Birthday Eve

...a time of evaluation and giving thanks. My experience in the world grows more complex. The simple truths deeper and more defined. Mvto out there for all those who have touched my life. In this Internet age this includes the blog circle.

Crazy Brave River Writing Journey in September

UTAH RIVER WRITING WITH PAGE LAMBERT and JOY HARJO

Sept. 10-13, 2013

Westwater Canyon, Colorado River 

4-days 

Women-only river trip with special guest Mvskoke (Creek) Nation writer and musician Joy Harjo.  This trip celebrates Joy’s new memoir Crazy Brave. Her seven books of poetry include She Had Some Horses, The Woman Who Fell From the Sky, and How We Became Human, New and Selected Poems.  Professional outfitter Sheri Griffith Expeditions provides all food/equipment.  No cooking, just write, float, and relax, and visit with like-hearted women.  Moderate fitness level. $1199.  

$300 deposit holds your space. 

Details: http://www.pagelambert.com/river2013.html

PDF Flyer

Joy Harjo at 2013 Pen America in New York

Joy Harjo: A Preview (Interview)

http://www.pen.org/interview/joy-harjo-preview

April 29

PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

NYC Open Night Reading: Bravery 7-8:30PM

May 1 

PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

Speaking in Languages on the Edge 9:30-11 pm

May 3  

PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature

Obsession: Joy Harjo on Time

More information: http://www.joyharjo.com/Calendar.html

Broken Song

Fragmented poetry and interrupted forms could be the natural creation of poetry shards, evidence of a world broken apart, or shredded meaning.

Disappointment and Determination

Yesterday the National Council of the Muscogee Nation turned down money to help start an arts council to benefit all tribal members. It was a bare bones budget.It would have resulted in an online almanac of Mvskoke artists, an assessment of the state of Mvskoke arts and artists, an examination of other indigenous models, a five year strategic plan, finding the best housing in the tribe, a look at funding sources, and several artist projects involving youth and master artists.

 I will meet with my working group and every member of the council, and we will try again. We will need the support and presence of everyone in the tribe who believes in the power of arts to express the spirit of the people, to renew.

"Things fall apart" and then they find a way to keep moving with beautiful integrity. I believe that vnvketka/love is the truth holding up the story matrix.

Fierce, flower star.            c Joy Harjo
Hollyhock power--
Has many healing properties.

Maverick Muscogee Nation News Column Feb 2013

(I decided to write a monthly Muscogee Nation News Column though I no longer do them. I used to write them as an unpaid service for the Nation. The paper discontinued them. Here goes--here's a maverick MNN column. Enjoy.)

It’s one of those late winter mornings in the Creek Nation. Light patches of snow dot the ground make me think about patterning. There is some order to how the snow catches and holds but I can’t quite see it from the perspective of the glass doors in the kitchen.

I was recently at the Ucross Foundation, at a ranch outside Sheridan, Wyoming, holed up writing.  One day it snowed all day. On the drive from the writing studio to the residence the wind had drifted the snow into elegant, undulating patterns. The snow was about three feet deep by early evening and we slowly plowed through it. We admired the patterns. They created beauty in our minds, a kind of snow music.

The patterns of snowfall this morning make no beautiful sense. What they tell me is that the flashing signs on highway 75 from Tulsa to Glenpool were wrong. There was no need to take cover for a blizzard.

Being a weather prophet is a tough business.  The meteorologist reads the signs from gadgets that report barometric pressure, temperature and other details. They now have sophisticated satellite images from which to read. Every one of us has this information on non-stop streaming weather channels. A storm may be approaching from the west in a discernible pattern, marching slowly across the land or making some kind of wind-driven haphazard trail. Often we’re right in our predictions, and just as often we can be wrong, though some of us learn to catch the rhythms more precisely.

One of my favorite classes in all of my experience as a student from kindergarten through college was a physics class in junior high. We leaned how to fly to the moon. We also learned how to tell the weather using various gauges. I learned that if you developed your gauge reading skills and watched the patterns you could get a pretty good sense of prevailing conditions and what shape they were likely to take. Since then I’ve learned that birds, animals and plants are probably a little sharper than civilized humans when it comes to such things, and seem to know what’s going on ahead of the arc.

However you do it, we read patterns and make predictions. The storm will either get here or not, and ultimately it has its own mind. Yes, even a storm has a kind of mind that guides it.

When I look back over my life from the perspective of now, I see both elegant waves and chaotic patches of trouble. They make a story. Some of the story is difficult to speak or to even fully understand. Other parts of the story fold sweetly from one detail to the next, like catching a wave in an outrigger canoe that takes you all the way in. I feel like I am on such a wave right now, even as I am still taking care to understand the patterns in chaos. Often, those patterns are the most creative, though they may be the most challenging, even painful. We humans are created of both—they make a weave and even constitute the energetic system of our minds, bodies and spirits. When we stand back far enough to get a perspective, we can see the music in the system, how every small thought of human or cloud matters, and shifts the direction of the weather.

c Joy Harjo February 26, 2013 Glenpool, OK

"Get Up Offa That Thing"

Back to the last day at my Ucross writing studio, after my last workout with Radha Blank. The closest gym is in Sheridan, thirty miles away, so we made our own workouts that have included many kinds of dance (mostly done to soul, funk, r and b and hip hop), workout, step, stretches, dips, and ending with those dreaded planks. In three weeks we've lost some weight, can do stretches that were impossible at the beginning, and can hold the planks longer without collapsing within a few seconds. Yeah us! Now--for my last writing run here, then horn practice--and back for dinner and packing. And then to the "Historic Occidental Hotel" in Buffalo, where we all plan to sit in during the jam, or stand up and sing or dance. What an incredible group at this writing retreat--

Names

Read that bottle nose call their loved ones by names. I don't believe that's a unique phenomenon to dolphins or humans.

The Wilds of Discipline

More snow, more wind, but I am finding the story--Everything I've written in these last two weeks I abandoned yesterday. I start again. That's how it often works when creating any new story, song, dance, painting...Discipline and wildness meet in creativity.