As a mother and a teacher working with children, I fight the urge to worry about their future and protection in our communities within the context of class disparities and racial violence in this country. In this poem, I think about prayer and faith. To tackle my worries, my fears, I remind myself our children, as they navigate this world, have the inner strength and capability to exist with certainty.
Yaccaira Salvatierra on "María De La Tierra" |
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Joy Harjo's "New Children’s Book is for Every Grandchild"
"You know, it's a doorway of transformation. And anytime there's transformation, there's danger, you know, it's you can think of becoming an adolescent, and you face so many choices. Which way is my story going to go? Who's there for me, and because we all go through, we all go through things, and especially at that doorway, you know, and it's important that you have protection. I see the poem as a kind of a protection poem, and it's important to know that you have community and family around you."
via KUNM |
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What Sparks Poetry:
Nathan Spoon on Life in Public
"I hoped for this poem to expand beyond the realm of the scholarly, outward in a serious way relating to societal circumstances we are in together at present—and by societal I mean the global society of human beings sharing a planet, one tragically in a vortex of cascading concerns including war, surging debt and inflation, climate crisis, resource depletion and the crossing of planetary boundaries, growing inequality, artificial intelligence and synthetic biology, and the backsliding of democracy.” |
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