Musicality of Poetry Festival X
Guild Complex
After a rousing opening night kickoff event with Sonia Sanchez in January, Musicality of Poetry X continues with the music and poetic vibrations of Joy Harjo with Poetic Justice and a reading with longtime friend of Guild complex, Elise Paschen.
After a rousing opening night kickoff event with Sonia Sanchez in January, Musicality of Poetry X continues with the music and poetic vibrations of Joy Harjo with Poetic Justice and a reading with longtime friend of Guild complex, Elise Paschen.
Joy Harjo?s blend of sensibility and spirituality make her a favorite around the world. She is an extraordinary poet, storyteller and sax player whomixes genres and crosses boundaries. Her books of poetry include A Map to the Next World: Poems (W.W. Norton); TheWoman Who Fell From the Sky, In Mad Love and War, which received an American Book Award, Secrets from the Center of the World; She Had Some Horses; and What Moon drove Me to This? She also performs her poetry and plays saxophone with her band, Poetic Justice. Her many honors include The American Indian Disdinguished achievement in the Arts sward, the Josephine Miles Poetry Award, and the William Carlos Williams Award. Joy Harjo and Poetic Justice – The term poetic justice is a term of grace expressing how justice can appear in the world despite forces of confusion and destruction. The band takes its name from this term because we have worked for justice in our lives and the lives of our peoples, through music, through any means possible. This music is influenced by Mvskoke, Navajo, Northern Plains and other tribal music, as well as reggae, a music born of the indomitable spirit of a tribal people in a colonized land; jazz, amusic born of the need to sing by African people in this country; and rock and blues, musics brought into being by Africans, the sourthern tribes and European immigrants. Distinguished poet Elise Paschen is the author of Houses: Coasts (Oxford: Sycamore Press) and Infidelities (Story Line Press), winner of the Nicholas Roerich Poetry Prize. Her poems have been published in the New Yorker,The New Republic, Poetry Magazine and in numerous anthologies, including Reinventing the Enemy?s Language: Contemporary Native Women?s Writings of North America (Norton) and A Formal Feeling comes: Poems in form by Contemporary Women (Story Line). Co-Editor of Poetry in Motion (Norton), Elise is a Frances Allen Fellow at the Newberry Library in Chicago. Elise Paschen has been president of The Poetry Society of America Guild Complex? tenth Annual Musicality of Poetry Festival is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, Joy Harjo?s performance is co-sponsored by Literature for All of Us.Performers
Joy Harjo and her band Poetic Justice
With a special reading from Elise Paschen