Joe Neal lives in the most loveliest part of Wexford at Edenvale, beside the River Sow waterfall, close to the village of Castlebridge, with a clear view of the Slaney estuary flowing towards historic Wexford town, and he is further endowed with the joy of his new book of poetry, which has just been published.
Joe Neal is an award-winning actor and poet. He has just had his sixth collection of poetry published, entitled Rossetti’s Wombat.

JOE NEAL reading from his latest collection of poetry.

This is Joe’s sixth collection of poetry and he has just completed a reading tour of North America, a book launch in Wexford and a reading in Enniscorthy with future events planned also.
Neal originally trained as an actor in repertory theatre before attending the University of Nottingham. Apart from poetry, he has divided his time between acting and journalism – working in London for the Times, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Express.
As an actor he has appeared in London’s West End and in Dublin’s Abbey and Gate theatres and in provincial theatres in the UK. He has also appeared on television and radio in Britain and Ireland. As well as poetry, he writes extensively on natural history and the countryside.
In 2017, Neal won the Anthony Cronin International Poetry Award at the Wexford Literary Festival held in Enniscorthy for a poem published in his collection The Next Blue Note.
Other poetry collections include Telling It at a Slant, Turn Now the Tide, Hear the Colour and Still Rise the Sun. He has given readings and workshops in theatre and arts centre venues, in festivals across England, Ireland and Wales and in 2018 thanks to an Arts Council Bursary he gave a tour of New England.
Rossetti’s Wombat takes its title from one of his poems prompted by the unusual behaviour of Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
He has received outsanding reviews.
Wexford’s Eoin Colfer wrote; “Neal paints a layered and subtle picture of days gone by. His poems are warm, graceful and keenly observed.”
Former editor of the defunct The Wexford Echo Group of Newspapers. Tom Mooney, who is a close friend of Joe Neal and wrote the foreward; “’In Rossetti’s Wombat Neal writes like a hipster evangelist; read him and share the pleasure of a poet remembering things he didn’t know he knew.”