Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden appointed Joy Harjo the Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry in June, 2019. Harjo is the first Native American poet to serve in the position – she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Creek Nation. She is also the nation's first Poet Laureate from Oklahoma. Hayden says that Harjo's poems tell “an American story of tradition and loss, reckoning and myth-making. Her work powerfully connects us to the earth and the spiritual world with direct, inventive lyricism that helps us reimagine who we are.”

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Interview with Poet Laureate Joy Harjo »

Image credit: The central gallery of the "Americans" exhibition includes nearly 350 representations of Americans Indians in pop culture at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian. Photo by Paul Morigi, 2018.