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I first encountered Joy Harjo, member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, at the Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in the late 1990s.

At an offsite event she read some poems, then sang and played her saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice. I was transfixed. I picked up a book of her poetry, “In Mad Love and War” (Wesleyan University Press, 1990), which she signed and inscribed, “For Chris, For Justice, For Love.”

I have carried that book with me through every move, every bookshelf culling, every physical and emotional transformation since. At a time when I was just beginning to appreciate poetry, Harjo’s work became a touchstone against which pretty much everything else would be measured. The poetry of other writers has come and gone, but Harjo’s work has remained lodged deep in my heart.

Joy Harjo was named U.S. poet laureate in June 2019. She is the first American Indian to hold that position, and she embodies everything a poet should. She is a fierce writer. She is a fierce advocate and defender of social justice. She is a fierce member of a proud Indigenous people. She is everything a people could want in an elder, wise and generous, but also a little frightening. That we have had to wait so long to have one of us as poet laureate (I am Chippewa-Cree Métis, enrolled with the Little Shell Tribe) is beside the point.