Thu, Sep 24
|Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse
Joy Harjo, Cloud Runner
Three-term U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo returns with a moving collection about grief, loss, and how art can transform suffering.
Date, Time & Location
Sep 24, 2026, 6:00 PM MDT
Collected Works Bookstore & Coffeehouse, 202 Galisteo St, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA
About the Event
Join us in-store or register to watch on Zoom.
Order Cloud Runner: Poems ($26.99, hardcover) online from CWB or call the store to order
Losing a child is one of the most irreconcilable griefs. In Cloud Runner, Joy Harjo reckons with the unspeakable pain of losing her daughter: “Reason has no home in this hour,” she writes. Despite a devastating loss, Harjo constructs a shrine to human resilience, reminding us that the most profound revelations can appear in our darkest hours: “I now know why we construct ceremonial epics of mystery and beauty, / Of enemy and failure: it is so we can pick up our burdens / And go on.”
Harjo’s magical poems are known for weaving myth, song, and spirit. In this searing volume, her poems become essential witnesses to history, especially in our current era of compounded loss: mass shootings, missing and murdered Native women, climate disaster,…