Ten Evenings with Joy Harjo, Presented by Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures

Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light is a selection of fifty poems to celebrate three-term US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo’s fifty years as a poet. She is a member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and the author of nine poetry collections and two memoirs, most recently Poet Warrior.

In this gemlike volume, Harjo selects her best poems from across fifty years, beginning with her early discoveries of her own voice and ending with moving reflections on our contemporary moment. Generous notes on each poem offer insight into Harjo’s inimitable poetics as she takes inspiration from Navajo horse songs and jazz, reckons with home and loss, and listens to the natural messengers of the earth. As evidenced in this transcendent collection, Joy Harjo’s “poetry is light and elixir, the very best prescription for us in wounded times.” (Sandra Cisneros, Millions).

Joy Harjo, the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States, is a member of the Muscogee Nation and is only the second poet to be appointed to a third term as U.S. Poet Laureate. The author of nine poetry collections and two memoirs, most recently Poet Warrior, she is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award in Creative Non-Fiction, and the American Book Award. Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, directs For Girls Becoming, an arts mentorship program for young Muscogee women, and is a founding board member and Chair of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma where she is the inaugural Artist-in-Residence of the Bob Dylan Center.

The lecture will be held at the Carnegie Music Hall on Monday, March 27 at 7:30 p.m. ET. Tickets for this event start at $15. For those unable to attend in person, a livestreamed option is also available.