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Program for Writing and Rhetoric Professor Jen Stewart wrestles with faith, motherhood, myth and the moon in poetry collection��Darling Heresies

Jen Grace Stewart killed her darlings—and turned them into��, her new book of poetry.

It’s common advice in creative writing, the idea “to get rid of the stuff that you’re really attached to when it’s not serving you,” Stewart explains.

Jen Stewart is an assistant teaching professor in the ���Ҵ�ý�ƽ��������Program for Writing and Rhetoric.

Combined with “heresies”—a nod to her evolving systems of belief—the phrase captures what she describes as “ways of believing that are not orthodox, that are not appropriate, that you hold dear, even if they're not the best thing for you.”

Stewart, an assistant teaching professor in the University of Colorado Boulder��Program for Writing and Rhetoric, recently released�� as a “sister” to her debut,�� and in it wrestles with concepts of faith, motherhood and myth. The timing of the book’s release was planned to coincide with the beginning of the fall semester, which Stewart says feels like a great time to release work.��

“There's so much phenomenal energy at the beginning of an academic year,” she says. “To me, it's better than New Year's.”

Capturing the heart of the moon

The journey into Darling Heresies begins at the cover, which features an illustration of a woman with her head replaced by the moon, a visual anchor further strengthened by the collection’s dedication to Endymion—the handsome figure from Greek myth who captured the heart of the moon.

“I really liked the idea that the Endymion figure is someone who witnesses the moon, who loves the moon, who sees her,” Stewart says.

Darling Heresies��“represents a four- or five-year span of time that covered early motherhood, moving away from my faith tradition and going through a divorce,” she says. Stewart and early readers describe the throughline of the collection as “an argument with patriarchy,” challenging restrictive roles placed on women in marriage, motherhood, faith and landscape.

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Jen Stewart explores faith, motherhood and myth in her poetry collection Darling Heresies.

“If my first book was a faith journey narrative with a particular arc, this is just the continuing of the journey,” Stewart says in comparing Darling Heresies to Madonna, Complex. “It's a little less certain about things. There's a lot more doubt in it.”

That doubt hasn't slowed Stewart down. If anything, it's pushed her toward balance — a discipline she practices even while keeping an extremely busy teaching schedule.

With Darling Heresies newly in print, Stewart is teaching a 4-4 course load in the Program for Writing and Rhetoric. “During the school year, it's difficult for me to get myself to the mental space that's open enough to receive poetry work—teaching and writing have to live in different spaces for me,” she says. She allows space for poetry to find her by spending time in art museums and nature, keeping analog journals, jotting notes-app entries and circulating drafts through an editing group's email chain.

Stewart credits her colleagues and students as major sources of inspiration. “My department is very collegial, very supportive,” she says. “There are a lot of us pursuing creative work who, even though that's not part of our job description... we're doing, we're teaching, we're writing poems.”

Offering advice for aspiring poets, Stewart says, “Poetry is a weird, niche space in the world, despite being ignored by most mainstream media. It's tiny, but it's also wide.” She encourages students to reframe how they think about poetry, emphasizing its communal aspect: “I want them to see poetry as less a precious artistic thing and more a communicative act that will connect them to other people—to listen and to be listened to.”

And even with a newly published book, Stewart is already considering what’s next. She hopes to explore fragmented essays, drawing inspiration from writers such as Maggie Nelson and Heather Christle. Her biggest upcoming project, though, is channeling creative energy into building class curricula and course readings. “I used to feel like poetry was being shut away,” she says, “and it's only been in the last five years or so that I've been able to say, no, class development is creative work too.”

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