Join us on Sunday, May 7 at 2 p.m., People’s Poetry will feature readings from former three-term United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo and additional readings by poets Emily Hoffman and Alyssa Brown.
Tickets
This event is free with admission to the center on the day of the event.
ABOUT PEOPLE’S POETRY
Woody Guthrie was an artist in multiple mediums. In addition to his music and paintings, Woody was a prolific writer, producing a bulk of poems, essays, short stories, and more.
Often called the “Poet of the People”, Woody’s writing was an important tool both for his personal self-expression and his life-long commitment to activism.
Woody Guthrie once wrote, “A folk song is what’s wrong and how to fix it, or it could be who’s hungry and where their mouth is or who’s out of work and how to fix it or who’s broke and where the money is or who’s carrying a gun and where the peace is.”
This bent toward repairing the damages of the world was at the forefront of his creative drive. People’s Poetry carries on the legacy of Woody Guthrie and his writing while also highlighting the voice of today’s poets who use their craft towards that same end: highlighting the injustices of the world and pushing us all towards a better world.
About Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned poet, performer, and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States. Harjo is the author of ten books of poetry, several plays and children’s books, and two memoirs; she has also produced seven award-winning music albums and edited several anthologies. Her many honors include Yale’s 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ruth Lily Prize from the Poetry Foundation, the Academy of American Poets Wallace Stevens Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. An inductee to the National Women’s Hall of Fame and the Oklahoma Hall of Fame, Harjo is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Board of Directors Chair of the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and serves as the inaugural Artist-in-Residence at the Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where she lives.
About Emily Hoffman
Emily Hoffman is a writer from Brooklyn, NY, and a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology and the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University. She has lived in Tulsa since 2021, conducting field research for her dissertation. She is a volunteer with Poetic Justice, where she writes in community with women incarcerated at Eddie Warrior Correctional Facility.
About Alyssa Brown
Alyssa Brown is a poet, screenwriter, director, cat mom, and hardcore Muppets fan living in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Since the age of six, Alyssa always knew she wanted to be a star after being in a production of Wizard of Oz where there were oddly four different Dorothys (it didn’t make sense). However, although she was Dorothy #2, she got to sing the titular Judy Garland classic “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” Since then, Alyssa knew she wanted to be the someday, not the muse. You can find Alyssa hosting Sundays in the Studio at The Studio once a month, acting in The Ironic Feminine on YouTube, and writing vigorously to publish her next book!
