Writing
Harjo first published her poetry in an Italian magazine, when she was 12 years old. "I began writing poetry because of the poetics and density of Cheyenne and Muscogee oral history as related by my Cheyenne mother and her parents and my Muscogee father and his parents," says Harjo. For the first International Women's Day in the 1970s, Harjo wrote the poem "gathering rites" and read it at "Women/Voices at Town Hall" in New York City, where she was one of 20 American women writers, including Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni. Harjo also presented the poem on the West Steps of the US Capitol.
As an Eric and Barbara Dobkin Fellow and an IARC Summer School at the School for Advanced Research in 2004, Harjo developed oral history poetry about her experiences working for repatriation laws and policies.
Read more about this topic: Suzan Shown Harjo
Famous quotes containing the word writing:
“All the critics who could not make their reputations by discovering you are hoping to make them by predicting hopefully your approaching impotence, failure and general drying up of natural juices. Not a one will wish you luck or hope that you will keep on writing unless you have political affiliations in which case these will rally around and speak of you and Homer, Balzac, Zola and Link Steffens.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learn’d to dance.
‘Tis not enough no harshness gives offence,
The sound must seem an echo to the sense:”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“In writing songs I’ve learned as much from Cézanne as I have from Woody Guthrie.”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)