Joy Harjo

To call Joy Harjo a multihyphenate is both an understatement and the only possible descriptor that even comes close to characterizing this remarkably talented woman. While the current Poet Laureate of the United States is now best known for her poetry, Harjo is also a vocalist, a saxophonist, a flutist, an activist, a mother, a feminist, an environmentalist, and an active member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. In addition to poetry, she has written plays, children’s books, and two memoirs: Crazy Brave and Poet Warrior: A Call for Love and Justice. Harjo has also produced six award-winning albums, including her latest, I Pray for My Enemies (Sunyata Records/Sony Orchard), which dropped in early March.

While none of this success or these accolades came easily, art was always, in some ways, meant to be a part of her journey. To hear Harjo tell it, music and musicality were baked into her DNA from day one. Her mother, Wynema Baker Foster, loved singing, and even recorded some of her own original songs; Harjo recently told Vanity Fair that she believes her sister has these albums in her possession now. “I liked that you could hold music in your hands,” Harjo wrote in Crazy Brave. “It was like holding a spinning world.” Harjo described her mother’s songs as “heartbreak ballads” that likely drew from her mother’s rocky relationships — first, with Harjo’s father, Allen W. Foster, and later, her stepfather.