I am delighted to announce that my first book of poetry appeared in May 2025, A Precise Chaos, published by Arrowsmith Press. It’s available via all booksellers and book websites. Order it from your local bookstore.
Here is what my publisher has to say: “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 Taoromina, 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."
My poetry is informed by a strong narrative and an observant spirit. Here is a poem from the book in Plume: A song called “My Daughters,” with lyrics by Hillary Rollins and music by Michele Brourman, was composed from the poem “Not in this Lifetime.” Here’s a video of the song.
Contact me at joann.mort@gmail.com or on WhatsApp at +17189540352
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.
This essay, from Arrowsmith Journal, is insightful re my philosophy about—and inspiration for—my poetry. It’s called Poetry As Secular Prayer.
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.