A Precise Chaos

Coming May 10. 2025


“These poems, fruits of a lifetime, take us so many places, from former Yugoslavia and Paris to ‘the up and down of everyday,’ and into so many corners of the heart.”

— Katha Pollitt

 


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, Poland to Israel/ Palestine, 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?”

 
 

“Jo-Ann Mort’s poems move with astonishing mastery between

the exigencies of history and the intensities of private life.”

–Brian Morton

 

Upcoming Events

 

Book Launch

Saturday, May 10, 2025
4:00 PM

Friends Meeting at Cambridge
5 Longfellow Park
Cambridge, MA 02138

Also Streaming Online

 

An Evening of Poetry

Wednesday, May 14, 2025
7:00 PM

CBE Chapel
247 Garfield Place
Brooklyn, NY 11215