Former Poet Laureate to Speak on Poetry and Spirituality

Former United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will give a poetry reading and hold a public conversation. Titled “Poetry and Spirituality,” the event is the Chapel’s 2026 Pluralism Lecture and part of the Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging.

A free ticket is required to attend the event. Duke students can register for tickets beginning February 3; registration for the public begins February 5. Registration for tickets will be available through the Duke Box Office.

Harjo was the U.S. Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022, the first Native American to hold the position and only the second poet to be appointed to a third term. A member of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, she is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and three memoirs.

“I believe every poem is a ritual,” Harjo writes in her memoir Poet Warrior, “there is a naming, a beginning, a knot or a question, then possibly revelation, and then closure, which can be opening, setting the reader, speaker, or singer out and back on a journey.”

“Poetry can bring rain, make someone fall in love, can hold the grief of a nation,” she says. “Poetry is essentially an oral art whose roots are intertwined with music and dance.”

Harjo is the recipient of numerous awards. Her honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, National Book Critics Circle’s Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the PEN USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Tulsa Artist Fellowship. She is a former chancellor of the Academy of American Poets as well as former Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and is the inaugural artist-in-residence for the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.

In addition to her writing, Harjo is a musician who plays saxophone and flute. She has produced seven award-winning music albums, including her newest, I Pray for My Enemies. Her album of traditional flute, Red Dreams, A Trail Beyond Tears and Winding Through the Milky Way, won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year in 2009.

Alongside her own work, Harjo has also sought to highlight the work of other Native American poets. She is the executive editor of the anthology When the Light of the World was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through — A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry and the editor of Living Nations, Living Words: An Anthology of First Peoples Poetry, the companion anthology to her signature Poet Laureate project fea¬tur¬ing a sam¬pling of work by forty-seven Native Nations poets

Duke Chapel’s Pluralism Lecture was launched last year to further Duke University’s aim of “foster[ing] a lively relationship between knowledge and faith” as well as its commitment “to creating a rigorous scholarly community characterized by generous hospitality toward diverse religious and cultural traditions.” This lectureship takes as its premise a “confident” approach to pluralism that embraces the reality of diverse faith traditions and beliefs while also recognizing the need for competing truth claims to be acknowledged, discussed, and debated.

The Provost’s Initiative on Pluralism, Free Inquiry, and Belonging creates new opportunities for student, faculty, and staff learning across the university, including programs to help students conduct constructive conversations across diverse perspectives and faculty to support student skill development. In addition, the initiative provides opportunities for faculty to develop new curricular offerings, conduct research connected to the themes of pluralism, free inquiry, and belonging, and bring speakers and visiting scholars with different perspectives to campus.

Campus co-sponsors of the lecture include the Office of the Provost, Department of English, Native American/Indigenous Student Alliance, Thompson Writing Program, Language, Arts and Media Program, and Kenan Institute for Ethics’ Research for Indigenous Studies and Engagement in the United States.