Interview with Journalist Jo-Ann Mort: Debut Poetry Collection скачать в хорошем качестве

Interview with Journalist Jo-Ann Mort: Debut Poetry Collection

A life-long commitment to social evolution — and, occasionally, revolution — animates the poems in Jo-Ann Mort’s debut collection, A Precise Chaos. Moving from Mostar to Oaxaca, Paris to Taormina, Mort’s peripatetic poems reflect her experiences as a trade union activist, a political organizer, and a peace activist in the Middle East. Refusing to evade the hard questions called for by a life honestly examined, she asks: “We, who are so righteous./Where does it lead us?” By publishing her first collection in her sixties, Mort succeeds in distilling a wealth of experience into something like wisdom: “The men were larger than life/starting revolutions in their heads and in their classrooms...//The men were larger than life,/so life eluded them.” Jo-Ann Mort returned to poetry writing when she turned 60. Her poetry has appeared recently in Plume, UpStreet, Stand (UK), the Atlanta Review, and elsewhere. A 1978 graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she also did graduate work in poetry and philosophy at NYU. Her previous lives inform her poetry, as do her global wanderings—as a trade union activist, a political organizer, and a long time advocate for, and writer about, peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Jo-Ann has written analysis and reported for more than 40 years from Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT), including the West Bank and Gaza. Her journalism is widely published in the US and UK. Jo-Ann is a member of the national steering committee of Writers for Democratic Action.