Joy Harjo wins $100,000 poetry prize

Poet of Muskogee Creek heritage wins Wallace Stevens award from the Academy of American Poets for ‘proven mastery’

Poet Joy Harjo, known for wedding social consciousness to her Muskogee Creek heritage and the south-west American landscape, has won a $100,000 prize for lifetime achievement.

Harjo, 64, received the Wallace Stevens award for “proven mastery”, the Academy of American Poets announced on Thursday. The academy praised Harjo for her “visionary justice-seeking art” and for transforming “bitterness to beauty” and “trauma to healing”.