Arizona Poets is a series featuring 20 poets from Arizona in honor of our 60th Anniversary. These poets have all visited the Poetry Center and recordings of those visits are available in our audiovisual archive, Voca. Click here to learn more about our anniversary and here to see the rest of this series. 

N. Scott Momaday won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his novel House Made of Dawn. A Kiowa poet, essayist, and writer of fiction, Momaday has published seventeen books, including his most recent book of poetry, The Death of Sitting Bear. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Momaday is Regents Professor at the University of Arizona.

See more of Momaday's work on Voca.

Mammedaty saw to the building of this house. Just

there, by the arbor, he made a camp in the old way.

From The Gourd Dancer. New York: Harper & Row, ©1976. Read the full poem here.