Joy Harjo on Transformational Time
In Conversation with Mitzi Rapkin on the First Draft Podcast
First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.
In this episode, Mitzi talks to Joy Harjo about her poem, “Washing My Mother’s Body.”
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From the episode:
Mitzi Rapkin: What do you hope that people get out of this poem “Washing My Mother’s Body” when they read it?
Joy Harjo: Well, I hope that it’s inspirational, you know, or that it helps people move through grief or even life. You know, it all matters. It’s always bothered me that at some of the most transformational moments of life we hand them over to strangers, like at birth. You know there you are and you’re open, as a woman you’re as open and naked as you can be, and there you are with strangers. And that just seems odd to me. It says something about a society, I think. And then death, which is also one of the most transformative moments and intimate. I mean, there’s an intimacy in those moments, and they’re handed over to strangers. I mean, the poem came about because I was with my sister when my mother passed, and my niece and the three of us were in her bed. We didn’t even know she would. We didn’t know she was going. Right then the hospice worker was shocked. She said she’s going, and there we were. And so, I stayed in there with her and prayed and sang and thought, I’m going to wash her body. So, I started to get ready to do that. Next thing I know, there are these, if I say undertakers, that makes me old. I guess the funeral attendants dressed in suits, all solemn suits, come walking in. It’s rare that we saw suits in our house. If we saw somebody in a suit, it usually would portend something bad. Well, here come these two guys in suits to get her body. And I was not happy about that, but then I decided not to make a ruckus about it, because that transformational time is so tender, we didn’t need that. We didn’t need a confrontation at that time, so I let her go.
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Joy Harjo was the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She is the author of more than ten books of poetry including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years and the highly acclaimed An American Sunrise, which was a 2020 Oklahoma Book Award Winner. Her new book is Washing My Mother’s Body: A Ceremony for Grief.
