IN CONVERSATION
Joan Baez Used Her Voice for Political Activism. Now She’s Adding a Brand-New Chapter to Her Legacy
The singer-songwriter’s debut collection, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, marks the first time she’s sharing her poetry publicly, the culmination of decades spent chronicling her life.
BY ROB LEDONNE
APRIL 25, 2024
Image may contain Joan Baez Electrical Device Microphone Guitar Musical Instrument Adult Person Concert and Crowd
Baez performs live at The Beacon Theatre in New York City during her Fare Thee Well…Tour on May 1, 2019.DEBRA L ROTHENBERG/GETTY IMAGES.
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Aformidable voice since her days in the ’60s-era folk and protest movements, Joan Baez has embarked on a new journey of introspection. Her autobiographical debut poetry collection, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance, is out later this month from Godine an
Though the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter has been writing for years, the 120-page collection marks the first time she’s sharing her poetry publicly, the culmination of decades spent detailing her life.
“I put everything away until I was thinking of making this book,” she recently told Vanity Fair. “I had to go all over my house and property and office and storage unit to find bits and pieces of it, and that took a long time. And then I got very excited about it because I had forgotten the poems, and honestly, how good they are. So that spurred me on to finding somebody to work with and editing them down.”
