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. 

Luci Tapahonso served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation from 2013 to 2015. She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry, including her most recent, A Radiant Curve, which won the 2009 Arizona Book Award for Poetry. Tapahonso previously lived in Tucson and taught at the University of Arizona; she is a professor emerita at the University of New Mexico.

See more of Tapahonso's work on Voca.

We

must remember the worlds

our ancestors

traveled.

Always wear the songs they gave us.

Remember we are made of prayers.

Now we leave wrapped in old blankets of love and wisdom.

 

From A Radiant Curve by Luci Tapahonso. © 2008 Luci Tapahonso. Reprinted by permission of the University of Arizona Press.