Jude Neale is a teacher, classical singer and Bowen Island poet whose debut book of poetry, Only the Fallen Can See (Leaf Press, 2011), chronicles the journey of a mother struggling with bipolar illness. Her second book of poems, A Quiet Coming of Light: A Poetic Memoir (Leaf Press, 2014), was nominated for a Pat Lowther Award.

One of the poems from Splendid in its Silence (SPM Publications, 2017) was chosen by Britain's Poet Laureate to accompany other winners on the Channel Islands' public transit for a year. Neale was a featured reader at the Guernsey International Literary festival. This book was recently a SPM Prize winner and was published in the UK. Some of these poems can also be heard on Neale's collaborative (viola/spoken word) EP, Places Beyond.

In 2001, Neale was nominated for a Prime Minister's Award for Excellence in Teaching award. She graduated from the Humber School of Writing in Ontario in 2006 where she was mentored by poet Elisabeth Harvor.

In her tenth book of poems, The Flaw (Ekstasis, 2022), Bowen Island’s Jude Neale draws upon the recent years of “forced contemplation” to write about “what will sustain our fragile world.” On one hand, Neale sees the vast potential of humanity; on the other, “the proliferation of apathy, hate, hopelessness and greed.” And like Kintsugi, the Japanese art of mending and joining broken pottery shards with gold, Neale’s new poems offer the complicated comfort of embracing flaws and imperfections. “I have tried in this collection,” she writes, “to present a portrait in time of quiet moments of intimacy, grace, atrocities, anger, beauty and truth.”

BOOKS:

Only the Fallen Can See (Leaf Press, 2011) $15.95 9781926655246

A Quiet Coming of Light: A Poetic Memoir (Leaf Press, 2014) $17 9781926655680

Splendid in its Silence (SPM Publications, 2017) $9.95 9780993503559

Cantata in Two Voices (Ekstasis, 2018) 9781771712798

A Blooming (Ekstasis, 2019) 9781771713184

We Sing Ourselves Back (Ekstasis, 2019)

Impromptu (Ekstasis, 2020) $23.95 9781771713590

The River Answers (Ekstasis, 2021) $23.95 9781771714082

Inside the Pearl (Guernica, 2021) $20 9781771836746

The Flaw (Ekstasis, 2022) $23.95 9781771714785

Water Forgets Its Own Name (Ekstasis Editions, 2023) $36.95 9781771711609

[BCBW 2024]