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Cloud Runner: Poems
Not yet published
Expected 13 Oct 26Kindle Edition
Expected publication October 13, 2026
About the author
Joy Harjo
109 books2,056 followersBio Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She has released four award-winning CD's of original music and won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year. She performs nationally and internationally solo and with her band, The Arrow Dynamics. She has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, in venues in every major U.S. city and internationally. Most recently she performed We Were There When Jazz Was Invented at the Chan Centre at UBC in Vancouver, BC, and appeared at the San Miguel Writer’s Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which features guitarist Larry Mitchell premiered in Los Angeles in 2009, with recent performances at Joe’s Pub in New York City, LaJolla Playhouse as part of the Native Voices at the Autry, and the University of British Columbia. Her seven books of poetry include such well-known titles as How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems and She Had Some Horses. Her awards include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She was recently awarded 2011 Artist of the Year from the Mvskoke Women’s Leadership Initiative, and a Rasmuson US Artists Fellowship. She is a founding board member and treasurer of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column Comings and Goings for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. Soul Talk, Song Language, Conversations with Joy Harjo was recently released from Wesleyan University Press. Crazy Brave, a memoir is her newest publication from W.W. Norton, and a new album of music is being produced by the drummer/producer Barrett Martin. She is at work on a new shows: We Were There When Jazz Was Invented, a musical story that proves southeastern indigenous tribes were part of the origins of American music. She lives in the Mvskoke Nation of Oklahoma.
Joy Harjo was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma and is a member of the Mvskoke Nation. She has released four award-winning CD's of original music and won a Native American Music Award (NAMMY) for Best Female Artist of the Year. She performs nationally and internationally solo and with her band, The Arrow Dynamics. She has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam, in venues in every major U.S. city and internationally. Most recently she performed We Were There When Jazz Was Invented at the Chan Centre at UBC in Vancouver, BC, and appeared at the San Miguel Writer’s Conference in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Her one-woman show, Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, which features guitarist Larry Mitchell premiered in Los Angeles in 2009, with recent performances at Joe’s Pub in New York City, LaJolla Playhouse as part of the Native Voices at the Autry, and the University of British Columbia. Her seven books of poetry include such well-known titles as How We Became Human- New and Selected Poems and She Had Some Horses. Her awards include the New Mexico Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Native Writers Circle of the Americas, and the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. She was recently awarded 2011 Artist of the Year from the Mvskoke Women’s Leadership Initiative, and a Rasmuson US Artists Fellowship. She is a founding board member and treasurer of the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Harjo writes a column Comings and Goings for her tribal newspaper, the Muscogee Nation News. Soul Talk, Song Language, Conversations with Joy Harjo was recently released from Wesleyan University Press. Crazy Brave, a memoir is her newest publication from W.W. Norton, and a new album of music is being produced by the drummer/producer Barrett Martin. She is at work on a new shows: We Were There When Jazz Was Invented, a musical story that proves southeastern indigenous tribes were part of the origins of American music. She lives in the Mvskoke Nation of Oklahoma.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thanks to NetGalley & W.W. Norton & Company for the ARC!
Joy Harjo’s Cloud Runner is a tender reflection on what it means to lose someone—whether grief compromises or comprises beauty.
As a poet, Harjo has always been comfortable with a directness and transparency that feels boldly disinterested in posturing. Her poetics are centered in life as it is, and she favors attention over interpretation. Cloud Runner, a tribute to Harjo's late daughter, Rainy Dawn Ortiz, is a heartbreaking thematic variation because it’s about life as it isn’t. This is a collection where its form is its own resistance—poems about how poetry is inadequate for grief.
The first piece, “This is Not a Poem, It is a Cry,” sets the tone when the speaker immediately eschews embellishment in favor of bluntness:
Grief ruptures the book before it even begins, and the speaker spends the remaining poems circling questions of meaning. The metaphors here are overplayed, but in Harjo’s hands, the ubiquitous dance between light and dark doesn’t feel like a cliché. The speaker can yearn for a sunrise without it feeling like a trope. Loss is the fulfillment of fear, so grief has no room for pretense.
To some extent, Harjo situates her personal loss within the pain of fights for Native sovereignty, and she finds closure in open-endedness. Colonized history has tried to erase Indians, but they persevere and persist even as their identities change shape. Adaptation offers something richer than mere survival. Similarly, the speaker begins to dwell on the motif of her daughter as water in flux—sometimes cloud, sometimes tears, sometimes river, sometimes the vapor of a rainbow. Nobody is ever really gone, but our relationship to them changes alongside their form.
Cloud Runner is a call to remember, but more importantly, it is an assertion that memory is an active, life-giving act. People live beyond death, sometimes as the pain of a phantom limb (“The Sacred Art of Mothering”), and sometimes as a rain shower growing the next generation. It is good to grieve because, as Joy Harjo gently reminds us, it is a generative act.
Joy Harjo’s Cloud Runner is a tender reflection on what it means to lose someone—whether grief compromises or comprises beauty.
As a poet, Harjo has always been comfortable with a directness and transparency that feels boldly disinterested in posturing. Her poetics are centered in life as it is, and she favors attention over interpretation. Cloud Runner, a tribute to Harjo's late daughter, Rainy Dawn Ortiz, is a heartbreaking thematic variation because it’s about life as it isn’t. This is a collection where its form is its own resistance—poems about how poetry is inadequate for grief.
The first piece, “This is Not a Poem, It is a Cry,” sets the tone when the speaker immediately eschews embellishment in favor of bluntness:
It has been four days.
I have lost my girl.
Some things do not belong in words.
Grief ruptures the book before it even begins, and the speaker spends the remaining poems circling questions of meaning. The metaphors here are overplayed, but in Harjo’s hands, the ubiquitous dance between light and dark doesn’t feel like a cliché. The speaker can yearn for a sunrise without it feeling like a trope. Loss is the fulfillment of fear, so grief has no room for pretense.
To some extent, Harjo situates her personal loss within the pain of fights for Native sovereignty, and she finds closure in open-endedness. Colonized history has tried to erase Indians, but they persevere and persist even as their identities change shape. Adaptation offers something richer than mere survival. Similarly, the speaker begins to dwell on the motif of her daughter as water in flux—sometimes cloud, sometimes tears, sometimes river, sometimes the vapor of a rainbow. Nobody is ever really gone, but our relationship to them changes alongside their form.
Cloud Runner is a call to remember, but more importantly, it is an assertion that memory is an active, life-giving act. People live beyond death, sometimes as the pain of a phantom limb (“The Sacred Art of Mothering”), and sometimes as a rain shower growing the next generation. It is good to grieve because, as Joy Harjo gently reminds us, it is a generative act.
June 6, 2026
Joy Harjo’s poetry collection, Cloud Runner, was an unexpected read for me as I’m trying to be better about the arcs that i slowly but steadily start to accumulate and leave for last minute 🙈
First of all, the cover — vibes! 🌈
Second, it took me a little rereading here and there but I didn’t expect to be in my feels about a mother-daughter book of elegy of sorts where Harjo recounts the loss of her daughter 🥺
Now I understand the plea, the grief and the prayer that the poet gives us readers so tenderly as the endings to each of her poems serves as the aftermath of living that moment of need, full of love, and curious in its meditation and even more immense in its generosity of words.
I wish I could quote some lines but alas this one comes out sometime later this year in October so that just may have to wait 💙
Rainy Dawn Ortiz is the child’s name and what a beautiful ode of remembrance to her from mother to daughter — hope is a revelation worth witnessing! ✨
First of all, the cover — vibes! 🌈
Second, it took me a little rereading here and there but I didn’t expect to be in my feels about a mother-daughter book of elegy of sorts where Harjo recounts the loss of her daughter 🥺
Now I understand the plea, the grief and the prayer that the poet gives us readers so tenderly as the endings to each of her poems serves as the aftermath of living that moment of need, full of love, and curious in its meditation and even more immense in its generosity of words.
I wish I could quote some lines but alas this one comes out sometime later this year in October so that just may have to wait 💙
Rainy Dawn Ortiz is the child’s name and what a beautiful ode of remembrance to her from mother to daughter — hope is a revelation worth witnessing! ✨
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
have always appreciated Joy Harjo’s work. I knew this one was a hit for me as soon as I found myself reaching for a pen and paper to jot down quotes. Harjo puts grief into a frame that rings true for me. I found myself reading it planning to buy a copy for a friend. Thank you to the publisher and Net Galley for the chance to read it.
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
I am not much of a poetry fan, but when it comes to Joy Harjo, I make an exception.
This is a lovely book full of love and grief and the emotions a mother goes through after losing a child. A wonderful read for all.
This is a lovely book full of love and grief and the emotions a mother goes through after losing a child. A wonderful read for all.
June 19, 2026
What a beautiful, tragic, important collection of poetry— speaking to grief, love, loss, and finding words when there are no explanations for death. I will definitely be adding this collection to my classroom when it’s published!
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Heart-breaking collection of poems. Harjo writes a power collection of grief and loss. Thank you to Netgalley and W.W. Norton for the eARC!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews