Keith Stewart

"He knows you, long before you see him if at all, before he comes soundlessly white teeth, like the bones he exposes and cleans with such precision." Drenched in sadness and snow, the poems that make up Stewart's second collection have the running theme of tragic heart ache and pain. Set in a landscape of bleak and cold winter, Stewart lays open his soul once again and sees himself and his actions through the eyes of a terrifying central character, the wolf-ghost. This is a brutal and hard journey to undertake with him, his shocking desires of death and violence are entwined with the reader as witness to horrific acts born out of self loathing, bitterness and above all the blame for worlds falling apart. Following on from his first collection of poems "We Are Weapon", Stewart presents an even harder read with "The Wolf-Ghost", dark and often disturbing Stewart writes of ruin and hopelessness in the blackest hours of the long nights of winter.

Keith Stewart, already in his early forties and discontent with New York’s corporate grind, moved upstate and started a one-man organic farm in 1986. Today, having surmounted the seemingly endless challenges to succeeding as an organic farmer, Keith employs seven to eight seasonal interns and provides 100 varieties of fresh produce to the shoppers and chefs who flock twice weekly, May to December, to his stand at Union Square Greenmarket in Manhattan—the only place where his produce is sold. It’s a Long Road to a Tomato opens a window into the world of Keith’s Farm, with essays on Keith’s development as a farmer, the nuts and bolts of organic farming for an urban market, farm animals domestic and wild, and the political, social, and environmental issues relevant to agriculture today—and their impact on all of us.