Joanne Therese Hart, poet and longtime resident of Morris, Minnesota and Grand Portage, Minnesota, died peacefully at Sannes Skogdalen Heim in Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin on Saturday, April 28, 2018. Born September 25, 1927, she was 90 years old. Joanne’s devotion to inscribing in poetry the meditative quality of life centered in the non-human world is her legacy to the many who admire her life and work.
Joanne was born in Weehawken, New Jersey to Clarence and Harriet Velz and grew up in Hastings on Hudson, New York. From an early age, she showed an affinity for the literary arts. She graduated with high honors from the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota. She married Dean J. Converse in 1949 and bore two sons. She was widowed in 1953. In 1957, she married Nathaniel Hart, with whom she had six more children.
The family moved to Morris, where Nathaniel was employed at the University of Minnesota, Morris. Joanne became immersed in the community, where she served in the League of Women Voters, was a voice for progressive policy issues, and raised funds to build a new public library. Joanne’s continued advocacy for improved library services in Minnesota led to her appointment as a delegate to the first White House Conference on Library and Information Services.
In 1974, the family moved to 47 acres on the Pigeon River in the Grand Portage Indian Reservation where, in Joanne’s words: “We lead a simplified life with few conveniences, no TV or plumbing, lots of fresh air and natural beauty.” Many members of the Grand Portage Band became dear friends with Joanne during the decades she lived on their reservation. Their shared knowledge, respect, and good humor were central to Joanne’s well-being and inspiration.
By the Pigeon River, she wrote poetry, which was published in Dacotah Territory, Sing Heavenly Muse!, Women’s Times, Touchstone, and Great River Review, among others. She was a Fellow at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, where William Stafford was her mentor. She has three chapbooks of poetry: In These Hills, I Walk on the River at Dawn, and The Village Schoolmaster. In 1992, she joined with visual artist Hazel Belvo to create Witch Tree: A Collaboration. This conjunction of wood cuts and poems about an ancient “spirit place” on Lake Superior’s North Shore may be Joanne’s best-known work.
Joanne is preceded in death by her parents, her siblings John and Martha, her first and second husbands, Dean and Nathaniel, and an infant grandson, Elijah. She is survived by her sister Mary Catherine Jarvis; several nieces and nephews; her children, John, Thomas, Marya, Naomi, Agnes, Natalie, David, and Joseph; and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, for whom she knitted countless sweaters, mittens, hats, scarves, socks, and dolls.
A memorial gathering will be held for Joanne on Saturday, June 16 at St. Peter Claver Church, 375 North Oxford Street, St. Paul. Visitation begins at 9:30 a.m.; sharing stories and poems at 10:30 a.m.; liturgy of the word at 11 a.m. A second memorial is planned for later in the year in Grand Portage. In lieu of flowers, the family requests checks made out to Grand Portage Reservation Tribal Council for an educational scholarship fund in Joanne’s name.
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