* I am Jade, a poet, painter, and yoga teacher from Brooklyn, NY, living in Massachusetts. I graduated magna cum laude from CUNY Brooklyn College with a degree in English Literature.
I published my first book of poetry, Moonflower in 2018; it’s about finding the beauty and goodness in life’s experiences, from the ordinary to the monumental, and in both the difficult and happier moments.
My second book, A Little Honey Sweetens The Flame explores the concept of passion and how it can stir up everyday existence, including one’s dreams and spiritual insights. The poems range in subject from the ocean, the night sky, and the painter, Vincent Van Gogh.
I focus my attention on these three occupations: writing, painting, and teaching yoga, and at times they may overlap.
* I am most inspired by my senses, by imagined experiences or ones I’ve remembered, or am right in the midst of as I am writing, and also the stirrings of my heart and anything that warms or chills me, or I see as destructive, and especially where my heart, mind, and senses meet.
This could be in my spiritual understanding, the art I see others’ making, like poems, music, and paintings, the dreams that may stand out to me, memories of mine near and distant, and the other poets and artists I get to know through their work, both local ones and ones in other countries, and the living ones and ones who have passed.
* I haven’t felt that bad reviews would be a bad thing to me at all as I know as an appreciator of art we may all have different variations in what we like. Maybe a negative comment could show me something I wish to improve in my writing that I didn’t think of myself.
I may be very excited about a poem or set of poems, but I enjoy looking for ways to add to them whatever they need: to expand on a part or remove something that feels extraneous. At the same time, I could read a negative comment that I would personally find as something I really like in my own work. I don’t see a definite ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in art and that readers are free to decide what they like and don’t like.
I appreciate any reviews of my books, whether the person liked it or hated it or felt somewhere in between, and am grateful to anyone who reads my books.
Jade Nicole Beals