My poetry is informed by a strong narrative and an observant spirit. Poems are new in the Atlanta Review and Plume for 2023 and forthcoming in Stand. I have a poem in the Fall 2021 issue of Atlanta Review that was a finalist for that journal’s annual international poetry award. I had two poems in the 2019 edition of The Atlanta Review, one that was also shortlisted for The International Poetry Prize. I have a poem including in an upcoming volume celebrating 50 years of women in the rabbinate published by the Central Conference on American Rabbis, and an essay, “Poetry as Secular Prayer” in the February 2022 issue of Arrowsmith Journal. Four of my prose poems were featured in the Spring 2019 issue of Stand magazine and the August/September 2018 issue of Stand magazine, published in the UK; and I have a poem in the print edition of Plume Poetry 6 (pub date March 2018), poetry in Plume magazine #115 (March 2021), #75 (October 2017), in Plume Poetry on line in January 2019. I have a poem in Arlijo #115. Poetry is also recently published in The Women’s Review of Books and Upstreet Review. A song called “My Daughters,” with lyrics by Hillary Rollins and music by Michele Brourman, was composed from my poem “Not in this Lifetime.” Here’s a video of the song.
You can listen to me talk and watch me too engage about poetry, politics, and more on this recent podcast from KeenOn on Lit Hub.
My poetry appeared in Stand previously in the 1990s, The Jewish Quarterly, Social Text, Pequod, and more. Poetry of mine is included in the poetry anthology, Without a Single Answer: Poems on Contemporary Israel, published by the Judah Magnes Museum.
My poetry trajectory is a bit unusual. I studied poetry at Sarah Lawrence College and at NYU. I graduated from SLC in 1978, but in my late thirties, my poetry writing went cold. I returned to writing poetry when I turned sixty and haven’t stopped since. I went through decades thinking that poetry couldn’t change the world—and then, the world changed and it grew so ugly, that I rushed back to poetry, as a way to yes, save humanity and humanness.
As a freelance journalist, I am especially known for writing and analysis about Israeli domestic life and Palestinians. I’ve increasingly written about Poland and global democracy issues. New publications include The New Republic on the new Israeli government, Democracy Journal, The New Republic —interview with Mikhael Khodorkovsky, Index on Censorship—interview with the Russian dissident Pavel Litvinov, Foreign Policy magazine, and The American Prospect. I frequently write for Dissent magazine,. I have reported from Israel, the West Bank and Gaza for the Chicago Tribune, the Forward newspaper, The American Prospect, Prospect Magazine, the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, JTA, Foreign Policy magazine and more. I have been a frequent contributor to national newspapers and magazines in the U.S., U.K. and Israel with my analysis and writing on progressive politics and culture, including in The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Nation, Haaretz, The Guardian and more.
The co-author of Our Hearts Invented a Place: Can Kibbutzim Survive in Today’s Israel? (Cornell University Press) and editor of Not Your Father’s Union Movement: Inside the New AFL-CIO (Verso) and a contributor to numerous publications and anthologies, I have spoken at universities and in public forums in the U.S., Israel and Europe, for the Israel Women’s Network, the Socialist Group of the European Parliament, the Central European University Jewish Studies’ program, and more.
I graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1978, having studied poetry, literature and philosophy. At SLC and later, at NYU grad school, I was privileged to study with poets Tom Lux, Jane Cooper, Galway Kinnell, Gerry Stern, argued politics and learned about life from Grace Paley--and at NYU, with Yehuda Amichai (who later took me to his coffee haunts in Jerusalem) and Joseph Brodsky.
I am a proud member of the national steering committe of Writers for Democratic Action and PEN .
At Communicatechange.com, you can learn much about my other life, including my stint as director of communications in the trade union movement for 15 years. I was a founder and former vice chair of Democratic Socialists of America, though I am not affiliated with that movement in the last several decades (and have written critically about it recently).
A resident of Park Slope, Brooklyn, I grew up in Lafayette Hill, Pa.
Contact me at joann.mort@gmail.com or on WhatsApp at +17189540352