Poetry as Ceremonial Language and Witness

Joy Harjo joins us for part one of a three-part series asking the question posed by poet Christian Wiman: What is poetry’s role when the world is burning?

It’s not a metaphorical question. We’re living through wars, climate collapse, collective burnout, and political fragmentation. What possibly might human flourishing mean in such a context? And what might poetry have to do with it? 

Here, three‑term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Muskogee Creek Nation) shares how her poetry emerges from pain, memory, and fierce hope. She reflects on the loss and colonization embedded in her own family story—from the Trail of Tears to the extraction of resources from her tribal lands—and how those historical wounds still pulse in our shared present.

Harjo also traces her coming‑of‑age: learning to find voice through art and activism, encountering the power and beauty of Native elders and poets, recognizing the injustice hidden in history textbooks, and experiencing the healing that comes through being seen and witnessed in kindness. Amidst crises of war, climate, racial injustice, and spiritual dislocation, she argues that poetry is not luxury or escape—it is ritual, ceremony, language of the sacred, a way to speak to the soul and open space for listening and transformation.

Her upcoming book Girl Warrior: On Coming of Age becomes a touchstone in this conversation—one that unearths the raw edges of adolescence, grief, identity, heritage, and hope. This episode invites you to reckon with legacy, cultivate courage, and consider how poetry and voice are vital to living with purpose, meaning, and belonging.

⁠⁠Show Notes, Resources, and Transcript⁠ for our episode with Joy Harjo⁠

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No Small Endeavor: An award-winning podcast that asks what it means to live a good life. Through conversations with leading thinkers across theology, philosophy, psychology, politics, and the social sciences, we explore human flourishing, meaning and purpose, faith and culture, science and religion, virtue and character, community, and the practices that help shape a good life grounded in truth, beauty, and goodness.

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Host Lee C. Camp: Lee has worked as a professor of theology & ethics for more than 25 years, teaching and writing on topics of faith & politics, inter-religious dialog, and human flourishing at the intersection of theology, moral philosophy, and social sciences. Follow ⁠@leeccamp ⁠

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