Our Bones Sing of Salt

JT Stewart, poet and educator, daughter of the Bronx, well known and respected in the Seattle literary arts community, has been an inspiration and mentor to many other writers over her long career. Her work is diverse, ranging from poems that are brief bursts of emotion, coherent as lasers, to narrative poems as thrilling as suspense fiction and complex longer pieces that celebrate, honor, mourn, and heal.

The men, women, children, goddesses, and ghosts in her work arise from roots both personal and cultural, at once individual and universal. The speakers there compel the listener’s attention, and their voices, distinct and assertive, reflect it back: they are speaking to you, and the more you bring to them, the more they say.

JT Stewart, Black feminist, poet and educator, daughter of the Bronx, influential and respected in the Seattle literary arts community, has been a teacher, mentor, and inspiration to many other poets and writers.

Originally from New York City, where she was a member of the Harlem Writers Guild, Stewart attended the High School of Music and Art as a teenager. She attended Fisk University, a historically Black liberal-arts land-grant college in Nashville, Tennessee, where she was a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, one of the “Divine Nine” historically Black sororities. At Fisk, she studied with Robert Hayden, an outstanding poet of the African-American experience. She graduated Fisk in 1949 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. After Fisk, she attended Wellesley College and then Fordham University, where she earned a Master of Arts degree in 18th Century Literature.

Stewart moved to Seattle in the early 1950s. She taught there at the University of Washington and Seattle Central Community College, and has been for many years a respected and influential member of the literary community. She directed and named the Langston Hughes Cultural Arts Center and, with Vonda McIntyre and Ursula Le Guin, co-founded the Clarion West Writers Workshop. She was a curator of the Jack Straw Writers Program, and served as a teacher for many years at Richard Hugo House, a gathering spot in central Seattle for both writers and readers. She was also deeply involved with the Hedgebrook community of women writers, where she served on the board of directors. A distinguished writer’s scholarship was established there in her name. She also taught at Fairhaven College, part of Western Washington University in Bellingham. After retiring from Fairhaven, she continued to mentor students and encourage younger writers.

Stewart’s poetry, collected here, has been published widely in poetry magazines and in the chapbooks Nommo, Promised Lands, and Love on the Rocks – Yet Again. Her collaborative work includes co-editing two books: Gathering Ground: New Writing & Art by Northwest Women of Color (Seal Press, 1984), and Seattle Poets and Photographers: A Millennium Reflection (University of Washington Press, 1999). She also was a member, with artists Carl Chew, Ron Hilbert, and Mare Blocker, of the artistic team commissioned to create Raven Brings Light to This House of Stories, a permanent installation at the University of Washington’s Paul Allen Library. JT Stewart still lives in Seattle, where she just celebrated her 98th birthday. Considering everything she’s done over the course of her long life, both for individual writers and for her communities, it is amazing that she found any time to write poetry. But she did, and this substantial volume of her collected works is proof.