12 or 20 (second series) questions with Jo-Ann Mort

Jo-AnnMort is a poet and journalist. Her first book of poetry, publishedwhen she was 69, is A Precise Chaos ,published by Arrowsmith Press (May 2025). A lifelong poet, Jo-Ann’s life took adifferent turn, and she returned to poetry writing after a 22-year hiatus.

1- How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent workcompare to your previous? How does it feel different?
Thisis my first book of poetry. I’m sixty-nine years old upon its publication. I’vepublished non-fiction previously, but this is my penultimate success--forstarters. I’m already working on another one.

2 - How did you come to poetry first, as opposed to, say, fiction ornonfiction?
Well, I came to both poetry and nonfiction and journalism all at the sametime. I wrote my first poem when I was around 10 years old and was from then onwriting and reading poetry, though journalism and expository prose also held myinterest. I went to college to study poetry and then, a semester in gradschool, but after college, I got deeply involved in progressive politics andcreated an earning career for myself as a communications strategist (as opposedto a non-earning career as a poet!) I wasn’t trained as a journalist, but I wasintrigued to become one--I am somewhat of a frustrated foreign reporter atheart--and so I began to write opinion pieces and do some straight reporting andfeature writing for newspapers from overseas.

Then, from my late thirties to my late fifties, I stopped cold in writingpoetry. I filed tons of journalism, was a columnist at a weekly paper for awhile and wrote a lot of opinion pieces in newspapers and magazines in the USand UK and Israel, where I frequently travelled. I became an expert on Israeland the Occupied Palestinian Territories and have now been writing opinion andreported pieces from and about there since the 1980s. I also began to writeabout other countries with a progressive lens, like Poland and France.

When I began to write poetry again--when I turned 60--I wrote some poems aboutplaces and incidents on which I had reported. It has been fun to figure out thedifferences in how to describe something in a reported piece versus how todescribe something in a poem. Reporting must be factual, but poetry can make upfacts by discovering connections that we didn't know were there until beginningto write about them.

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does yourwriting initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appearlooking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copiousnotes?
I usually start a poem with a line or sometimes even a word, or a memory.My first drafts sometimes are nothing but notes with brackets that I placethere for words to come. I like to go over a poem for several weeks before itis in its final form-at least for that moment.

4 - Where does a poem usually begin for you? Are you an author of shortpieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a"book" from the very beginning?
I’m never working on a book-I work on poems, and then, as with my new book,I look for story arcs to bring them together.

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are youthe sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?
I love doing readings and talking to people about writing.

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds ofquestions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think thecurrent questions are?
Hmm… since I am very active politically, many of my poems reflect that-orreflect the multitude of travel that I do. I hope that the poems will showconnections where people may not have considered them.

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture?Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
Writers should advocate for themselves and their art. If we can gain avoice because people are reading our work, then we should also speak out aboutour societal concerns-especially at this moment.

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult oressential (or both)?
I work with editors when I write my journalism and find them to be veryhelpful. For this poetry book, I had a new experience--Arrowsmith Press hired acopyeditor to go over my manuscript. I loved working with a copyeditor,something I’d never done before for poetry. It was so interesting, making methink hard about every comma and capitalization. I also had a brilliant editorin the Arrowsmith publisher, Askold Melnyczuk, who is also a friend of mine.The book’s title was Askold’s idea—I had another title for the book. He alsosuggested some re-ordering of the poems that I wouldn’t have thought about, butI think he was correct.

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given toyou directly)?
This isn’t quite advice, but it is words to write by--When I was in collegeat Sarah Lawrence,  I queried  a writer teaching there (with whom I didn’tstudy, but with whom I was friends ), the marvelous Grace Paley, and told herthat I was trying to find a an American Jewish female poet who wrote about herexperience of being such, and addressed many of the concerns that I had at thattime in my life. I wanted to read a poet whose work would inspire me to say,“yes, that’s how I see the world.” Grace’s answer to me was blunt (as shealways was). She said, “Jo-Ann, you are looking for your poems, your writing.”I have never forgotten that conversation decades later. Write yourself into theworld.

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (poetry tojournalism)? What do you see as the appeal?
It’s easy. My poetry training for sure helped me when I became ajournalist. I’m not trained as a journalist, but from the study of poetrywriting I learned about how to tell a story, how to be concise and how even oneword can have an impact on the entire reported story. Journalism fills one roleand poetry another. I’ll frequently report on something or write an opinioncolumn and then take those same thoughts and mold them into a poem. The poemwill find a different truth than the journalism and that’s terrific.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even haveone? How does a typical day (for you) begin?
I begin my day by reading at least seven newspapers, although as I’vegotten older, I’ve allowed myself not to read entire articles and more justperuse headlines. But I read the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Guardian,(where I write frequent opinion pieces), LeMonde, the Wall Street Journal, theWashington Post, and Haaretz newspaper along with a round up that I receivefrom the Israeli media.

When I am really disciplined, I’ll open my journal and writesomething--anything--on the blank page. But I am not that disciplined.

I wish I had a routine. I always have a journal ongoing. I’ll carry it aroundwith me all day, put it on my desk in the morning, sleep with it near my bed atnight--just in case inspiration strikes. But, too often, I’ll go days withoutwriting in it, even as I’m schlepping it around.

I remember my first poetry workshop in college, taught by the wonderful poetTom Lux, who told us that we always had to be writing a poem, always had tohave something going on the page. I did that when I was younger, but I don’t doit anymore, and I’m not sure that I need to. I find that the best process forme comes in daydreaming or obsessing on one word or one image or thought andthen, I take notes in my journal or start a doc in my google drive, or I writea note on my phone.

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (forlack of a better word) inspiration?
I return to poets I admire. And sometimes, favorite poems. I’ve also beenreading a lot of essays on writing by poets and finding these to be so helpful.These days, Denise Levertov’s essays are inspirational to me because she writesboth about process and content, and of course, she was a very political poet,too. My own writing is not as sparse as hers usually is, but I love readingabout how she writes, and I aspire to be sparser in my verse.

13 - What fragrance reminds you of home?
I have a lot of dried Eucalyptus in my apartment, so I guess that’s thescent or fragrance I associate with home.

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are thereany other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science orvisual art?
Oh yes. I’m very inspired by music. But, for me music evokes memory-andthat is where the inspiration comes in. These days, the artist Wassily Kandinsky inspires me (I chose a print of his for my cover art for my book),because I think that he really speaks to our time where everything feelschaotic and out of control.

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simplyyour life outside of your work?
So many writers are important to me--a few come to mind immediately: poetslike Muriel Rukeyser, Phil Levine, Denise Levertov, Adrienne Rich, Maxine Kumin, Yehuda Amichai, Mahmoud Darwish,Osip Mandelstam, many Polish poets like Wislawa Szymborska and Tadeusz Rozewicz, Octavio Paz; novelists like Marcel Proust (whose writing about memory is so very poetic and mimics the creativepoetry writing process)  and Lawrence(and his poetry), Iris Murdoch, Elsa Morante. I love reading novelists whocreate not only a world with their storytelling but a moral world.

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?
I have a travel bucket list and since so much of what I write is inspiredby travel, I’m intrigued to find out what I would write were I able to travelto places like Japan, South Korea, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Ukraine (I’ve been toLviv just before the war but I want to go deeper into the country). I hadalways wanted to go to Russia, but I think that will probably stay off of my todo list for the foreseeable future. As you can tell, I’m not exactly a hang outon the beach vacation person!

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be?Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you notbeen a writer?
I can’t imagine anything else, especially because I’ve found that having abandonedmy poetry self for two decades and now having come back to it, I am wholeagain.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?
Writing is in my blood. It’s how I understand and explain the world.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?
I was blown away by Elsa Morante’s book History: a Novel. I found an oldused copy online I believe it’s set for a new reissue in the next year or so. Ihope so. She was an extraordinarily important novelist, married to a better-knownItalian novelist-Alberto Moravia. But this novel, which is nearly 1000 pages,is literally a history of Italy up through the rise of and then defeat offascism, told through the eyes of a peasant woman in Sicily. It’s a brilliantfeminist leftist novel, lyrical and magical also.

The recent Brazilian film I’m Still Here , is brilliant andhaunting—especially because it deals with the life of a leftist politicianunder the Brazilian dictatorship, but also because it feels so genuine, almostlike a documentary, even though it is a feature film based on a true story.

20 - What are you currently working on?
Poems for what I hope will be my second book.

12 or 20 (second series) questions;