Bless the creation of new land, for out of chaos we will be compelled to remember to bless this land


The smallest one remembered, the most humble one, the one whose voice you'd have to lean in a thousand years to hear—we will begin there


Bless us, these lands, said the rememberer. These lands aren't our lands. These lands aren't your lands. We are this land.


And the blessing began a graceful moving through the grasses of time, from the beginning, to the circling around place of time, always moving, always





Source: An American Sunrise: Poems by Joy Harjo, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, USA, 2019, pp. 106-108.