Özge Lena
HEARTENING
She had some horses she loved.
She had some horses she hated.
These were the same horses.
—Joy Harjo, She Had Some Horses
How I wish I had some horses.
How I wish I had some lands of cerulean,
rivers of celadon, skies of crimson, and a forest.
How I wish I had a forest the deep colour of ravens,
of iridescent spirits dancing under silver trees with coral veils.
How I wish I had a forest to lean on, to rise from, and to write
my poems onto its layered skins, velvety and wild like some horses.
How I wish I had some horses of onyx to ride, to ride, to ride until the end
of that forest to see a hundred years old being with my ink, heartening, heartening.
How I wish I had some horses but not the abandoned corpses of poems, piled up, rottening.
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Statement of Homage
Joy Harjo is a very special poet for me because when I get lost in my words, I often find myself in hers and on “her horses” to turn back home. When my poems are abandoned to pile up, “rottening” in the depths of a folder, I turn back to Harjo's work to collect my courage back to write poetry. Like her, I have some horses I love and some horses I hate, and these are mostly the “same horses;” written by me, line by line, by my poet self, reflecting my soul completely. Rising from the colonised lands of otherised beings, Harjo’s enchanted poetry has always heartened the poet in me.
Joy Harjo
Joy Harjo is an internationally renowned poet, performer and writer of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. She served three terms as the 23rd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2019-2022 and is the winner of Yale's 2023 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry. She is the author of ten books of poetry including Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years, An American Sunrise, The Women Who Fell from the Sky, and She Had Some Horses. She lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
(Resource: www.joyharjo.com)
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Özge Lena has a published novella titled Otopsi, and her poems have appeared in Ink Sweat & Tears, Green Ink Poetry, Red Ogre Review, Harana, The Phare, Acropolis Journal, After Poetry, and elsewhere. Her poetry was shortlisted for Ralph Angel Poetry Prize and for The Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition in 2021.