Jo Stewart (they/them) is a poet, educator, and theater maker.  

Artist Statement

For much of my life, my artistic vision has been shaped by striving. Striving, in the sense that I accepted, early on, a basic condition of diminishment and strove to improve upon that condition, believing all the while that my inconsequence was real and true and self-evident. As a black girl-child, I desperately wanted to understand why no one seemed interested in my subjectivity and yet regarded me as an indispensable foil for their own. I could feel my personhood most potently when I pushed up against another, fighting for belonging in an environment of opposition. In this life-long quarrel with linearity, entrapment, and objecthood, I made a home, and from there most of my writing and staged works were born. My artistic vision as an adult thus shaped itself around what most threatened my aliveness, and so in a sense, centered and attuned to those very same forces. It’s a common mistake and yet it shapes us each uncommonly, and the effort left me, particularly, in a position of constant deference and spiritual fatigue.

My aim now is to creatively expand beyond my preoccupation with negation. As I release these forms, I soften my gaze and resist looking ahead. I want, instead, to invest my energy in the profound creative function of the vacuum—it’s gravity, momentum, currents and counter currents. How might I tolerate my previous creative compulsions coming apart without racing to create a new façade, a new suit, a new shape? How might I pause long enough in the in-between to readjust my vision of what’s possible for me, poetically, artistically, and politically? This is what I want to find out. 

What am I up to? I’m teaching, I’m learning how to play the guitar, I’m thinking and writing about pedagogy, I’m pursuing political education, I’m learning about somatics. I’m probably walking in the woods right now! 

Education

BA, English, Reed College

MFA, Interdisciplinary Writing, Brown University