[Coltelli is the author of Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak (1990). In the interview below, which was originally conducted in 1985, Harjo discusses her heritage, her identity as a Native American woman, her literary interests and influences, and various aspects of her poetry.]

[Coltelli]: When did you start writing?

[Harjo]: Not until I was about twenty-two, which I've always thought fairly late. Up to that time I was mostly interested in art, especially painting, and majored in it at the University of New Mexico until my last year, when I transferred to the English Department to graduate with a creative-writing major. I went on to get my M.F.A. in creative writing from the University of Iowa.

Why did you shift from being an art major to creative writing?

Because I found that language, through poetry, was taking on more magical qualities than my painting. I could say more when I wrote. Soon it wasn't a choice. Poetry-speaking "called me" in a sense. And I couldn't say no.

Could you speak about going back to your roots, in your poetry, of your Oklahoma land and heritage?

I just finished a poem today. It's about trying to find the way back. But it's a different place, a mythical place. It's a spiritual landscape that Oklahoma is a part of—I always see Oklahoma as my mother, my motherland. I am connected psychically; there is a birth cord that connects me. But I don't live there and don't know that I ever will. It's too familiar, and too painful. My son lives there now; he's going to Sequoyah High School, a tribal school that is now managed by the Cherokee tribe.

So my return usually takes place on a mythical level. I mean, I do travel there as often as I can. I've written a literary column for my tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News, know my relatives, keep in touch. There are many memories there for me, it's one of my homes.

How much does your Creek heritage affect your work as a poet?

It provides the underlying psychic structure, within which is a wealth of memory. I was not brought up traditionally Creek, was raised in the north side of Tulsa in a neighborhood where there lived many other mixed-blood Indian families. My neighbors were Seminole Indian, Pawnee, other tribes, and white. I know when I write there is an old Creek within me that often participates.

You said once, memory is like "a delta in the skin," so you are "memory alive," your poetry stems from memory always at work.

It is Creek, and touches in on the larger tribal continental memory and the larger human memory, global. It's not something I consciously chose; I mean, I am not a full-blood, but it was something that chose me, that lives in me, and I cannot deny it. Sometimes I wish I could disappear into the crowds of the city and lose this responsibility, because it is a responsibility. But I can't I also see memory as not just associated with past history, past events, past stories, but nonlinear, as in future and ongoing history, events, and stories. And it changes.

You see a very close relationship between writing poetry and "digging piles of earth with a stick: smell it, form it." So, does it mean you're still looking for your roots down there?

They're there. That's no question. When I speak of roots I often mean more than what's usually conjectured. I consider the place we all came from, since the very beginning. It's a place I don't yet have a language for. But, on the more mundane level, I did drive around the United States in my car, alone, about three or four summers ago—just to know it better, this beautiful land. And one place that was most important for me to visit was outside a little town in Alabama called Atmore. There is still a settlement of Creeks there, who hung on through the destruction set off by Andrew Jackson's greed. I went there to say hello, and they welcomed me, treated me well. There is a communication beginning between the Oklahoma Creeks and the Alabama Creeks. We [Oklahoma Creeks] still have the language, the dances, ceremonies, which they have lost much of, but then again, nothing has destroyed their memory, which is strong, and which has kept their small enclave alive through these years of the racist South. I was so proud of them, am proud that they have kept their Creekness alive when Jackson meant them to be destroyed.

My family on my father's side was originally from Alabama. They were forced to leave during the time of Removal [1832], which really wasn't that long ago. In fact, my great-great-grandfather, Menawha, led the Redstick War of the Creeks against Andrew Jackson. Of course, we know what happened, and Menawha and his family were forced into Oklahoma. Menawha said he never wanted to see a white face again; from that part of my family we were rebels, and speakers. So what I am doing makes sense in terms of a family memory.

Do you look at writing as a means of survival?

Sure. I have to. On both a personal level and a larger, communal level. I don't believe I would be alive today if it hadn't been for writing. There were times when I was conscious of holding onto a pen and letting the words flow, painful and from the gut, to keep from letting go of it all. Now, this was when I was much younger, and full of self-hatred. Writing helped me give voice to turn around a terrible silence that was killing me. And on a larger level, if we, as Indian people, Indian women, keep silent, then we will disappear, at least in this level of reality. As Audre Lorde says [in her Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches], also, "Your silence will not protect you," which has been a quietly unanimous decision it seems, this last century with Indian people.

She Had Some Horses is a kind of circular journey, walking and talking backward. "Call it Fear" is the very first poem and in the last one, "I Give You Back," "the terrible and beautiful fear" comes to an end. Could you elaborate on that?

"Call it Fear" was one of the earliest poems I wrote in that series, and "I Give You Back" one of the last. I didn't consciously set up the structure of the book that way, but maybe unconsciously I did. I want to thank Brenda Petersen, a novelist-editor friend of mine, for her arrangement. I gave her the manuscript when I couldn't get the arrangement right after many, many tries, and it is because of her that it works well. She understood that I meant a circular journey.

In the last section of the same book you see in the horses the coming of a new people. Does it also shape your identity as a woman?

I'm not sure I know what you mean. When I consider a new people, I consider a people whose spiritual selves are obvious. There are no judgments, or prejudices. Sexual identities are not cause for power plays, and we become fully who we are, whether male, female, or any combination. We need this resurrection; it's who we truly are, yet you could be deceived, especially when you look around the world and see the hatred against the female, and notice, too, that all the wars are basically race wars, white people against the darker-skinned ones. But I am especially speaking of a power that would be called women-woman-intuitive. My work is woman-identified. One of the funniest questions I've been asked as a visitor to an Indian-culture class in a university is, by a male student, "Where are the men in your poems?" He was offended because he didn't see himself, not in the form that he looked for. I truly feel there is a new language coming about—look at the work of Meridel LeSueur, Sharon Doubiago, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker—it's coming from the women. Something has to be turned around.

The moon image is central to your poetry. Moon as wholeness, which speaks of the universe, a circular design again, which speaks also of woman's life. Is that true?

Yes, although she appears less and less in my new poems. I associate the moon with the past, evoking the past, past fears, and so on.

Your personal past?

Anyone's personal past. Now I am looking toward fire, a renewal. But still aware of the dream, in which the moon appears, a constructive kind of dreaming.

What do you mean by constructive?

I mean, consciously understanding that dreamtime is another kind of cohesive reality that we take part in.

A kind of active perception instead of a passive one.

Yes, it's much more active.

Feminism and tribal heritage—can you see any connection?

The world has changed so much. Yes, I'm sure there is a connection, but so much differs from tribe to tribe.

Because some Indian cultures are woman-oriented?

Some are woman-oriented, especially when you consider the earth as woman, like the Pueblo people of the Southwest. But all have changed over the years after much white contact. And values have changed. Many have evolved, or devolved, into male-centered, male-dominated cultures, following the pattern of the dominant Euro-culture that is American, but generally women were, are, recognized as physically, electrically, whatever, more grounded, in tune with the earth, and again, that's a generalization, because there are always exceptions. You will find "grounded" men, also. I still don't feel as if I have answered your question. I know I walk in and out of several worlds everyday. Some overlap, some never will, or at least not as harmoniously. The word "feminism" doesn't carry over to the tribal world, but a concept mirroring similar meanings would. Let's see, what would it then be called—empowerment, some kind of empowerment.

What does it mean, being an American Indian woman in the United States nowadays?

To begin, it certainly means you are a survivor. Indian people make up only about one-half of 1 percent of the total population of the United States! It means you carry with you a certain unique perception. And again you are dealing with tribal differences, personal differences, and so on. We are not all alike! Yet, I believe there is a common dream, a common thread between us, mostly unspoken.

I don't believe there are any accidents in why people were born where they were, who they were, or are. There are no accidents. So I realize that being born an American Indian woman in this time and place is with a certain reason, a certain purpose. There are seeds of dreams I hold, and responsibility, that go with being born someone, especially a woman of my tribe, who is also part of this invading other culture, and the larger globe. We in this generation, and the next generation, are dealing with a larger world than the people who went before us—that we know of, because who knows what went down many, many many, years ago that no one remembers. We are dealing with a world consciousness, and have begun to see unity, first with many tribes in the United States and North America with the Pan-Indian movement, and now with tribal people in the rest of the world, Central and South America, Africa, Australian aborigines, and so on. We are not isolated. No one is. What happens here, happens there. But it is on sometimes subtle yet disturbing levels.

Are you active in women's organizations?

Not really. Sometimes I feel I should be, but it isn't my manner. I participate by doing benefit readings, appearances, taking part when it is useful to do so. I know it is important, and groups are more powerful than one person working alone, but I guess there is no one group that I feel strong enough about to be active in, though I actively take part in many.

Are you suspicious? Of what?

I've wondered. Maybe it comes from being a mixed-blood in this world. I mean, I feel connected to others, but many women's groups have a majority of white women and I honestly can feel uncomfortable, or even voiceless sometimes. I've lived in and out of both worlds for a long time and have learned how to speak—those groups just affect others that way—with a voicelessness. It's my problem, something I've learned to get over, am learning to overcome, because I am often the only one to speak for many of us in those situations. Sometimes it gets pretty comical, bizarre. When I was on the National Endowment for the Arts literature panel I was often the spokesperson-representative for Indian people, black people, all minority people, including women's, lesbian, and gay groups. It was rather ridiculous and angering at the same time, for we were all considered outside the mainstream of American literature. And it's not true, for often we are closer to the center.

Noni Daylight appears in some of your poems, persona poems. You said, "It's like she was a good friend." Would you comment on that, on the persona in your poems?

She began quite some time ago, as a name I gave a real-life woman I couldn't name in a poem. Then she evolved into her own person, took on her own life. And then she left my poems and went into a poem by Barney Bush, a Shawnee poet, and I never saw her again. She never came back!

What about the other stories of women in your poems? Are they true stories?

Yes, always on some level. I'm a writer, I like to make up stories, to add to them, often make them larger. The "I" is not always me, but a way I chose to speak the poem. "The Woman Hanging from the Thirteenth Floor" is written around an imaginary woman. You could call her imaginary. But within that space she is real, also. I made a trip to Chicago, oh, about eight years ago, and one of the places I went to while I was there was the Chicago Indian Center. The center was rather bleak, as there wasn't extra money around to buy things to make the place warm, home-like; there were no curtains, nothing like that, but in one room I noticed a rocking chair. It may have been empty, or there may have been someone in it—the image stayed with me. Perhaps it was because the chair was round, and everything else, all around, was square. So, a few years after that trip, the image stayed with me, and I would see this woman, rocking and rocking, for her life, and she compelled me to write the poem. And I felt her standing behind me, urging me on as I wrote, kept looking behind me. When it first appeared, and during the first readings of the poem others would come up after the reading and say, "You know, I know that woman," or "I knew her," or "I heard the story and have a newspaper clipping of it," and the event always had occurred in a different place. And other women are composites of many women I know, or stories I've heard, probably much like a fiction writer would work.

So you became a kind of storyteller?

In a way, though I am not a good fiction writer, or should I say, have never really tried it, except in terms of screenplays.

"Language identifies the world." You said that the English language is not enough. "It is a male language, not tribal, not spiritual enough."

Yes, I said that. I have learned to love the language, or rather, what the language can express. But I have felt bound by the strictness imposed by its male-centeredness, its emphasis on nouns. So, it's also challenging, as a poet, to use it to express tribal, spiritual language, being. But maybe all poets basically are after that, and sometimes it isn't enough and that's when those boundaries become frustrating.

What do you mean by saying English is not enough, English is a male language?

Again, maybe it would be that way in any language, the sense of somehow being at a loss for words; [that] could always be the poet's dilemma. The ending of a poem, "Bleed-Through," says it: "There are no words, only sounds / that lead us into the darkest nights / where stars burn into ice / where the dead arise again / to walk in shoes of fire."

Since language has an importance of its own in Indian culture, what's the contribution or influence, just in terms of language, to mainstream American literature?

What I think of immediately is the denial, the incredible denial of anything other than that based on the European soul in American literature. Anything else is seen as "foreign," or not consciously integrated into what is called American literature. It could be ethnocentrism backed by a terrible guilt about what happened in this country.

So what's the contribution, just in terms of language, to main-stream American literature?

That's a difficult question, one that will take me many months to consider, because I'm always thinking about what I can add to the language, as someone of this background—dreams, and so on. I consider first a certain lyricism, a land-based language.

The spirit of place?

Yes, the spirit of place recognized, fed, not even paved over, forgotten. Sometimes I feel like specters of forgotten ones roam the literature of some of these American writers who don't understand where they come from, who they are, where they are going. The strongest writers have always been the ones with a well-defined sense of place—I don't mean you have to be a nature writer—I'm thinking of "nonethnic" people, like Flannery O'Connor.

What about imagery?

Oh sure, imagery. That's definitely part of it.

A new feeling of landscape perhaps?

Or a knowing of the landscape, as something alive with personality, breathing. Alive with names, alive with events, nonlinear. It's not static and that's a very important point. The Western viewpoint has always been one of the land as wilderness, something to be afraid of, and conquered because of the fear.

The so-called wilderness.

Yes, it depends on your viewpoint what wilderness is. For some the city is a wilderness of concrete and steel, made within a labyrinth of mind.

You mentioned before you are not only a poet, but you're a scriptwriter for television and film. How does the process work in translating your poetical world from one medium to another?

Screenwriting is definitely related to poetry. You're dealing again with the translation of emotions into images. There's a similar kind of language involved. One goal I have, a life goal in terms of the cinema, is to create a film with a truly tribal vision, viewpoint, in terms of story, camera viewpoints, angles, everything. It hasn't been done, not on the scale I would like to do it.

What do you think of non-Indian critics of your work and of Indian literature in general?

That question could be answered many ways—I mean, there are specific non-Indian critics who get into trying to be Indian, when they don't have to. What I write, what any of us write, or are after, whether we are Indian, Chicano, Laotian, is shimmering language, poetry, the same as anyone else who is writing in whatever language; with whatever sensibilities. Or too often they won't approach the literature at all, won't read it or speak of it because, again, that guilt enters in, or that fear that keeps them from entering any place other than what is most familiar.

As far as the literature goes, I've seen much growth in these last several years, in all of us. We are setting high standards for ourselves, our own standards, mind you, in terms of what is possible with this language, and with what we have come to know as artists of this continent.

What writers are important to you?

I consider first the writers who got me turned on to writing, what writing could do. Because I was rather a late bloomer in this business, I was never turned on by conventional English-language poetry. These writers include Simon Ortiz, Leslie Silko, and many black American writers, like June Jordan, later Audre Lordre and Alice Walker. Also Pablo Neruda, James Wright, Galway Kinnell, and African writers. I love the work of Amos Tutuola, especially The Palm Wine Drunkard. And there are many others.

Do you see any changes in your work?

Yes, many. If I didn't see them, didn't see growth, then I wouldn't do it any more. There are leaps between What Moon Drove Me to This? and She Had Some Horses, and I expect the leap to be huge between Horses and this next collection I am working on. I feel like I am just now learning how to write a poem. It has taken me over ten years to get to this point of just beginning.

And what about in terms of technique?

I'm certainly much more involved with process, inner travel, when I write now than even five years ago.

Can you speak a bit more about these new poems?

For one thing they are not so personal. I am in them, for I believe poets have to be inside their poems somewhere, or the poem won't work. But they aren't so personally revealing, and the space has grown larger. The first book was definitely centered in Oklahoma, or New Mexico. Then, in Horses, there was much more traveling, and in the new work [In Mad Love and War], there is even more traveling into the inner landscape.

So, in comparison with the other books, how could you define this new book?

Oh, it's hard to say—intensity. I would hope it is more powerful, stirring. "We Must Call a Meeting" is one of the newest poems in it. I'll read what I have, but I might change some of it.

              "We Must Call a Meeting"
      I am fragile, a piece of pottery smoked from fire
                                         made of dung,
      the design drawn from nightmares. I am an arrow, painted
                                         with lightning
      to seek the way to the name of the enemy,
                     but the arrow has now created
      its own language.
        It is a language of lizards and storms, and we
                                                 have
      begun to hold conversations
               long into the night.
                                         I forget to eat
      I don't work. My children are hungry and the animals who live
      in the backyard are starving.
               I begin to draw maps of stars.
      The spirits of old and new ancestors perch on my shoulders.
      I make prayers of clear stone
               of feathers from birds
                         who live closest to the gods.
      The voice of the stone is born
               of a meeting of yellow birds
      who circle the ashes of smoldering ashes.
                  The feathers sweep the prayers up
      and away.
       I, too, try to fly but get caught in the crossfire
                                               of signals
            and my spirit drops back down to earth.
      I am lost; I am looking for you
         who can help me walk this thin line between
                                       the breathing
                and the dead.
      You are the curled serpent in the pottery of nightmares.
      You are the dreaming animal who paces back and forth in my head.
      We must call a meeting.
        Give me back my language and build a house inside it.
           A house of madness.
               A house for the dead who are not dead.
      And the spiral of the sky above it.
      And the sun
            and the moon.
            And the stars to guide us called promise.

Also another new poem, called "Transformations," about turning someone's hatred into love. I tried to actually work that transformation in the poem.

          "Transformations"

This poem is a letter to tell you that I have smelled the hatred you have tried to find me with; you would like to destroy me. Bone splintered in the eye of one you choose to name your enemy won't make it better for you to see. It could take a thousand years if you name it that way, but then, to see after all that time, never could anything be so clear. Memory has many forms. When I think of early winter I think of a blackbird laughing in the frozen air; guards a piece of light. I saw the whole world caught in that sound, the sun stopped for a moment because of tough belief. I don't know what that has to do with what I am trying to tell you except that I know you can turn a poem into something else. This poem could be a bear treading the far northern tundra, smelling the air for sweet alive meat. Or a piece of seaweed stumbling in the sea. Or a blackbird, laughing. What I mean is that hatred can be turned into something else, if you have the right words, the right meanings, buried in that tender place in your heart where the most precious animals live. Down the street an ambulance has come to rescue an old man who is slowly losing his life. Not many can see that he is already becoming the backyard tree he has tended for years, before he moves on. He is not sad, but compassionate for the fears moving around him.

That's what I mean to tell you. On the other side of the place you live stands a dark woman. She has been trying to talk to you for years. You have called the same name in the middle of a nightmare, from the center of miracles. She is beautiful. This is your hatred back. She loves you.

It's a kind of circular design again.

Yes.

Would you describe your writing process? I understand that you revise a lot.

I begin with the seed of an emotion, a place, and then move from there. It means hours watching the space form in the place in front of the typewriter, speaking words, listening to them, watching them form, and be crossed out, on the paper, and so on, and yes, revision. I no longer see the poem as an ending point, perhaps more the end of a journey, an often long journey that can begin years earlier, say with the blur of the memory of the sun on someone's cheek, a certain smell, an ache, and will culminate years later in a poem, sifted through a point, a lake in my heart through which language must come. That's what I work with, with my students at the university, opening that place within them of original language, which I believe must be in everyone, but not everyone can reach it.

You said before that you were speaking with your students about your work as well?

I can't separate my work, my writing, from who I am, so of course it comes into the classroom with me in one way or another.

Just a piece of paper with a new poem?

Oh no, as part of that space I teach out of, a space of intuition made up of everything I know as well as what I don't know, and I've learned in writing, and in teaching, that it is important to recognize that place, to open yourself, believing.

Joy Harjo with Laura Coltelli, in an interview in Winged Words: American Indian Writers Speak, University of Nebraska Press, 1990, pp. 54-68.