Before Leaving the Island: Poetry by John Fadely
Forthcoming April, 2026
Winner of the Trail to Table Book Award in Poetry and forthcoming in 2026
ALT: Painting by Tom Blood entitled "No Man Is an Island" depicts man wearing black suit and bowler hat, standing in shoulder deep water and facing land as the sun rises or sets, casting a pinkish glow on the clouds and water. Text reads: Before Leaving the Island - John Fadely - poems
Winner of the 2025 Trail to Table Book Award in Poetry
“Fadely offers a mosaic of influences in this evocative poetry collection.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Before you leave your own island, be sure to explore John Fadely’s. Along the shore, your signals are jammed with true hyperbole, as in every good poem’s interference against the usual. Below the ground, you interrogate the poem exactly as you read it. Navigate the shoals in order to find scraps of wisdom not from but for Confucius. The notes map the journey you’ve taken along with Marianne Moore, Jack Kerouac, Gustave Caillebotte, Khalil Gibran, and Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet where he and we sing the outcast hymns.”
--Al Filreis, Kelly Professor, University of Pennsylvania
“Fadely offers a mosaic of influences in this evocative poetry collection.”
--Kirkus Reviews
“Before you leave your own island, be sure to explore John Fadely’s. Along the shore, your signals are jammed with true hyperbole, as in every good poem’s interference against the usual. Below the ground, you interrogate the poem exactly as you read it. Navigate the shoals in order to find scraps of wisdom not from but for Confucius. The notes map the journey you’ve taken along with Marianne Moore, Jack Kerouac, Gustave Caillebotte, Khalil Gibran, and Shakespeare’s 29th sonnet where he and we sing the outcast hymns.”
--Al Filreis, Kelly Professor, University of Pennsylvania
“John Fadely’s debut collection is rich with inventive language, engaging forms and the realities of leaving one land and transitioning to another. These poems contain an honest believable voice from a life lived globally but studded with small intimate moments shining through. Each poem is gleaming in a varnish of light.”
--Tina Schumann, author of Boneyard Heresies
“In Fadely’s collection, the echoes of Donne’s “no man is an island” resonate as poems deeply connected to lyrical traditions, ancient and modern, navigate the flux of continents and cultures. These verses move with striking versatility, from moments of fierce, high-stakes questioning to scenes of tender, quiet reflection. Contemplative, at times experimental, and rooted in both inherited and personal myths, the poems feel pleasurable and necessary, charting a poet’s honest journey to locate oneself within life’s vast, shifting geographies.”
--Jake Marmer, author of Cosmic Diaspora
--Tina Schumann, author of Boneyard Heresies
“In Fadely’s collection, the echoes of Donne’s “no man is an island” resonate as poems deeply connected to lyrical traditions, ancient and modern, navigate the flux of continents and cultures. These verses move with striking versatility, from moments of fierce, high-stakes questioning to scenes of tender, quiet reflection. Contemplative, at times experimental, and rooted in both inherited and personal myths, the poems feel pleasurable and necessary, charting a poet’s honest journey to locate oneself within life’s vast, shifting geographies.”
--Jake Marmer, author of Cosmic Diaspora
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ALT: Photo of poet John Fadely
After 29 years in Asia, including practicing law in Hong Kong, Tokyo and Singapore for 25 years, John Fadely wrote Before Leaving the Island as part of a midlife journey, from 2019 to 2025, from Hong Kong through Singapore – both of them islands – to California.
He is also co-translating an illustrated edition of Tang and Song dynasty poetry, and participates in a reading group that he co-founded in 2021 to explore modern and contemporary long poems. Before Leaving the Island is his debut poetry collection.
Learn more at johnfadely.com
He is also co-translating an illustrated edition of Tang and Song dynasty poetry, and participates in a reading group that he co-founded in 2021 to explore modern and contemporary long poems. Before Leaving the Island is his debut poetry collection.
Learn more at johnfadely.com