Business Insider Interviews Joy Harjo

For Business Insider's 'Strategy' section, Marguerite Ward interviews U.S. poet laureate Joy Harjo. On writing and reading poetry during the Covid-19 pandemic, Harjo notes: "[p]oetry can be found during times of grief, times of transformation. I've been in touch with experts who tell me that readership of poetry has gone up." More: 

People go to poetry for solace. A poem can hold things that ordinary language cannot. And that's one reason I wound up in poetry because four lines, 10 lines, even an epic poem can carry history, can carry a moment of social unrest and perhaps point in a certain direction or shift meaning in a way with metaphor and language in a way that political rhetoric cannot. 

Have you seen an uptick in the number of people reaching out to you recently? 

I've seen a lot of people come to poetry, write poetry because of what it offers especially during times like these, amid multiple storms. It's all coming together and we need these places that carry wisdom and insight. 

I've been getting a lot of letters and emails and requests. A lot. I don't know if it's because I'm the poet laureate or because of the times we're in — perhaps it's both of those things combined — but I've gotten a lot of requests and emails recently. The nature of the requests are more attuned toward wanting something to help get them through this time, or writing about how important my work or the work of others to help them move through these turbulent times, almost like a rudder, almost to say, 'Here's where we're going. Here's how to get there.'  

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