Biography

Jo Stewart (she/her) is a poet and theater maker. She uses a combination of gesture, voice, and text to make poetry and performance that investigates entrapment, borders, and freedom. Jo has previously been an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center, Azule, the Old American Can Factory, the Anderson Center at Tower View, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and others. She was a recent member of Meredith Monk & Vocal Ensemble, rehearsing and touring “Cellular Songs” from 2017-2019. 

Project Description

Un- is a book length serial poem that centers the life of a girl-child named un. This work investigates the prefix as an independent formulation—one with a destabilizing gift. Un- sows disorder in a language and social order for which “wholeness” relies on the exclusion of a non-being Other or  antithesis. Central to these poems is a preoccupation with self-recovery as it correlates with deliberate kinship and affinity for land. By joining this writing project with the hands-on teachings of land stewards and practitioners of plant medicine, I seek to find new grammars of selfhood and community formation that is rooted in becoming naturalized to place as medicine for an un- free world.